‘Are You the One?’ all-star season is coming
This article originally appeared on PEOPLE.com
Are You the One? fans, you might want to sit down for this one.
For five seasons, the wildly addictive MTV reality show has put single men and women through comprehensive interviews, compatibility tests and personality metrics that come together in an algorithm to identify their ideal partner — and then given them 10 weeks to figure out each perfect match in order to win $1 million. Now, PEOPLE can exclusively reveal that 10 of your all-time favorite perfect match couples are getting a second chance at love — and money — in an all-new spin-off series, Are You The One: All-Star Challenge.
Set in Melbourne, Australia and hosted by Real World alum Karamo Brown, the season features seven perfect match couples from seasons 1-4, as well as three from the current season 5 that have yet to be revealed.
The twist, of course, is that this time, not everyone will win together. Over the course of the season, the perfect match couples will compete in a series of challenges designed to test the strength of their bonds. Every week, the successful couples will be rewarded with cash and one match will be sent home until the definitive All-Star couple is crowned.
The relationship-focused missions will test each couple’s compatibility, and the more missions each match wins, the more money they bank — keeping them safe from elimination.
Each week, the couple in last place after the mission will enter “The Choice,” where they must individually decide between stealing their winnings earned until that point and going home, or sharing their jackpot and staying in the game. If one person chooses to steal, they get to walk away with the money — but if both opt to steal, it’s the ultimate betrayal and they’ll be sent home with nothing.
And who better to walk us through all of the twists and turns than two of the franchise’s most popular stars? PEOPLE caught up with All-Star couple Devin and Rashida, a perfect match from AYTO season 3, to get the scoop on the new spin-off.
“As soon as they called me and told me this is going to be a situation where I’m with my perfect match, competing against other perfect matches, I pretty much blacked out,” said Devin. “I was like: ‘Okay, this is it — you finally made me a show that was just for me.’ ”
Of course, of the 10 All-Star perfect matches, some have dated outside of the show while others were strictly friends. So does that mean some couples had the upper hand?
“I definitely think if you’re dating your perfect match, you have an advantage because you know things about them,” said Rashida. “Devin and I, we’re close, we’re cool, we’re friends — but we wouldn’t know that deeper side of one another. We were all there to figure out why this person is our perfect match, and if you guys are already together, you’re a step ahead.”
“But I do feel that that was also a double-edged sword,” added Devin. “Because when you’re in a relationship with somebody, everything is intensified. So yeah, you know the ins and the outs of that person, but how are you going to act when you need to navigate through a city you’ve never been to? I know when I go on road trips with a girl I’m dating, it’s my nightmare. So they definitely had an advantage in some aspects, and a disadvantage in others.”
And while some matches may have come into the competition as just friends, living together in the house definitely sent sparks flying — in fact, “spark” is probably “a little bit of an understatement,” according to Devin.
“Let’s just say the boom boom room got some work put in,” he said. “And there’s one perfect match hookup that is going to rock your socks off. You will not see it coming.”
“We can’t tell you if we won any competitions or not, but I can say that if you do win a competition in this show, you get an added bonus that definitely pushes you towards a … certain action,” he said, hinting at a private suite scenario.
As for the missions? Let’s just say a regular season of AYTO didn’t exactly prepare the cast for the All-Star challenges.
“Are You the One? challenges compared to these?” said Devin with a laugh. “We’re not even talking about the same sport.”
“Navigating through the city, memorization … I mean, it was mentally and physically challenging,” said Rashida. “I actually really appreciated how balanced it was.”
“There was never one person on a team that could carry both people through any one of these missions,” said Devin. “You both need to pull your own weight, you both need to add something to the team, or you’re not going to win. So there are some mind-bending challenges, and there are also some things that involve intense physicality.”
“It was a super balanced competition,” he added. “And it lent the upper hand to whichever team could stay mentally on track and work together for the whole game.”
But that being said, the bond each perfect match had formed on AYTO could definitely make or break them.
“Devin and I already had a strong connection,” said Rashida. “I don’t know what it is about him, but I completely trust him. There was a time where I jumped off a rock into the water and I can’t even swim! So I feel like the friendship that we initially built in the Are You the One? house did help us.”
“Are You the One? prepares for a show like this if you have a good connection with your perfect match,” added Devin. “But we have some couples on All-Stars that didn’t have a good connection, or had tried dating afterwards and it didn’t work.”
Who might he be referring to? Season 4’s Tori and Morgan, who gave things a shot after the show wrapped — until Tori eventually hooked up with Morgan’s roommate.
“You always want to cover your biggest weakness, and the fact that we knew going into this that Tori and Morgan have trust issues — when you put a couple of manipulators like us in there, that’s awesome,” said Devin. “Like, oh, thanks for giving us the f—ing silver bullet! We’re just going to fuel this fire, stoke it a little bit, and let you take care of yourselves.” (Hey, they don’t call him the puppet master for nothing.)
“The cast overall is a massive home run — we’ve got some solid characters in there,” he added. “And anytime you give me unlimited amounts of beer and 20 people to f— with, that’s where I start thriving.”
So who’s Dashida going up against? Meet the rest of the announced cast below.
Francesca and Giovanni , season 4:
Happy watching, AYTO addicts.
Are You the One? airs Wednesdays (9 p.m. ET) and Are You the One: All-Star Challenge premieres March 22 at 9 p.m. ET, both on MTV.
