'The Amazing Race' season 31 finale sees Colin and Christie come on top with not just the win but also their impressive personality glow-ups
Spoiler alert for The Amazing Race season 31 finale!
Four teams who bested the rest competed for a million dollars on Wednesday night's episode of 'The Amazing Race', and we saw one of them get crowned as the winner. Despite bringing in contestants from various CBS reality shows, the finale proved that the skills required to finish 'The Amazing Race' is unique. This was proved by the fact that Nicole Franzel and Victor Arroyo from 'Big Brother' Season 20 were the only non-Amazing Race alumni to make it to the end.
The other teams joining them were Colin Guinn and Christie Woods from 'The Amazing Race 5', Tyler Oakley and Korey Kuhl from 'The Amazing Race' season 28, and Leo Temory and Jamal Zadran aka The Afghanimals from 'The Amazing Race 23'. In this episode, we even saw the TAR teams forming an alliance, very openly helping one another, unfortunately leaving Nicole and Victor to handle things on their own.
The episode kicked off with the teams departing from Amsterdam and heading to London, with the playing ground getting leveled and them ending up on the same flight, and later taking choppers to Dover Castle. The road block of the finale requires all the players to correctly crack a World War II message starting with Leo and Jamal, followed by Colin and Christie, after which, Nicole and Victor got a shot at it and finally, Korey and Tyler take a go. Even with Korey’s help, Christie was left behind, and Victor was left to fend for himself after a point as well. Meanwhile, Leo was the first to complete it.
Another helicopter ride and a speedboat trip later, the teams reached the detour leg, where they are asked to find a "golden queen" to get their next clue. At the detour, the players have the choice to memorize a difficult cab route or row a 200-meter course in under a minute. All teams, except for Colin and Christie, opted to switch challenges mid-way and they all succeed and make it to the pit stop leg of the episode, where we see the teams trying to collect an assortment of items from a crowded London marketplace. Unfortunately for Nicole and Victor, they were the last to reach the pit stop and were unable to complete their task in time, making their team the third runner up.
The final three return to the United States for the final leg and are given a series of tedious tasks to complete. One of them where contestants rappel down a Detroit skyscraper while collecting numbers for a bank vault combination lock along the way slows down Jamal and Leo. The other tasks included playing a game of fowling aka a football-bowling hybrid, making five vinyl records, and assembling a drum kit even as a bunch of musicians play 'Seven Nation Army' too loud and too close to them which eventually takes Tyler and Korey off the extremely close game.
At the end of it all, Colin and Christie finished the race first, and became the winners of the 'Reality Showdown'. Fans of the 'The Amazing Race' will remember these life partners as finalists of the show's fifth season in 2004, who got engaged at the season finale and married the year after. They had a polarizing effect on the fans, who antagonized Colin for his manic outbursts and overall douchey behavior on the show, while Christie was accused of not pulling her weight in the race and often getting into arguments with Colin.
Their dysfunctionality in general and Colin's anger management issues, in particular, could be attributed as the reasons for their downfall last time around. On their return, Christie said, "Watching myself run 'The Amazing Race '15 years ago gave me the opportunity to look in on myself from the outside and see just how unconscious and full of ego my behavior was. Since then, I have done many years of work to broaden my perspective and come from a more loving and collaborative mindset. I hope to enter this engineered reality that is designed to bring on extreme stress and reduce resilience."
In fact, their evolution as individuals and as a couple has been the best glow-up, personality-wise, on the show. From a bickering duo, they have become inspirations to many, with fans claiming that Colin's change in character is teachable to many youngsters. Needless to say, Colin and Christie are going home with not just a million dollars, but a lot more fans.