“Ocean warfare is treacherous.” – Rudy Reyes
I had so much fun recapping Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test Season 2, so I dove right back in for Season 3, which moves from the icy climes of New Zealand’s South Island to focus on “a course of ocean warfare” in the wet and blustery Holyhead Harbor in North Wales, United Kingdom.
This time around, we start out with 16 celebrity “recruits” from “the world of sports and entertainment.”
They include:
- Stephen Baldwin, 58, actor – We get an iconic quote from the youngest (and wackiest) Baldwin brother immediately when he tells a fellow recruit, “This is the ultimate in gnarly, bro.”
- Golden Tate, 35, Super Bowl champion – Tate won the Super Bowl in 2013 with the Seattle Seahawks beating the Denver Broncos during the peak era of “hustle and bustle” Russell Wilson’s tenure there. Now that he’s retired from the NFL, Tate asks, “What’s my purpose on this Earth? I’m hoping that I find some answers.”
- Cam Newton, 35, NFL Pro Bowler – At one time, Newton was considered to be an elite NFL quarterback. Side note that I witnessed the Seahawks give Newton’s Carolina Panthers a shellacking shortly after I moved to Seattle in 2016. “I’m not gonna be scared,” he tells the camera.
- Denise Richards, 53, actress – An early hilarious moment is when Billy asks Richards, star of Starship Troopers and Love Actually and Wild Things, what she does, and she says, “Movies and TV shows.” “Would I know you?” he replies.
- Brody Jenner, 40, TV personality and DJ – Jenner wants to change the perception that he’s “just a Kardashian brother and kind of like a party boy” and test his limits.
- Christy Carlson Romano, 41, actress and podcast host – Romano talks about how her husband was in the Marines and that “selection will permit me access to parts of him I’ve not connected to yet.”
- Jordyn Wieber, 28, Olympic gymnastics gold medalist – Wieber misses “that feeling achievement” since retiring from gymnastics.
- Marion Jones Thompson, 48, Olympic track & field athlete
- Landon Donovan, 42, pro soccer player
- Carey Hart, 48, motorcross champion
- Nathan Adrian, 35, Olympic swimming gold medalist
- Alana Blanchard, professional surfer
- Ali Manno and Trista Sutter, reality TV stars, both alums of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette
- Kayla Nicole, model
- Kyla Pratt, actress
In a move that’s a little more like Survivor than perhaps the show producers of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test would like, the opening scenes starts out with the recruits together on a ferry, and then “all of the sudden” all hell breaks loose with smoke bombs going off, and the DS (Directing Staff) or “staff” ordering everyone to “take cover!”
“The pleasure cruise is over,” Narrator Guy tells us in his deeply serious voice.
“You now belong to us,” Billy tells them, while in tandem he tells the camera that ocean warfare is both physical and psychological.
Then, one-by-one, Billy roughly shoves the recruits off the ferry before pointing to the shore and saying, “Go that way.”
“Do you know where you are? You’re in hell,” he adds.
Clearly, the DS ain’t softening up one bit in this edition of SF:WTT.
Denise Richards struggles with swimming to shore, which is an awful, terrible, not good sign for her prospects on a reality show that a) has Special Forces and b) World’s Toughest Test in its title and that c) is focused on OCEAN WARFARE this season.
On shore, Dusty lays it out for the new recruits: When you’ve realized that you’re pathetic, weak, and haven’t got it in you, you take that armband off your arm and you say you VW.”
Doing so indicates a “voluntary withdrawal,” and results in the recruit leaving the course and the show immediately. What I rather like about this reality show, for what it’s worth, is that there are no reunions or “return appearances” of those recruits who don’t make it to the end.
In other words, once you’re out, you’re out.
What’s perhaps a new wrinkle is that Dusty also tells the recruits that staff has the discretion to boot a recruit at any time for “not being good enough.”
This all leads up to the first task of the season. Rudy demonstrates what the recruits must do: jump onto a helicopter from a speeding small boat. It’s so great to watch the jaws of the recruits drop in reaction to this (especially Stephen Baldwin’s, of course).
