The Double Agents final mission kicking off on the precipice of a wild windstorm was no coincidence. Kaycee — one of the presumed Challenge front-runners — has so far borne the brunt of the storm. And as the last leg of Season 36 commences, the question lingers: Can she survive the hurricane?
After Kyle’s elimination from the game at the hands of Fessy and the cementing of the final four Double Agents teams, the game’s remaining eight players met host TJ Lavin at the base of an Icelandic footrace for the final mission. Raging winds littered the course with airborne sand and brush, and as the players set off onto the first leg — a three-mile race to an inaugural checkpoint — they struggled to stay upright.
“We have never done a final at the tail end of a hurricane, but there’s a first for everything,” TJ said.
And that wasn’t the only warning TJ gave. After informing the game’s players that only first- and second-place finishers would earn cash (the winners would split $900,000, while runners-up would split $100,000), he revealed that the first day’s last-place finishers would be immediately expunged from the game.
For Nany, who struggled to keep a pace, there was tremendous pressure to make Leroy proud. Her partner, who said he was retiring after Double Agents, hadn’t won a Challenge in a decade of trying. And when she watched Team CT and Amber reach the first checkpoint first, Team Fessy and Kaycee reach it second and Team Cory and Kam reach it third, she knew she had to up the ante.
“I know how bad Leroy wants this win…and if I’m the reason he gets eliminated on the first day, I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself,” Nany said.
Conversely, Amber, the game’s lone remaining rookie, exceeded expectations. Not only did she win the first run by a longshot, but she also beat the game’s other seven players in the first checkpoint.
“This is why I came here to this Challenge,” Amber said. “I’m gonna put my body through everything to make it.”
But for Amber’s fellow Big Brother alumna Kaycee, the next leg of the game would prove to be a body-breaker. At some point during a two-mile race along a coastline, Kaycee took a tumble, landed on her back and injured her knee. Historically invincible on The Challenge, her screams and tears were especially shocking, and as she struggled to move, she and Fessy watched their comfortable second-place standing disappear.
“Everything I went through this whole entire game I’m thinking about as I’m laying here with my knee out of my socket,” Kaycee said through tears.
She struggled to get upright and eventually managed to get back on her feet, but when she arrived with Fessy at the next checkpoint — a feast of fish eyes, sheep face, and more stomach-churning snacks — Kaycee encountered another heartbreak: Her partner’s evident surrender.
Yes, while Kaycee insisted on continuing the race, face soaked with spillover from her specialty blood cocktail, she noticed that Fessy had basically thrown in the towel. She pleaded with him through sobs to keep fighting, but Fessy — who said he saw the writing on the wall — essentially admitted defeat.
“I wonder if Kaycee has any regret right now about having Fessy as a partner,” Leroy, a longtime skeptic of Fessy, said. “I would be f*cking pissed.”
It’s only a matter of time before TJ reveals the first team to be expelled from the Double Agents final mission. Can Kaycee pull out the ultimate underdog story and rise above her injury? Or are her knee and her partner’s apparent forfeiture too much to overcome? Find out what happens when The Challenge finale continues Wednesday!
