Each season of MTV’s The Challenge brings a unique filming location where the competitors battle in various grueling events and eliminations.
The locations typically include breathtaking visuals such as high mountaintops, rugged terrain, and bodies of water that the players have to consider as they compete.
Season 36 of the show will be no different and brings another great bit of scenery to the series.
So, where is The Challenge: Double Agents filmed?
The Challenge: Double Agents filming location
As of December 2020, viewers got to see the premiere of The Challenge: Double Agents, which had a lot of buildup through promotional clips shared on social media. Many of the clips showed off some of the beautiful scenery involved in the latest season of MTV’s show. The Double Agents Super Trailer showed a lot of the location ahead of the season’s episodes.
For Season 36 of the competition, they filmed in Reykjavík, Iceland from August through November of 2020. The location was initially chosen after production scouted different areas virtually. This was due to COVID-19 travel restrictions making it tough to visit other countries.
Reykjavík is the capital city of Iceland and also the largest city in the Nordic island country. It’s also said that this was the area for the first permanent Viking settlement by Norsemen in Iceland. The area was established in AD 874.
As of 2016, it had a population of nearly 123,000 people. Reykjavík features subpolar oceanic climates and often includes extremes of day and night throughout the year. In midwinter, there are only four or five hours of daylight in the region each day. Other times of year feature a lot more sunlight throughout the day.
The area tends to get a high temperature of around 57 degrees Fahrenheit in July, just before The Challenge competitors got there. The coldest months are typically January and February, and they weren’t filming the show then.
Basically, it appears that the temperatures in Reykjavík may have been as low as 30 degrees Fahrenheit to as high as 55 degrees Fahrenheit for the months the show filmed there.
Per Trip Savvy, the wettest month comes in September with about 4.6 inches of rain on average. So there may have been some rainy competitions taking place, which have been featured on other seasons in the past.
Other Double Agents filming location details
As mentioned in a report from Variety, production chose this location “because of its topography, which has everything from glaciers to volcanos to black sand beaches that would make for visually interesting backdrops for competition challenges, elimination challenges, and the eventual finale.”
The production also created an exclusive nightclub for competitors to party at which was connected to The Challenge house. This was to keep the competitors in the same spot, rather than having them going out on the town and risk exposure to COVID-19 during the show’s filming.
The other tidbit with The Challenge: Double Agents location is that they kept the final in the same location this season. In past seasons, viewers saw finalists transported to a new spot, possibly a nearby island, or another country. They’ll stay put in Iceland for the Season 36 final.
Based on the Super Trailer (below), the Double Agents production crew put the filming location to good use. Viewers saw in the previews for the upcoming season that there are competitions involving heights near a waterfall, swimming underwater, chopping away at large ice blocks, and a wild explosion scene or two on some rough terrain.
The Challenge: Double Agents airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on MTV.