Name of the task: the helicopter extraction.
Based on her early struggles, it seems purposeful that Denise Richards is called upon first for the task. As she gets on the speedboat, we also learn that Richards is afraid of heights and “hates cold water.”
While Denise does a fine job of leaping onto the helicopter’s landing gear, she has zero ability to pull herself up into the safety of the craft’s interior and falls into the water pretty quickly. This kind of strength and agility is another prerequisite for making it through selection, as we also saw in SF: WTT Season 2 during a harrowing task involving crossing a chasm in the New Zealand mountains by way of a single rope.
Olympic gymnast Jordyn Wieber is up next, and Billy tells her that based on her background, “You ought to be good at this.” However, Jordyn isn’t able to grab onto the helo’s landing gear upon leaping, perhaps her short stature playing a role.
Stephen Baldwin, even at 58 years of age, easily grabs the landing gear, though it appears its way closer to the boat than it was for Wieber. He also gains a massive advantage versus Richards in that he’s able to hook an entire arm around the horizontal bar right away versus Richards, who held on with only her hand strength. Therefore, Baldwin is able to struggle his way into the helicopter’s interior and passes the task.
We then see a montage of the other recruits attempting the task, and there’s a mix of some who are not able to even touch the helicopter at all (there seems to be a wide variance in terms of its closeness to the boat, though I suppose staff would quickly defend this by saying that in a real combat situation, them’s the breaks), some who grab the landing gear and have no real ability to make it into the interior, and a small group who are athletic enough to scramble inside the helicopter no matter how close or far from the aircraft they begin from.
When the recruits applaud Golden Tate completing the task successfully after struggling at first, Jovon “Q” ain’t having the revelry and orders everyone to get into a pushup position and stay there for a nice long spell.
After all recruits attempt the task, Billy tells the recruits that the overall 50% fail rate is “not acceptable.”
“If you don’t want to be here, go home,” he adds.
We’re reminded here that the purpose of “selection” isn’t just to torture a bunch of entertainers and former pro athletes, it’s a real world process by which to find and train the very best of the best who will then go onto engaging in some of the most dangerous and taxing work that anyone – civilian or military – could ever imagine.
In vans after the task, Landon Donovan talks about how he already feels “physically shatters” and wonders what non-athletes like Denise Richards must be feeling. And meanwhile, Cam Newton muses that, “Part of me wants somebody to quit, ‘cause it’s gonna take the pressure off everyone else.”
Which is maybe a way of saying: I really want to quit, but I really don’t want to be the first one to quit.
The recruits’ barracks and base is a “makeshift” one in a “remote area of North Wales.” It also looks a bit Squid Game-y, somehow. Once assembled there, Billy splits the recruits up into two teams of eight, comprising the “losers and winners” of the helicopter extraction task.
Billy reiterates the unacceptableness of the high failure rate and calls for a punishment for the entire group, and adds, “It’s going to be brutal.”
After the DS meet to assess the recruits in the early going, they call in Denise Richards first for “tactical questioning,” which once again this season involves the odd bit where the hood the recruit for the short walk to what’s essentially the staff office. Having watched and recapped all of Season 2, I suppose there’s a rationale that this helps prepare recruits for aspects of training (and the “real world” possibility) of getting taken captive while on a special forces mission.
Richards tells staff that she’s completely out of her comfort zone, and Billy counters with, “You look petrified.”
Things then lighten up briefly, with Billy encouraging her to tell them more about herself. When Richards mentions that she did “a Bond movie with Pierce (Brosnan),” this perks Billy’s interest, and it’s hilarious when he responds, “So you’re a Bond girl?”
Things get much more serious when Denise talks about how one day she was driving with her husband and her car got shot at. The trauma from that – and sexual assault that she experienced at the age of 15 – is something that she’s trying to work through and overcome through participating in this selection course.
It did seem as though Billy respected Richards’ reasons for participating, which is not always the case. “Don’t let the fear rule you,” he advises.
Moments later, the recruits are called back onto the parade square in the pouring rain.
