With the recent season of MTV’s The Challenge experiencing lower ratings than usual for the reality series, many fans have speculated on what the issues might be.
Cast members from previous seasons of the show have also been voicing their opinions about the current state of The Challenge.
That includes Jenna Compono, who has been on a brief hiatus from the competition series as she got married and became a new mother.
However, she continues to answer fan questions about the show and recently revealed her thoughts on why she enjoyed older seasons of The Challenge.
Jenna Compono explains what The Challenge may be missing
Recent seasons of The Challenge may have some fans less interested, possibly due to the cast consisting of many rookies or the same veteran cast members over and over. Other fans have mentioned they dislike the spy formats in the past several seasons.
Just recently, Jenna Compono gave fans the ability to “ask away” by sending questions on her Instagram Story as she said it was feeding time for her and Zach Nichols’ baby, Anthony.
“Do you think The Challenge isn’t as good as it used to be? Concept & partnering?” a fan sent in as a question for Jenna.
The Challenge star explained why she loved her first several seasons of the show and commented on what she’s heard or read about the newer seasons.
“I loved having so many of the older vets and not soooo many new people. I think a lot of people can agree that fans like following castmates’ stories throughout the years and have their favorites to root for,” Jenna said in part of her reply.
“With sooo many new people it’s hard to follow and I’ve been hearing/reading that people hate it,” she added.
Jenna revealed her favorite season she appeared on was Battle of the Exes 2, adding she missed the game where the winners got dinner later on and decided who went into elimination.
“I also miss how drama was about the game and less about personal attacks,” she said regarding older seasons.
Viewers saw Jenna last appear on The Challenge Season 35, Total Madness, before taking the past two seasons off. During her time away, she and castmate Zach Nichols got married, and Jenna recently gave birth to their first child.
However, Jenna’s mentioned wanting to return to the show at some point. It’s unknown if that would be on MTV’s series, or possibly down the road for a season of Paramount Plus’ All Stars spinoff.
The Challenge offering new Season 37 format, spinoff series
The current season, The Challenge: Spies, Lies & Allies, started with 34 cast members divided up into pairs of two teammates. However, 19 of those cast members were rookies, meaning fans had to keep track of the new people.
Some cast members came from shows that United States viewers are familiar with, including Survivor and Love Island. Others were from international shows that viewers may have never seen.
With the way the format was set up at the start of the season, a huge veteran alliance formed consisting of The Challenge stars who were back after at least one or more seasons on the show. Those castmates formed a truce to not vote for one another to go into elimination until all rookies were out.
Each week’s elimination saw veterans able to systematically pick off the rookies, eliminating one or two per episode. By the end of Episode 10, it was down to just five rookies.
However, the format also changed in Episode 10 as the partnerships ended, and eventually, the competitors were divided into three teams of six people each.
The winning team in the daily challenge got to vote for one cast member to go into elimination later, with each day being either a men’s or women’s elimination day.
Another twist arrived with the person voted into elimination, choosing their opponent, except for one from the winning team. Also, the winner in the elimination got to decide if they wanted to rejoin their group or steal someone’s spot from any other group.
Those twists, along with fewer rookies, could be enough to keep The Challenge ratings steady. However, fans have now seen that The Challenge: All Stars 2 spinoff is coming and will bring back their favorite OGs from previous installments in the series.
With that, fans can choose which show they prefer, although many are still hoping for some changes to the main season on MTV’s popular series to keep them watching.
The Challenge: Spies, Lies & Allies airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on MTV. The Challenge: All Stars 2 premieres on Thursday, November 11, on Paramount Plus.