Spoiler Alert: This Team Just Won The Challenge: Double Agents

Soon after a Challenge season that spilled over with unexpected injuries, crushing betrayals and at least eight pints of Icelandic blood cocktails (we’ll stick to seltzer, thankyouverymuch), Double Agents officially named its two champions on Wednesday’s finale. And immediately after a grueling race to a mountaintop that featured seven seasoned vets, it was the lone remaining rookie who ultimately blew the competition away.


Any time the final mission resumed at the best of the game’s final episode, Kaycee, who’d badly injured her knee while in a footrace, watched her chances at Challenge gold slip away. Though she was devoted to powering through her injury and chowed down on the next checkpoint’s stomach-churning entrees, her partner Fessy had all although given up. And as soon as the game’s other three teams had advanced to the game’s next stage — a race to gather buoyed puzzle pieces from aboard a kayak — TJ told Kaycee and Fessy that their time on the show was over.


“Fessy isn't gonna own any of this -- we already know,” Cory mentioned soon after hearing the news of the Big Brother star's elimination. “I don’t know if he’s earned that vet stripe yet…It’s not all physical.”


Amber and CT — the final mission’s underdogs — conversely showed unexpected strength. Though they had never worked with each other before the final mission, Amber’s penchant for long-distance running paired with CT’s tactical acumen proved to be a winning mixture. The two collected their puzzle pieces before anyone else, finished their puzzle before anyone else and raced to a fourth checkpoint — an overnight reside in a hollowed-out glacier — before anyone else.


“I’m so happy Amber’s my partner now because she makes me feel like she’s slowing her pace down for me,” CT mentioned, surprised by the generally quiet Amber’s commanding efficiency. “Marching through three checkpoints in first place. Let’s go!”


all of the while, Teams Cory/Kam and Nany/Leroy continued to battle for second place, which came with a $100,000 money prize.


“I have dedicated ten years of my life to Challenges, and there’s nothing more that I want than to win,” Nany mentioned, while Cory was incentivized by avoiding a third-place finish, which came without cash at all.


“You get no respect for third, so we have got to create up some time,” he said.


Soon after a miserable night in which players tried in vain to get some shut-eye while freezing-cold water droplets showered down on them, host TJ Lavin arrived to usher in daylight and the game’s final stage. The remaining six players would have to sprint up an adjacent glacier, each retrieve a pickaxe and hack away at an ice block up until they could yank out a capsule frozen indoors. They’d then use a code buried indoors within the capsule to accomplish a puzzle before sprinting to a tangram brain teaser.


Amber, for one, wondered how she’d survive the race still to come.


“I don’t know how I’m gonna do this with an empty belly and no sleep,” she mentioned. “I’m still in the middle of a hurricane that’s coming through.”


Yet hunger and fatigue proved to be rocket fuel for her, as she and CT — in one of the most decisive performances in Challenge history — crossed the game’s finish line first, earning $900,000 in the process. As they collapsed at TJ’s feet and looked out into the expanse of Icelandic cliffsides, they agreed that pre-race odds would never again be a reliable metric. Immediately considering that, the only team with a rookie and the only team that had never worked with each other spent the whole final mission in first place.


“I cannot believe that I just won this whole entire final,” Amber said.


And while Amber and CT’s win was an absolute blowout, the race for second proved to be a buzzer-beater. Though Leroy and Nany, who spent much of the final mission in second place, seemed to have the silver medal inside the bag, Nany struggled up the mission’s final ascent. Cory and Kam pulled ahead at the very last second, earning a paycheck they were sure they had lost.


And while Leroy failed to secure a Challenge win in his final outing before his retirement, sharing the race with Nany, his friend of a decade, felt like a poetic conclusion.


“You would think with me losing again I could be upset,” Leroy mentioned, before addressing his partner. “This is the ideal way to end it if I couldn’t get a win, is to end it with you, Nany. I don’t have any more tears, this is a joyful moment.”


Are you shocked by the winners, or did Amber and CT’s win seem written in the stars? Sound off on Season 36 of The Challenge: Double Agents and catch Part 1 of the reunion next Wednesday!