Who Is the Most Important Castmember on The Challenge Right Now?

I think it’s safe to say that the casting pool for The Challenge is in a state of flux.

I was reading through one of my old articles the other day, and I saw that I had written after War of the Worlds that “there’s no way there’s going to be another season where half the cast is rookies anytime soon”.

Well, flash forward four seasons and we already have another season where there’s as many rookies as returning players.

A huge reason we’re getting this is the dramatic casting turnover in the last few years. I seriously doubt that of all the promising prospects on War of the Worlds — Turbo, Theo, Georgia, Bear, Mattie, Ninja, Dee — anyone would have expected that Josh would be the only prospect to still be on the show just four seasons later.

With Johnny Bananas on hiatus from the show, Wes taking at least this season off and a bunch of castmembers like Cara, Paulie, Jordan and Rogan being blacklisted the last few seasons, doing another “Fresh Meat” type season became necessary.

So with season 37 right around the corner, I wanted to take a look at the current state of The Challenge casting pool.

In doing this exercise, I put on my producer’s hat and tried to look at it from this perspective — if the show had to…