While The Challenge: All Stars spinoff features competitors who are mostly older than those on the regular season of MTV’s show, the challenges they are participating in aren’t much easier.
In fact, that was apparent in All Stars Episode 1, as numerous competitors had difficulty with a swim and diving underneath cold water to retrieve large blocks with numbers on them.
Several cast members even needed medical help or recovery time, including one who revealed she “nearly blacked out twice” and had a castmate yelling that she may have had hypothermia.
The Challenge: All Stars cast had difficult first mission
In the All Stars’ first episode, TJ Lavin revealed to the competitors that their first mission was called Deep Blue Dive. It involved two teams of 11 solving math equations on shore to get a specific number answer.
Once they had the answer, one team member swam out into cold water. After they swam out to a certain point, they had to dive down under the water to retrieve a block with their correct number on it.
While that sounds easy, it wasn’t for all of the competitors. Some swam out to the area where the blocks were and then realized they weren’t going to be able to make the dive, so they swam back.
Others tried to go under the water and couldn’t, so they needed a lifeguard or even medical help. Cast member Arissa Hill started to suffer a terrible cramp in her body and needed help to get back to shore.
“Welcome to The Challenge, uh, the senior edition,” Teck Holmes joked during a confessional interview segment. Two of his castmates, Jisela Delgado and Derrick Kosinski, also spoke about that first mission during a morning news program.
After the episode arrived, Kendal Sheppard was on Twitter, where she shared some extra details about her attempts to do the mission.
Someone on Twitter mentioned they felt Kendal wasn’t shown much in the episode, and another Twitter member asked if she was even in the water. Kendal replied that she was for 15 minutes and tried to participate in that part, but things got scary.
“Grabbed the box 3 times between my feet and pulled up with no release and nearly blacked out twice on my way back in and again on the rock. The lifeguard was nowhere in sight. My memory skips a minute or so until I hear Yes [Duffy] yelling for a medic,” Kendal tweeted.
Kendal explains what it took for her to recover
In another series of tweets, Kendal revealed that Yes yelled, “she has hypothermia,” and that she was “confused and ‘babbling,'” according to her castmate. She also said it took “about an hour” before she stopped shaking. That was after many cups of warm water, blankets, and having half her body buried in the sand.
She also went on to praise several of her All Stars castmates for being able to make the swim despite those tough conditions.
“Seeing all of us drop like that isn’t a Testament of us being old/weak, it’s a Testament to how incredibly AMAZING the others (Jisela, Nehemiah, Darrell, Yes, Jem, etc) did!! Although, in the moment I felt very weak. It was awful. That said, the way they edited it in the show was pure comedy &prob my favorite part!” Kendal shared in a tweet reply.
Kendal’s castmate, Trishelle Cannatella, also replied, saying she was afraid for Kendal and Arissa. Trishelle also shared she didn’t realize until watching the episode how close Laterrian Wallace was to drowning.
Kendal added Jonna Mannion to the list of competitors she was scared over after seeing the footage and revealed that Arissa Hill went into an ambulance, but it didn’t make the episode.
Based on the sneak peek trailer for upcoming episodes, it doesn’t appear like TJ Lavin and the show’s producers will let up in terms of how tough the challenges will be. So it definitely will put the OG competitors to the test in this updated version of The Challenge.
The Challenge: All Stars releases new episodes every Thursday on Paramount Plus.
Episodes of The Challenge are now streaming on Paramount+. Try it FREE!
The link above is an affiliate link. This means that for any qualifying purchase you make, we may earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you.