While the first few episodes of MTV’s The Challenge: Battle For a New Champion featured relatively little drama, that will change in the next several installments.
Potential showmances and a heated clash between castmates are in the spotlight in a promotional trailer released before Episodes 3 and 4.
In the video footage, viewers hear Horacio Gutierrez talking about the “flirtatious vibes” in the house.
He mentions the potential showmances featuring Michele Fitzgerald and Callum Izzard, as well as Kyland Young and Melissa Reeves.
Horacio indicates he’s staying out of all that, although a brief shot of Nurys Mateo during the cast’s time in the hot tub seemingly foreshadows their showmance.
Spies, Lies & Allies’ Berna Canbeldek is also featured in the clip and among those shown dancing and enjoying herself near the hot tub.
However, she notices two of her castmates making faces, leading to a heated confrontation between her and Melissa. Following the clip’s release, Berna made further remarks about the situation, as did Melissa.
Melissa fires back at Berna’s ‘bully’ claims in Season 39 clip
“What’s a house party without a little drama?” the IG caption teases on a promotional video for Battle For a New Champion’s upcoming episode.
The hot tub party starts as fun and games, with Melissa and Ed Eason chest-bumping in the water and Asaf Goren parading around in a beige bikini before performing some dance moves.
However, things devolve from there when Berna is dancing outside of the hot tub and spots Tula “Big T” Fazakerley and Melissa rolling their eyes at her while they’re in the water.
“I have fun. I do my thing. Everyone knows I love dancing. But then I look down and kind of see rolling eyes and smiling to one another, like, kind of bullying,” Berna says in a confessional.
She also shares she felt the need to “confront them” because she’s not sure they know “how much they can hurt a person” by acting that way.
While explaining what she was upset by, Berna mentions the word “bully.” Melissa takes exception to it and begins to yell in Berna’s face, as seen in the clip.
During her confessional, Melissa indicated that being called a “bully” triggered her because she was “bullied severely in schools” during her “entire childhood.” She revealed that she was “targeted” and “beaten up” because she was more like “one of the boys.”
The clip teases the argument between Berna and Melissa, with various castmates gathered around as Melissa continues to yell at Berna.
However, it cuts off before indicating whether things escalated beyond yelling and arguing. Viewers will see what happens in back-to-back episodes of The Challenge Season 39 on November 8.
Berna calls out edited footage in further remarks
Taking to the comment section of The Challenge IG post, several of the cast members left further remarks about what happened or didn’t happen involving Berna, Melissa, and Big T.
Big Brother star Kyland, Melissa’s showmance from Season 39, dropped by to leave his thoughts.
“it’s hilarious when you realize they weren’t even talking about her AT ALL in that moment she’s referring to,” Kyland commented, which prompted Berna to fire back.
“how would you know.. like you weren’t even their this very moment.. but I’ll give you your Superman moment !! We will all see how wonderful of a Superman u are 🤞🏽sending love,” Berna wrote.
The Season 39 castmates continued to go back and forth with their arguing in the comments, including Berna indicating she couldn’t talk too much about the situation because the footage hadn’t aired.
However, she mentioned that “half of the cast or the production or service crew said so” and apologized to her. She finished her comment by telling Kyland, “mind your business.”
Berna wishes her castmate ‘most of luck,’ ‘far from me’
After more back and forth between the castmates, Berna ultimately wished Kyland well, indicating she didn’t want further communication.
“I hope you get better soon. wish you most of luck. Close to god, far from me,” Berna wrote.
It remains to be seen if something happened between Berna and Kyland during the season. In the above comments, Berna hinted at Kyland’s role as a “Superman,” which is intriguing and could present itself in upcoming episodes.
Melissa says her castmate ‘played the victim a lot’
As viewers have seen in many MTV and spinoff seasons of The Challenge, plenty gets left out of the final episodes, which seems necessary to present all sides and tell the whole story.
Based on a comment that Melissa left about the footage, the promotional clip’s edit did her “dirty,” and things may look much different when all of the episode is shown.
In her comment, Melissa claims she wasn’t the only one “accused of giving the side eye or rolling their eyes,” adding that Berna did that a lot and “played victim a lot.”
She followed up by saying that she yelled at Berna due to her and others trying to talk with her and it not getting through.
“The word bully shouldn’t be thrown about lightly, hence why I was so upset when being accused of one,” Melissa commented.
Based on the comments ahead of the episode, there may be a lot to unpack regarding the situation involving Berna, Melissa, and castmates. Viewers will see more of this drama during Episodes 3 and 4, which arrive on Wednesday, November 8.
The Challenge: Battle For a New Champion airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on MTV.