Every Season of The Challenge, Ranked: #42 — Battle of the Eras

Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Host: TJ Lavin

Aired: 2024–25

Champions: Jordan, Jenny and Rachel

Overall Thoughts: For season 40, The Challenge assembled one of the greatest casts in the history of the show.

Unfortunately, the season couldn’t do much to distinguish itself from other recent, boring seasons.

Although there were some big-name elimination matchups, some impressive moments in competition, with some castmembers who made deep runs that hadn’t been on the flagship in more than a decade, this season didn’t come close to living up to its potential.

I enjoyed the nostalgia aspect and celebration of the show’s history, but due to an unfortunate boot order (especially on the guys’ side), a bad game format, poor editing, and boring appearances by the majority of the cast, Battle of the Eras was yet another lackluster season.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS

• CT’s Pro Tips
• Paulie/Theo deliberation confrontation
• The Tony/Averey stalemate
• Laurel vs. Cara Maria
• Theo’s plan
• Cory vs. Josh
• Bananas vs Tori after the Ryan elimination
• Feetgate

REPORT CARD

Format: F

The idea to have teams across four different eras was a good way to celebrate the show’s history, but the game mechanics of this season were bad.

The elimination winners picked the targets for the next round. In the team portion, it was one person on every team of the opposite sex, and in the individual portion it was three people of the opposite sex.

The losers of the daily challenge automatically went into elimination, while the winners got to choose between the remaining targets.

With such a limited amount of options, there were very few interesting decisions. This became more of an issue in the individual phase, as there were instances where the target…