The Challenge: Ride or Dies winners break down how they dominated the 100-hour final
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Warning: This article contains spoilers for the finale of The Challenge: Ride or Dies.
Tori Deal and Devin Walker couldn't be beat in the finale of The Challenge: Ride or Dies. After winning every checkpoint in the final except for one, the two competitors finally became Challenge champions at the end of the grueling 100 hours, beating Johnny "Bananas" Devenanzio and Nany Gonzalez in the last checkpoint and taking home the $1 million prize (minus the $38,000 they gifted each finalist team).
"It's super-well-deserved on both of our parts," Walker tells EW. "We put almost 15 years between the two of us into this, so to finally get the payoff and, for me in particular, to shut up all the haters, I would describe it as nirvana. Vindication."
"It feels like confirmation," Deal says. "You try for so many seasons — this is our seventh season each, and our seventh final collectively, so it's been a long time coming. The stress of needing to prove that we are worthy of being champs is gone, because we are. That pressure's off."
Walker laughs before adding, "Yeah, but that whole 'new champs' monologue I've been spitting for the last few seasons is going to go out the window. I'll have to go back to the drawing board on my tactic there. But to any Challengers that are listening to this, bring it the f--- on. I'm not scared. I'm going to do it again."
Below, Walker and Deal break down their big win and more.
MTV 'The Challenge: Ride or Dies'
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Going into this season, how did you feel about your chances at winning?
DEVIN WALKER: We didn't love our odds when our top three teams were eliminated before the first elimination. But we've both been able to be open to in-the-moment changes, so it's just a testament to our ability to shift and navigate a very complex game.
How did going into the first elimination of the season change the way you played moving forward?
TORI DEAL: Devin and I, neither of us really wanted to do this season. We wanted to take a break. We both were kind of tired after Spies, Lies & Allies. But finding out we could go with each other, we were like, "I'll go for you." In my mind, I was kind of like, "Maybe we'll get thrown into the first elimination anyway, and go home." Sure enough, we did. And I think that's when it clicked for me. Clearly manifested that too easily, so if we win this, let's lock it back in and make some moves. Thankfully, that was a good wake-up call.
WALKER: And we've actually taken a lot of heat for this, but just go back and take a peek at all the teams that won up until the split. We were working with every one. We just got lucky. I'll never not play the game with Nelson, he's been my friend since our first show. Fessy and Tori have a solid relationship, they respect each other as competitors and neither one of them are ever going to take the first shot. I have a strong friendship with Michele, she picked me to be her partner in Spies, Lies, & Allies. I tentatively played the game with Jay before in Double Agents. Bananas was my roommate. We both have strong relationships with Nany. And those teams just happened to win. Our greatest asset was being a team that people feared, because they felt like if they did take a shot and put us in and we won, we were going to come back, have a decent chance at winning a daily, and we would repay the favor. It wasn't easy, but we were able to get it done.
During the 100-hour finale, what was the moment you realized you were going to win?
DEAL: It happened inside the sand room. We couldn't really see a lot, but you could definitely hear the sparkler when it went off [when the other team completed a level], and I noticed that we hadn't heard another sparkler from Bananas and Nany at that point. We had a good feeling but were still a little nervous, because there was still an entire room to get through. You don't see this on TV, but that entire elimination took five hours and that final room took about two hours. When we were pulling out those chains and still hadn't heard a sparkler, we were getting screamed at by Aneesa and Olivia and Jordan and Horacio and they were like, "Just keep going. This is yours to lose." At that point we were like, "Oh my God, they're not even in their chain room yet, they haven't made it through their sand room, we are hours in front of them. It's ours to win." It was just beautiful.
That puzzle is really what set us apart. One of the most important things that Devin did was make sure that we didn't bury any of the important pieces. I feel bad for them that that's how it ended. But I mean, we were very strict about our puzzle.
You say you feel bad about how it ended for Bananas and Nany, but it's either them or you, so…
DEAL: Right.
WALKER: I don't feel bad at all, for the record. Tori handles the sympathetic portion of this duo. Kudos to her for that. When I'm in competition, I'm so locked in. You have to put the blinders on. Because if you let any sort of emotion creep in, whether it's good or bad, that could be your ticket home. I will never let something like the emotional side of the game impact what I believe to be is the best strategic decision.
MTV 'The Challenge: Ride or Dies'
You kept a lead throughout most of the final except in that last eating checkpoint — what was that like in the moment?
DEAL: Oh my God, it was just the worst feeling. Devin and I are moderately fast eaters, but we were never going to be able to eat like Nany and Bananas. They had caught up to us on the bread and were just absolutely housing the spaghetti. Devin and I were doing our best, but that whole thing took about an hour and 15 minutes. We were in pain. Thankfully we came in second place, and that was enough to get the chalk bombs that we needed for the helicopter because we ended up winning that, so it was only just a moment of not being in the lead. Once we got it back, we had it the whole time.
