‘Jet Lag: The Game’ Hosts on How a ‘Strategic Blunder’ and ‘Two of the Rarest Moments’ in the Entire Series Led to Season 7 Finale Twist
SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers from the Season 7 finale of “Jet Lag: The Game” now streaming on Nebula and debuting Oct. 18 on YouTube.
Seven seasons in and there are still surprises to be found on “Jet Lag: The Game,” the Streamy-nominated online travel competition show that follows an “Amazing Race”-esque format, if those players filmed themselves on iPhones and participated in more off-the-rails challenges.
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Streaming on independent, creator-focused subscription streamer Nebula on Wednesday, the “Jet Lag” Season 7 finale features two of the biggest twists seen on the show since creators, hosts and contestants Adam Chase, Ben Doyle and Nebula chief content officer Sam Denby launched the first season in May 2022.
In the concluding installment of the “Jet Lag” gang’s second 72-hour game of “tag across Europe,” just one of many formats utilized throughout the Wendover Productions-produced series, runner Doyle manages to avoid being tagged by pursuers Denby and Chase in France not once, but twice, and without knowing at the time he had outwitted them and the GPS trackers.
First, he manages to get off a train at the exact moment Denby and Chase are boarding it in an attempt to catch him, sending them on their way in the wrong direction as he proceeds further into his “win” territory. Then, when they catch up with him at a different station down the line, he hides in a photo booth for 10 minutes while they hunt the grounds for him using his GPS tracker dot as proof he’s somewhere very close, and then he slips past them onto a train that takes him to the win in Bar-le-Duc.
As “Jet Lag” crosses 1 million hours streamed on Nebula and builds on its 527,000 subscribers on YouTube, where it streams episodes a week after Nebula launch, Variety spoke with the “Jet Lag” hosts about the Season 7 finale’s unprecedented double twist that led to Doyle taking home “Jet Lag’s” latest virtual trophy.
Ben, Sam, Adam, please break down how this series of events worked out, beginning with Ben, what did you think the likelihood was you’d win by hiding in the photo booth?
Ben Doyle: I did not think that that was going to work. I had assumed that if they were going to be at the station, this is over. That it was just going to be a funny place to catch me, was sort of what I was thinking. And when I got on that train, I was like, they must have never made it here. I didn’t even realize that it worked until they told me
Sam Denby: What so unbelievable about that is it’s so rare for people to get away. We kind of consider it inevitable that once you’re within relatively close to the runner in these games, you’re gonna catch them because that’s what precedent says. But here for this ending, what I think will make it so fun for the audience, we had two of the rarest moments back-to-back of near misses. As we always have, we have the dynamic on Adam and my’s side of, that’s gonna make us look like such idiots — but on the other hand, that’s going to be so entertaining. So you’re balancing out the in-game universe with the production universe, which is fun.
Adam Chase: I think our biggest strategic blunder was that we had not looked closely enough at the potential trains that Ben could take out of Metz station. We hadn’t identified that one to Bar-Le-Duc. We had looked at all the trains that could leave before we arrived, but we hadn’t looked at trains that would leave after we arrived, certainly not 10-15 minutes after we arrived. We were like, we’ll catch him when we get there. We weren’t worried about that. And very obviously, we should have been.
Denby: To be honest, we probably underestimated Ben. We should have taken the threat more seriously.
Chase: I think there’s a beautiful arc to the season that starts with Sam and I underestimating Ben on the picnic table all the way in Charleville-Mézières. And it turned out that we were right to be skeptical of him early on. But then later on, we underestimated him and we were very much wrong to do so.
Doyle: There’s a distinct beauty to the fact that I had an incredibly hapless run that ended with me not hiding and getting caught, and then I learned my lesson and and it ultimately won me the game.
Check back with Variety next Wednesday, Oct. 18, following the “Jet Lag” Season 7 finale’s wide launch on YouTube, for a longer interview with the team about the making of the Nebula show and the future of the series.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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