Every Season of The Challenge, Ranked: #7 — The Inferno II

Location: Manzanillo, Mexico

Host: Dave Mirra

Aired: 2005

Champions: Good Guys (Landon, The Miz, Darrell and Jamie)

Overall Thoughts: To me, Inferno II is where The Challenge really started becoming The Challenge. This is when Justin Booth became executive producer and transformed the challenges from mostly lighthearted with minimal amounts of athleticism required to (at times) military-like, as evidenced by the opening Surf Torture mission.

“When we used to do it, it was just a camp that kids would come on, they didn’t take anything seriously and there was a lot of money at stake,” Booth said in a 2017 interview with USA Today. “And so I thought that it might drive a different kind of story if we made this a competitive game. Instead of coming out and tying three rafts together and floating around, it would be an interesting experiment to see how the kids reacted to things they actually needed to be good at or generally athletic to be able to accomplish.”

But even with the improved competition, Inferno II shines in its drama. Whether it’s Tonya vs. Beth, Tonya vs. the Mean Girls, the Brad wedgie incident, etc., there is drama in pretty much…