“It’s gonna get worse for the rest of your time here.” – Jovon “Q”
After motorcross champion Carey Hart had to bow out of the previous episode (“Duty”) due to multiple injuries, we are now down to seven celebrity recruits of the starting 16 as the eighth episode (and eighth day) of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test Season 3 kicks off: Golden Tate, Cam Newton, Brody Jenner, Christy Carlson Romano, Alana Blanchard, Kayla Nicole and Kyla Pratt.
It’s the morning of Day 8 of special forces “selection” for the recruits, and as we see them figuring out their laundry situation and chasing off spiders in the latrine, it sinks in that while these ex-pro athletes and celebrities live pretty comfortable lives back home, it takes a real degree of strength, fortitude, skill, and even luck for them to have made it this far along in the process.
DS (directing service) “staff” member Rudy explains that at this point in selection, leaning on one’s remaining fellow recruits for support becomes critical to make it to the end.
In staff’s morning meeting, when the group – Rudy, Dusty, Billy, and Jovon “Q” – discuss how the upcoming task will severely test the recruits’ endurance, I cringe slightly from my comfortable viewing chair as I know how hardcore it must be if these special forces trainers are talking about it like this.
Soon, Rudy calls the recruits to the parade square in “full kit.” Q lays it out for the group that with two days to go in selection, “it’s gonna get worse for the rest of your time here.”
On the way to the task, located in the “isolated Welsh moors,” several recruits see a sign and announce in unison, “Danger of death. Do not enter.”
“This is so gnarly,” Christy Carlson Romano says, smiling.
Once assembled, Billy tells the recruits that the surrounding terrain is undulating, unforgiving, and brutal. “We’re going to do a speed march,” he says. “It will be over a large distance. The pace will be extremely fast.”
Then, he adds: “If you cannot keep up, you will be cut. Very few will make it.”
It’s been over three full episodes since we had the last VW (voluntary withdrawal) this season, so I’ve been waiting for a task where DS has the opportunity to cut people on the spot, and it looks like this is it.
“If you don’t want it,” Billy tells them, “you need to hand in your armband.”
No one does, and everyone gets ready with full Bergen’s on their backs.
After an initial run through muddy terrain, the recruits are ordered to find a large rock and place it in their Bergen’s (which moves their weight from 30-pounds to something closer to 40). And that’s before an uphill section looms ahead.
Dusty tells the camera that the task is designed to test who can operate even when completely exhausted.
37-year-old actress Kyla Pratt, who is petite, struggles mightily on the uphill section. When Billy yells at her to keep moving, she says softly, “I’m done,” and hands over her armband, which constitutes a VW.
So we move to six recruits left in selection now: Golden Tate, Cam Newton, Brody Jenner, Christy Carlson Romano, Alana Blanchard, and Kayla Nicole.
Most of the other recruits aren’t faring all that much better than Pratt. Which is to say this thing ain’t easy. At one point, the angle of the camera makes the muddle uphill slog look downright brutal – and that’s not factoring the 40-pound backpack.
Christy Carlson Romano, who is married to a Marine, tells the camera that her husband told her that “the entire purpose of selection is to show you just how unready you are for selection.”
Pro surfer Alana Blanchard tells the camera that she trained by hauling her kids up hills, and we see her make it to the top. The others make it as well, save for actress Christy Carlson Romano, who lags behind the others but nearly makes it to the top in time to satisfy staff. However, she’s forced to withdraw as well, frustrating Cam Newton and some of the other recruits.
Billy is kind to her here, telling her, “Good effort.” And it’s implied that they realize that there’s no way that she could have kept up with the group past this point. It’s wild how many recruits are dropping out now: we now have a final five: Golden Tate, Cam Newton, Brody Jenner, Alana Blanchard, and Kayla Nicole.
Next up: simulating having to carry a wounded soldier in the battlefield. We see the recruits switching off putting different people on their backs, and it’s especially impressive as we see Blanchard and Nicole putting men on their backs. Golden Tate, who is clearly in incredible shape as an ex-NFL player, struggles mightily with the massive fellow ex-NFL star Cam Newton on his back.
