‘The Challenge USA’ season 2’s format, explained

This article will include spoilers for August 9’s premiere episode, “The Riskiest Season Yet.”

The second iteration of The Challenge: USA is finally here, and with it comes a unique format to the franchise. The reality competition show premiered on Thursday night, after Big Brother via CBS and Paramount Plus.

The season brought back several Challenge mainstays, including John “Johnny Bananas” Devenanzio, Tori Deal, Amanda Garcia, and Wes Bergmann, as well as new hopefuls, like The Amazing Race’s Dusty Harris and Big Brother’s Alyssa Snider and Tyler Crispen. The thing that joins the contestants is that they’re all reality stars. Most of them are from a CBS show — specifically Survivor, Big Brother, or The Amazing Race — and six hail from MTV’s version of The Challenge.

All in all, 24 contestants (12 men and 12 women) were cast on USA 2. And during the first episode, longtime Challenge host TJ Lavin revealed that one man and one woman would walk away with $250,000 apiece.

But, how does this season work? I’ll go through what we know so far about USA 2’s format, and where it will likely go.

The information provided about USA 2’s structure is based on episode 1.

How does The Challenge work in season 2?

The Hopper is a randomizing device that’ll be ever-present this season

First, we need to talk about “The Hopper” — TJ introduced it at the start of episode 1. It appears to be a tool that’ll potentially be used the entire season, just like “The Algorithm” was relied upon during season 1 last year.

Balls with contestants’ names are placed into The Hopper, and are blown around and scrambled until a name is ejected out of the side. This is how TJ can produce a random name.

In the game’s opening moments, TJ told the challengers that USA 2 was a team-based season. He then used The Hopper to determine the three players who would assemble their respective teams. After some theatrics featuring the MTV stars rolling up to the Croatian scene on jet skis, the “Red,” “Blue,” and “Green” teams were created through a schoolyard pick led by names chosen by The Hopper.

Each group was compromised of eight contestants with two MTV veterans apiece.

The daily challenge determines who is safe from the elimination round

After the reality stars moved into their house, the daily challenge took place. Since it is a team game, Red, Blue, and Green battled it out for the top spot in episode 1. They competed in “Storm the Castle,” which forced the players to transport heavy statues depicting the MTV players while memorizing patterns along the way. After solving a code and racing to a castle, Blue emerged victorious.

Because they reigned supreme, all eight Blue competitors received safety from elimination during the opening round of play.

The daily challenge winners choose one man and one woman to be up for elimination

Resting easy is not the only benefit of winning a daily challenge, however. The victors are then tasked with choosing one man and one woman to potentially face elimination. The names are determined through a vote held solely between the winning team; in this case, Blue.

After the dust settled, The Amazing Race 34’s Luis Colon and Big Brother 24’s Ameerah Jones were chosen.

A secret vote is then held between the 2 losing teams

This is perhaps the most fun part of USA 2’s structure. Although Survivor and Big Brother contestants are used to anonymous voting, The Challenge players typically don’t receive that same luxury (but it has happened in the past, of course).

Well, in this season, secret voting is a thing.

After the two individuals nominated by the winning team are revealed, another vote is sanctioned. This time, players from the two losing teams — Red and Green, for example — take turns casting one vote alone. In episode 1, every contestant not wearing a Blue jersey was eligible to be chosen, regardless of sex.

The Hopper then determines who squares off in ‘The Arena’

After all of the votes were cast, the three teams left their home and headed to “The Arena,” this season’s elimination battleground. The daily challenge winners (Blue) arrived at The Arena wearing whatever they pleased and the two defeated teams (Red and Blue) donned their respective jerseys.

After TJ greeted the cast was greeted, Luis and Ameerah were summoned to the sandpit. Then, TJ explained how the elimination pairing would be determined.

Every player that receives a vote during the secret voting phase will have their name placed in The Hopper. The number of balls with their corresponding name is determined by the number of votes they receive. For example, Johnny Bananas was hit with four votes. So, four balls with his name were tossed into The Hopper.

Then, it’s turned on to spit out one name. If a male’s name pops out, then they’ll face Luis in The Arena. And if it’s a female’s name, they’ll take on Ameerah.

Michele Fitzgerald was ultimately chosen by The Hopper to face Ameerah in a loser-goes-home challenge, sending Luis back up to rejoin his housemates. Michele came out on top and served Ameerah up as the unenviable first boot.

Then, Michele was faced with a decision with big ramifications. Moving forward, any player triumphant in elimination has the opportunity to defect from their team and join another by switching places with one contestant of the same sex. However, in this case, Michele — a Red player — decided to stick with her group.

Considering there are only 2 winners, the team structure likely won’t last

It appears like the team-based daily challenge and individual-elimination style structure is here to stay for a while. But, don’t be surprised if the teams dissolve at some point. TJ made it clear on multiple occasions that only one woman and one man can split the $500,000 grand prize.

If the game is played within teams for the entirety of USA 2, the only way that can happen is if Blue, Red, and Green are whittled down to two players, one of each sex, by the end of the season. That seems unlikely to happen.

What’s more reasonable is that halfway through the game, it’ll switch into an individual-based structure. It’s very on-brand for The Challenge to switch up its format to mark a season’s midway point. So, stay on the lookout for TJ to shake things up, especially if the teams appear lopsided.