It’s time for the “punishment,” which involves a 10-foot water tank where the recruits will be “beasted in a drill known as the beehive,” which sounds straight up Game of Thrones-y to me.
Q, a former Navy Seal, explains that “the beehive is a simulation of being out in the open ocean.”
The idea is simple: the recruits must stay afloat near the center of what amounts to a deep aboveground pool. Moving to the side, Q notes, “shows weakness.”
While Cam Newton and a few others rest at the side briefly and then rejoin the group, Stephen Baldwin stays much longer even while, “No quitting!” is yelled at him.
The “beasting” goes on for 15 long minutes, and you can tell all the recruits – even all of the athletes – are pretty well wiped out.
After the task, Stephen Baldwin talks about how he’s having trouble breathing and goes to see the on-duty doctor. What ensues is a truly bizarre conversation, in which Baldwin seemingly (I guess?) offers the doctor ten times what he’s making now for reasons that I can’t explain, and then segues into talk about how he has another gig – an acting one, presumably – after his appearance on this show and that the “one condition” is that he not be injured.
When the very mild-mannered doctor asks Stephen the reasonable question of whether he knew what tasks would be involved in this course, Baldwin responds, “Yes, but I didn’t know I would definitely be getting injured.”
Then he says, “I cannot get injured,” in a near lunatic way, as though it was a direct order from a king to a subservient underling. The doc maneuvers through this by saying, “I’m not sure why you’re asking me, but I will pass on your concern.”
And that’s how “Ocean Warfare” ends, with all 16 recruits remaining, but seemingly not for very long at all.
More thoughts on Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test Season 3, “Ocean Warfare”
- Another iconic banger from Stephen Baldwin: “Am I special forces? No. But I’ve played one on TV.”
- Billy – the DS Billy and now the Baldwin Billy – clearly thinks that Cam Newton needs an attitude adjustment from jump street.
- More hilarity relating to Stephen Baldwin: DS Billy asks him if his brother is an actor, and then adds, “But he’s a decent actor.” This show is going to milk all of the Stephen Baldwin comedy it can while remains on the show.
- In the early going, we can recruit saying, “God, I’m so out of shape.” This seems like the worst kind of situation to put oneself in if you’re not at least decently fit.
- And on that note, this is the third season of this show. It seems ridiculously dumb for anyone to have not at least scanned through the previous two seasons to get an idea of what they might be in for here.
- Motorcross champ Carey Hart says that he has broken “80 plus” bones in his life. Ouch!
- While I never confirmed this, it was common knowledge that Billy Baldwin graduated from my alma mater – Binghamton University in New York.
- Question: does Cam Newton still dress super provocatively when he’s not on the field or playing recruit on a special forces training reality TV show? Yes he does.
- I find Golden Tate to be an interesting, compelling figure in the early going. He talks about how he’s seeking out the structure and regimentation that he had his entire life until he retired from the NFL. And then his proactivity in attempting to ensure that he and the recruits follow all the rules established by staff contrasts with fellow ex-NFLer Cam Newton, who seems much less engaged in the process (though he does shout in exultation when he completes the helicopter extraction, so there’s no doubting his competitiveness).
- Amazing quote right here: “Where’s the toilet paper!? Oh crap…”
- For more Denise Richards + reality TV if you’ve an interested, check this episode of The Millionaire Matchmaker, in which she helps out her dad, Irv Richards: Irv Richards & Stephanie Costa (“Denise Richards’ Dad Is Looking for Love”).
More info about Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test Season 3
TV SHOW – Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 3, Episode 1
AIRED ON – January 8th, 2025
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX/TubiTV
GENRE – Reality TV, Competition Show
CAST – Mark Billingham, Jason Fox, Rudy Reyes, Shaun Dooley, Jovon Quarles, Stephen Baldwin, Golden Tate, Cam Newton, Denise Richards, Brody Jenner, Christy Carlson Romano, Jordyn Wieber, Marion Jones Thompson, Landon Donovan, Carey Hart, Nathan Adrian, Alana Blanchard, Ali Manno, Trista Sutter, Kayla Nicole, Kyla Pratt