Inside MTV Reality: Welcome Back to The Challenge All-Stars, Part Four

BY DC CUEVA 

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May we say hello to all of you, and welcome back Inside MTV Reality at DCBLOG with the hope that 2024 has been good to you so far. As we wrote here Saturday, this site has been on a hiatus for most of the last year & a half to something more important to me than everything else: helping my family after our biggest heartache, and also growing my reputation as a YouTuber. But with a new appreciation for what's really important to me, we're set to resume regular activity and to properly mark our tenth anniversary of covering the shows you love and a lot more than that - although it'll be a little different.

The year as far as MTV Reality television is concerned has seen a first for that longtime staple of Thursdays in that everyone who has called Jersey Shore home is now under one roof, as we await what happens when Ronnie & Sammi see each other for the first time in forever as the franchise marks fifteen years young this summer. Also turning that age is the Teen Mom sorority, where they and the one who represents this world there of Cheyenne and her fellow MTV'ers, are out of country again for their third Vacation down in South America. And then, there's the one things that what we follow the most...

Poster & Pics: Paramount+/Andy Reeves

As much as this site is marking a belated birthday season here, fans like yourselves are marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the launch of The Challenge as a regular MTV series when alumni of The Real World and Road Rules went on that first cross-country road-trip. The show has changed quite a bit since then, and plenty has gone down in the course of what has been thirty-nine seasons of the MTV show, along with a slew of spinoff shows in its many and various forms. And we have been following this world ever since CT won his first career title, except for the past couple seasons including its second season on network television last summer on CBS with Big Brother, Survivor and Amazing Race alums competing alongside MTV Challenge alumni.

After that, this past fall and into the winter -- and prior to it eventually turning the same age as me, the show gave the opportunity for those who have not won one of these that chance to have the stage to themselves unabated. Battle for a New Champion saw a slew of new competitors and familiar faces take to the floor in search for win #1, and we saw plenty go down: a friendship of love show alumni going the way of the dinosaur, two who have mastered 39 days of outdoor captivity have control of the regular season until the finals, and even a few champions try to crash the whole thing without being mercenaries entering the game. And it was a Romanian who followed in the footsteps of a Big Brother champ in proving that those don't have to produce the big time drama and still be competitive enough to win it all.

What went down there will set up what should a most compelling battle for the ages when the fortieth season of the MTV Challenge comes our way once the autumn air hits after the heat of this summer. And this comes at a time where TV's longest-running reality competition franchise has once again hit the mainstream just as it did having the stage to itself when the world lost its mind. One GOAT and a fellow reality icon just claimed the season 2 crown of the streaming world's most buzzworthy reality show, coming after a 7-time champ also took his world tour to The Traitors just after joining fellow Villains elsewhere on the dial, one that will soon have a longtime nemesis joining in too. And we cannot forget about two other Challenge alums joining a battle of reality show GOAT's over at Jeff Bezo's place.

And it's also in the world of streaming, and in the entry of MTV's parent company into that world, that provides us with the stage to the main event of this spring... a bit later than planned, but it's one thing that's been in the rear view mirror of so many of you in Challenge Nation for some time. When Paramount+ launched back in 2021 the MTV Reality world was sure to be a major part of its offerings, and it's no surprise that The Challenge would play a big part of it. The result of that: the most exciting thing to happen in this world in years of the All-Stars spinoff series... and after the break, we bring you our first look at Season 4 as South Africa welcomes back legends, power players and more to a star-studded season that promises to be quite a season. And to Challenge Nation, welcome back again.