After a season filled with eliminations, disqualifications, medical emergencies and plenty of controversy, The Challenge: Cutthroat has crowned its winners.
Season 42 ended with nine finalists battling through a grueling final in the brutal Thailand heat for a share of the $500,000 grand prize.
SPOILER ALERT: Be warned of spoilers ahead for “The Final – Part 2” of The Challenge: Cutthroat. Don’t keep reading if you don’t want to be spoiled.
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Who Won ‘The Challenge: Cutthroat’ Season 42?
When it was all over, the five members of the Orange Team came out on top.
Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio, Chris “CT” Tamburello, Tori Deal, Michele Fitzgerald and Will Gagnon won The Challenge: Cutthroat season 42.
The Orange Team defeated the all-female Gray Team of Adrienne Naylor, Cara Maria Sorbello, Cassidy Clark and Alexis “Lete” Lete, who finished second—and the Gray girls managed to keep it very close.
The victory adds yet another championship to the already formidable résumés of Bananas, CT and Tori, while Michele and Will earned their first Challenge wins.
For Bananas, Cutthroat marks his eighth championship, extending his record as the winningest competitor in franchise history. CT earned his sixth championship, while Tori picked up her second. Michele, meanwhile, finally added a championship to a Challenge résumé that has included several deep runs across five seasons, while Will managed to win in just his second season on the show.
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Who Finished Second on ‘The Challenge’ Season 42?
Adrienne, Cara Maria, Cassidy and Lete finished second as the Gray Team.
Their path to the final looked considerably different from Orange’s. Gray entered the final without a single man after Chris Underwood was eliminated by Justin Hinsley a few episodes ago. That left the four women to take on an Orange Team that still had five competitors, including three men.
It also meant Adrienne and Cassidy recorded their best finishes yet on The Challenge, while Lete made the final during her rookie season.
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What Happened During ‘The Challenge: Cutthroat’ Final?
The Cutthroat final unfolded across two episodes, with the first half sending the nine finalists into punishing conditions in Thailand.
Day 1 began in approximately 90-degree heat with 100 percent humidity and a heat index that reached well above 110 degrees as the competition continued.
Each team had its own compound, with the competitors repeatedly traveling roughly a mile to the House of Puzzles. There, they had to solve puzzles to earn keys that unlocked additional checkpoints and components needed to construct a power source.
The first team to successfully activate its completed power source would ultimately win the final. But simply getting through Day 1 proved to be a serious challenge.
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What Happened to CT During ‘The Challenge’ Final?
CT struggled badly with the extreme heat during the first day.
He wanted to visit the recovery station early in the final and eventually became sick enough that medical personnel pulled him from the competition for an evaluation because they were concerned he was going into cardiac arrest.
That created one of the biggest controversies of Part 1.
Rather than forcing Orange to stop competing while CT was evaluated, the rest of his team was permitted to continue without him. CT was eventually cleared to return and rejoined Orange during the third checkpoint.
The decision immediately sparked criticism from viewers, particularly because Orange did not appear to receive a time penalty for competing without one of its required team members.
“So medical/production temporarily pulls CT from the final, allows the orange team to continue on, and then lets him come back to continue the final and orange team isn’t penalized at all?” one viewer wrote on X.
Another added, “As much as I love the Orange team, it’s Hella crazy that they got to continue without CT AND haven’t received any penalty for it.”
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Why Were Fans Accusing ‘The Challenge’ of Favoring the Orange Team?
CT’s medical break wasn’t the only thing viewers questioned during Part 1.
Lete later said on TikTok that the two teams received different instructions at certain checkpoints.
According to Lete, Gray was told it had to keep the tangram in its plexiglass case to solve it and could not solve it on the ground first and then place the pieces inside the case, while viewers later watched Orange solve its tangram outside the case. Cara Maria also said there were different rules surrounding the barrel-balancing checkpoint—Gray was told they couldn’t have their hands on the barrels and Orange was allowed to.
Fans quickly picked up on the apparent discrepancies.
One viewer wrote, “CT gets fluids, rejoins his team with zero penalty, & according to Lete, her team was told not to solve the tangram on the ground while Orange could.”
Another questioned why Orange appeared able to grasp the barrels during the balancing portion while Gray did not. The episode itself did not establish that production intentionally favored either team, but the complaints added another layer of controversy to an already grueling final.
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Did Tori Want CT Out of ‘The Challenge’ Final?
Perhaps the wildest moment of Part 1 came from CT’s own captain.
As CT struggled with the heat, Tori whispered to Will, “We run him into the ground and get him medically DQ’d.”
Tori also began wondering whether she had made the wrong decision by protecting CT before the final instead of Justin by sending Justin against Lete in the final elimination.
CT ultimately recovered enough to return to the competition, meaning Orange entered the remainder of the final with its five-person team intact.
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How Much Money Did the ‘Challenge: Cutthroat’ Winners Get?
The total prize for The Challenge: Cutthroat was $500,000.
As Orange captain, Tori had enormous power over the money: She was given the ability to decide how the team’s winnings would be divided.
Will ‘The Challenge’ Return For Season 43?
Paramount+ has not officially announced renewal for The Challenge season 43, but host TJ Lavin did say on Johnny Bananas’ podcast that he does know they will be filming another season, but he has no other details beyond that at this point in time.
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