Beast Games – Season 1 Episode 1 Recap & Review

1,000 People Fight For $5,000,000

Welcome to Beast Games, the biggest gameshow with the craziest cash prizes and some insane twists along the way. Our host is YouTuber Mr Beast, and he’s joined by his pals Karl, Nolan, Chandler, Tareq and Mack. However, there’s a twist here. Mr Beast intends to give out a million dollars before we even start the game.

With 10 minutes, contestants need to choose whether to stay or go. If they eliminate themselves right now, they’ll evenly split $1 million, depending on how many people hit their buzzer. Well, after 10 minutes, and the end of the countdown, 52 people hit the buzzer, meaning $19230 is split evenly. Honestly, I kinda wish we didn’t see the number until the end to make things more interesting, but there we go!

With 948 players remaining, everybody now competes in teams of 80 people. In order for their team to carry on, somebody has to sacrifice themselves for the betterment of their team. Some people just willingly hit the button, but the flip side here is that if they don’t sacrifice themselves? Well, their entire row will go if they happen to be 1 of the final 3 rows who don’t hit the buttons.

It’s absolutely brutal and those who hit the red, fall down to a spike trap below. Not really guys, but they do all collapse into the floor, in a really slick shot that sees individuals eliminated like dominoes.

Those left, all 705 of them, move onto a new game. Each individual needs to stack up a whole bunch of blocks and keep it going until 100 more contestants are eliminated. If the tower falls, or they can’t get it done in time, they’re eliminated.

The deafening sound is replaced with silence, as everybody concentrates. One by one, people drop out like flies. At the end, more towers do fall but right now it’s up to the 1107 camera control room to determine which ones have fallen in what order. The complete mix of emotions from those who fail and those who are still in is really fascinating to watch.

In order to move into the city the numbers now need to be reduced down to 500. That means over 100 people will be eliminated… but who? Well, the next game is all about bribery. Whoever accepts the bribes offered, with a prize fund continuing to go up, will take home the money… but also eliminate their entire row. And of course, these rows will be horizontal this time, rather than vertical.

This round is honestly absolutely brutal, but eventually we get down to 493 contestants, with bribes of up to 100k to get people to leave.

So, with 493 people left, the contestants arrive in Beast City, where they’ll stay in the homes built here for the next month.

The Episode Review

Episode 1 wastes absolutely no time getting to the crux of the drama, with Mr Beast’s team getting to work in whittling down the numbers from 1000 to 500. Or, well, 493 to be precise.

Along the way we see a good number of bribes, with over 2 million given out this episode alone, which is obviously an insane amount of money. The thing is though, 100k is a lot of money in its own right and just for pressing a button? That’s got to be super tempting to do, especially as you’ll never see the others in this gameshow again. But then, similarly, there’s the allure of even more money later on down the line too.

Personally, I think the opening game shouldn’t have shown how many people pressed the button, just to up that psychological factor, but that’s a minor gripe in what’s otherwise a very solid way to start things off. Episode 2 though, promises to be just as insane. Bring it on!