How did it feel knowing being in the lead didn't really give you any big advantage throughout the final?
WALKER: It was told to us by TJ when he came to the house, he hammered the idea of do not give up, this is anybody's race. I had a pretty good understanding from the beginning that it certainly wasn't going to be collective time. We haven't seen that in a long time. It was clear to me, even on the bikes, there's no benefit to killing ourselves here. People for morale reasons wanted to get off those bikes, but no one's falling asleep as soon as they hit the pillow. That's where, to me, experience pays. I was very surprised that Jordan and Aneesa and Bananas and Nany didn't take the same approach, which was "We have to sit on the bike for an extra 10-15 minutes, and this is going to help us further down the line."
Nany actually hurt her leg initially on the bike. Did that happen because they went too hard on the first checkpoint of a four-day final? It certainly didn't help. Long story short, it was irritating to win these days by a long amount and then get a short advantage. But with that being said, you were never out of the race. There was relief in a sense that this may not be our particular checkpoint, or our day, but we know we're still in it. We happened to be in the lead the whole time, so it didn't benefit us. But it was fair for everybody, and knowing it's going to be fair gives me extra motivation to never quit, because you're literally never out of the game. And so that to me was a fair trade-off.
Were there any checkpoints in the final that weren't shown in the episode?
DEAL: Yeah, a lot of people brought up how it looks like we wake up in the morning and we push this car, and then after we push the car, we're running for endless hours, and all of a sudden it's night and we arrive at a cornfield. There were actually two checkpoints that weren't shown where we had to do simple but ridiculous things. We had to hold up that same boulder that Fessy and Moriah had in the elimination to get back into the game, and then there was another where you had to stand in a picture frame for an hour, but it was a very thin piece of wood that you had to balance on. There weren't any lead differences within those checkpoints, so that's probably why they didn't make it past the cutting room floor, but there were definitely more things that we had to do.
WALKER: I believe there were 12 checkpoints, and we won 11 of them. You can't really say it should have gone any other way. It was, for lack of a better word, a blowout.
MTV 'The Challenge: Ride or Dies'
What was the hardest stage of this final for you?
WALKER: Fish guts was the worst thing that I've ever done on the show, and likely one of the worst things I've ever done in my life. The throw-up montage did not do it justice. There was an eyeball in one of them. Just so bad. I was throwing up the whole rest of the day.
DEAL: [Laughs] Thanks for doing that, Dave.
WALKER: I support my vegan sister.
DEAL: I have to give it to that final five-hour elimination against Nany and Bananas. By the end of it, I could not feel my hands for two days. When I was at the airport, I couldn't even grip my passport.
You've both been in so many finals before and come close to winning, so how did you learn from past mistakes to prepare to win this one?
DEAL: This one was different because we weren't alone. I didn't have to worry about the things that I naturally would worry about because I was with Devin. I know that if I get a puzzle, he's going to be the one that commands that and all I have to do is follow. I felt more confident than ever, because I didn't have to necessarily work on those things, and that actually led me to being more successful in those areas anyway. I didn't put as much pressure on myself to be successful. It was a lethal combination.
WALKER: The goal is not to get to the final anymore, it's to win. Having just been in a final and not having that moment of "We're so close" be enough — the first final I went to with Cheyenne, to be completely honest, we were just happy to be there. We knew we weren't beating Vince or Jenna or Bananas or Sarah. There was no shot. The goal was just to complete it. Spies, Lies, & Allies was a little bit more even, that's why that one stung more. What I learned from the finals that I had been in before is it's not enough to be there. You have to win, and you have to want to win, and you have to be prepared to do absolutely anything to win. Because the people you're going up against are willing to do absolutely anything.
Tori, how are you and Jordan doing now?
DEAL: We're totally good friends. And I'm so thankful for how important this experience was for us. Winning for sure helped, because I can't imagine how I would feel after that whole thing and losing, right? Being able to do it in front of him, that was f---ing epic. It was hard in the moment, but I would do it all over again. Looking back on this season, I wouldn't change a thing.
When did you decide to give some of your winnings to the other finalists?
WALKER: That was in the chain room. We've both received the benefit of CT and Kaycee being generous in the previous season, which seriously cushioned the blow. Tori started chatting about it a little early for me, which was when we hadn't yet finished. My dad used to always say, "Never do the early gloat. It will backfire 100 percent of the time." Planning on spending money you don't have yet is a cardinal way to make sure that you'll never get it. Sarah Rice actually did that [on Rivals 3] in the final on the bus ride up to the mountain. She was like, "Oh, this is the living room set I'm going to get," and we all remember how that worked out for her. But for us, it was decided before the win.
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