There’s no rest after this as the recruits are put through another sprinting section (with full equipment plus a rock to boot, let’s remember). Now model (and ex-girlfriend of Travis Kelce) Kayla Nicole falls behind and is given a countdown to reach the rest of the recruits. She barely makes it, and is told to “suck it up,” by Dusty.
As the five remaining recruits pant, Billy mercilessly tells them that if they don’t make it to the vehicles “around the bend” in time, they will “f— off” without them. They are given a one-minute countdown to get there in time. However, there’s no drama here as the recruits make it in time easily.
Golden Tate typically gets in the funniest line of the episode, and he does so again from inside the vehicle, telling Newton, “Bro, I picked the biggest damn rock ever, like a dummy.”
As the recruits make it back to suddenly much more spacious living quarters, DS meets to discuss the state of selection. Rudy calls the five recruits “the final team,” and Billy talks about how the need for emotional task that will be on tap next.
Billy next sits down with the recruits and tells them about real life in the special forces, how it’s “horrendous” and “dangerous” because you don’t know where you’re going to be from day to day. They would write “death letters” to their families in the event they didn’t make it back home alive.
The recruits are tasked with writing their own death letters and are told to read them aloud to each other.
As Nicole tells Blanchard how emotionally draining the exercise is, Rudy suddenly calls the recruits back out in full kit. “The relentless pace of selection continues,” Narrator Guy says, as we see a teary Blanchard in the back of a vehicle.
The next destination: “an isolated viaduct… that will test their trust in each other to the extreme.”
Q demonstrates a “free fall” from the top of the viaduct, with Billy as the “brakeman” on the ground. “It’s the ultimate test of trust,” Rudy tells us. “Your life is in their hands.”
It looks dangerous and scary as all hell.
Newton, by far the largest recruit, is sent up top first, with Brody Jenner assigned as the brakeman. “He’s a big unit,” Billy cautions Brody.
“Don’t f— it up because otherwise he’ll die, won’t he?” Billy adds.
Newton, who faced down opposing worldclass athletes in the NFL who wanted to violently tackle him to the turf, looks visibly nervous while hanging off the side of the viaduct, but Brody executes the task correctly and safely.
At this point, Blanchard tells her fellow recruits that she’s not thinking straight, doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and is leaning toward VW-ing. Kayla Nicole does a great job in talking her out of it for the moment, but once at the top of the viaduct, she tells Dusty that she’s not sure that she can move forward. He encourages her to push through, and she gets in position at the top of viaduct.
Nicole does her job correctly as brakeman, and Billy cheekily tells her, “Happy Christmas,” at the bottom.
I realized here that Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test does a good job of not showing the rest of this task as a montage as it often does at this point. Every moment of this task is tense and engaging, and it helps that we know all of the participants and want to see them do well (and not die or get severely injured, of course).
Newton returns the favor and successfully serves as brakeman for his guy Tate. Afterwards, it’s hilarious when Tate says, “Thanks for not killing me, brother,” and Newton retorts with, “All those times Seattle beat Carolina…”
This is triply funny for me because I actually attended a Sunday Night Football game in 2016 in Seattle, where the Seahawks beat Cam Newton’s Carolina Panthers, 40-7. The Panthers would get revenge however in the playoffs that year, when they beat Seattle 31-24 in the divisional round.
Back at base, Billy tells staff, “It’s been a tough day.”
The recruits then read their death letters to each other, and it’s an extremely emotional moment for Golden Tate. “I used to not be this emotional,” he says, before reading his letter that is from the perspective of his writing to his wife and children from heaven.
Kayla Nicole’s letter is also raw and personal, explaining to her family how she imagined – from the perspective of her “death” – that she would have found her “tribe” of a husband and kids by this point in her life.
Newton lightens things up by saying, “I ain’t got enough ink to talk about all my kids.”
Tate captures the spirit of the task when he says afterward, “It makes me sick to think about how people actually have to do this.”
More info about Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test Season 3
TV SHOW – Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 3, Episode 8
AIRED ON – January 29th, 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