The Challenge: Battle of the Eras featured the return of former winner Emily Schromm, someone many fans saw as a favorite to reach the final due to her previous success on the show.
However, her teammate, Laurel Stucky, revealed during Episode 5 that she viewed her castmate Emily as a threat to her winning the final and strategized to get rid of her.
Due to this, Laurel intentionally threw the episode’s daily challenge since Emily was one of the potential elimination candidates.
Emily went home earlier than anticipated after losing an elimination to Era 1’s Tina Barta.
She opened up about her castmate Laurel’s surprising plan to throw the daily challenge while on Johnny Bananas’ Death, Taxes and Bananas podcast.
While Emily said she wouldn’t play “victim” regarding how things worked out, she still had some things to say about their teammate and castmate’s plan against her.
Emily said Laurel’s plan against her ‘felt a little bit too soon’
According to Bananas, he learned the morning after Emily went home that Laurel intentionally threw the daily challenge to get rid of Emily.
While Bananas said he understood the move, he was also disappointed in Laurel for doing it because it hurt the Era 2 team.
Emily called it “smart on [Laurel’s] part in so many ways,” adding she couldn’t “be mad about it.”
Bananas agreed it was good for Laurel’s game but not necessarily their team’s game.
She explained that production changed the footage, so it looked like Emily was outside conversing with Tori Deal, suggesting that Emily was part of some dealmaking ahead of the deliberation for elimination candidates.
However, Emily said she had never participated in dealmaking and had been conversing with Laurel at that particular moment.
“You know Laurel and just how she can be,” Emily said, adding, “I think [her plan to get rid of me] just felt a little too soon.”
“We are competitors at our core, and it felt there was so much other s***,” Emily told Bananas.
Emily suggested there may have been something “threatening” Laurel, whether it was “jealousy or fear” over their relationships with other players in the game.
Viewers saw one surprising moment when Laurel even called out Emily for giving a massage to castmate Darrell Taylor, who is married.
The massage footage was innocent, but it was enough to get Darrell trash-talking with Laurel and even have Emily tell her to leave her name out of it.
Regarding Emily’s elimination due to Laurel throwing the daily event, Emily said she couldn’t be mad at her castmate for using the plan she did to oust her from the game since it made sense strategically. However, she reiterated that it felt too early for it to happen.
Emily supported castmate Cara Maria after castmate’s blowup at her
Before Emily’s Episode 5 elimination, she had an essential role in helping castmates who needed extra support.
Earlier in the episode, Michele Fitzgerald tried to work on her friendship with Laurel, who seemingly didn’t want any part of it. Castmate Cara Maria Sorbello was nearby as they conversed and offered her friendship to Michele outside the game.
Later, the footage showed Laurel exploding at Cara after she’d suggested that maybe Laurel was the problem rather than everyone she’d attacked from The Challenge.
Following the heated argument, castmates Ryan Kehoe, Rachel Robinson, Michele, and Emily comforted a distraught Cara in one of the rooms.
“Cara just needs to know she actually has support,” Emily said in a confessional interview.
“I can tell by us surrounding her and the way she’s reacting that she hasn’t ever felt this way,” she said, adding, “I want her to keep feeling this way, that she does feel supported.”
Viewers later saw Emily leading a breathing class with multiple castmates to help them reduce and alleviate their stress in the house. That scene arrived moments before she was sent to battle in The Arena.
Unfortunately, Emily’s calming and supportive presence on The Challenge Season 40 was cut short by an elimination that likely felt too early to fans for a competitor of her caliber.
Hopefully, viewers will see Emily return for another shot at a championship, whether it’s on the All Stars spin-off or MTV’s flagship show.
The Challenge: Battle of the Eras airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on MTV.
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.