YMMV / Endurance

• Adorkable: Monroe big time, especially with how he jumped up and down and screamed like a little girl whenever he won a mission.
• Awesome Music: Pei Pei Chung composed a killer soundtrack for this series, including the theme song. Most of it can be found here.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Sabrina: some fans thought she was one of the most influential contestants in the game because of her strategizing, while others thought she was just mean, especially with how she played with Aaron's feelings for her and wanting to kick her best friend out.
  • Scooter on Endurance 2. He was outspoken about his views that brown should be eliminated as he felt they already had a chance to win in the previous season and largely came off as hot headed. Given Brown's success though, some fans would argue he had a point.
  • Annie: Some fans saw her as one of the toughest girls that season, while others saw her as smug and mean because of her treatment towards Calley.
    • Conversely, some may have the opinion Calley might have caused unnecessary attention to her team while some of her mission performances made her seem The Load for the pro-brown alliance.
  • Max from E1/E2. Some fans considered him a strategist par excellence, along with a very strong competitor, while others believed that he did too many deals that he didn't follow through on.
  • E3's Gray Team: When the season first premiered, a lot of fans liked them because of their teamwork and their nice personalities. As time went on, some watchers saw them as manipulative, and put them as bad as Orange, if not worse.
  • Chris (Endurance Tehachapi): Was he just playing the game, or was he too arrogant and loud for his own good? His age (twelve at the time of filming) may be taken into account as well.
  • And on the same season, Jeszie. People are divided by how loud she was during the competition. It's made even more apparent because Tehachapi was a more low-key season with minimal drama. On the one hand, she was honest that her main goal was to win rather than make friends. However, some of her targeting (particularly towards Julie and Amelia) may be seen as being a bit more mean-spirited rather than strategic.
  • While Endurance: High Sierras' Blue Team (Connor and Taylor) is one of the most popular teams that season, Taylor and her crying split the fanbase a bit. Some say it is excessive and shows her immaturity, while others sympathize with her and turned the blame on the game itself.
    • Moreover, despite the team's popularity, some fans don't hold them to high esteem due to how they targeted their former teammates on Gray and Connor's role in their elimination.
  • The Blue team on Fiji to an extent. Some felt they didn't deserve to win due to their lack of success in missions (they only won the brain part of the final 4 temple mission) while their competitor in the finale, Green, won a number of missions. On the other hand, Blue has been praised for not causing drama and, as other contestants noted, they never lied or backstabbed anyone while also keeping a positive attitude even when facing possible elimination (traits which help win them the Karma piece).
• Broken Base:
  • The reception for Endurance: Tehachapi. Coming off a dramatic and notable Endurance: Hawaii, some people complained it lacked the drama of the latter. Notably, on the J.D's Greatest Twists special that aired after Fiji, it was the only season to not have anything listed. Others cheered on the casting and how close they are to each other (Franke mentioned in a podcast how a producer came over to the parents and told them that Tehachapi's cast was the best one they had up to that point), and some saw it was refreshing given the amount of drama that preceded it in Hawaii and would occur again in Endurance: High Sierras.
  • Green Team winning Endurance: High Sierras provided controversial for the fans. Most stated they were undeserved, as they only won one mission (though they did do better than Purple in the final piece mission) and were carried by the Purple Team for the entire way. Others suggested that it was better, because they were a strong team otherwise and actually reflected on why they weren't as liked for the karma vote, whereas Purple did not. In addition, some believe it's karma for Purple for carrying a team to the final only to then lose to them.
  • The Temple of Fate game has proven unpopular with some fans over time. The Rock-Paper-Scissors type game has not really changed since the series began (the only exception is the Mana nei lavo reward in Fiji which guarantees a free round whenever that team is sent to temple) and that strong teams can lose (and thus be eliminated) to weak teams based heavily on luck, which famously occured in the very first temple of fate between E1 Gray and Green. On the other hand, some find that this game is great at creating suspense and allowing for a surprising outcome, along with showing how "fate" can determine how things played out.
• Elimination Houdini:
  • Trevor & Lana (Green) from Endurance 1. They did not get along well and were rather weak for of the series. Trevor also got on Aaron's nerves which convinced the Blue team to kept sending Green to temple. Yet, they survived their first 2 trips to the temple of fate. It was only after they won a mission that they got eliminated when they got sent a 3rd time and lost, thus starting the Three Temple Curse.
  • Tyler and Michelle from Endurance 2. While Michelle was very keen on winning, Tyler became homesick and actually wanted to leave the game. Their performances in missions were also initially poor. Because of this, Orange was sent to the temple of fate after the first two temple missions with the intent that they would go home. Orange survived both trips though. It was only during the final 3(which, by this point, Orange had won a mission and held 2/3 of all of the pyramid pieces thanks to the eliminated Purple Team) that they got eliminated.
  • Bryanah & Monroe for Hawaii. They were disliked by most of the other teams (particularly the Orange-Red-Purple-Gray alliance though Orange did eventually change allegiance) and where given the Samadhi 3 times (the record for most Samadhi given to a team) and survived 2 trips to temple. It was only in the final 3 that they lost, becoming the last victims of the 3 temple curse. Downplayed though compared to examples, despite initial partner issues, they actually proved to be one of the stronger teams of the season.
  • Also Demian & Nicole. Despite their inability to work together in missions (their mission wins were due to some element of luck or, in one case, another team deliberately giving them the win) and Nicole's attitude which even prompted Demian to try make deals with other teams to get themselves sent to temple as he felt Nicole did not deserve to win, they made it to the finals while going to Temple only once (and that was before Demian tried to make the deals).
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Layla from Endurance 1, along with Brandon. They showed some promise as being a strong team, especially in the Plant the Flag mission but got eliminated before they could try to prove themselves again.
  • Chelsea from Endurance 1. Her quiet nature, despite not influencing the game, made her a lot of fans.
  • Lana and Trevor from the same season. They may have not gotten along, and their individual personalities may be divisive, but were the first underdogs on Endurance and broke the Red-Yellow-Blue hold in "House of Cards".
  • Christa on Endurance 2, despite having a smaller role compared to her partner.
  • Alex on Endurance 3, because she had a free-spirited personality and managed to stand up for Bryanah.
  • Monroe & Bryanah in season three. They proved they weren't a weak team and made it far into the competition despite being the prime target of Gray, Purple and Orange teams for most of the season.
  • Kylie from Endurance Tehachapi, in similar ways to Chelsea as they tended to be quiet and didn't cause a lot of drama. Some fans also sympathized with her because of Michael's dealing which ultimately made their team a target.
  • Franke. Despite being the weaker half of his team and having little influence in the game, he gained popularity due to his sense of humor.
  • Darci from Endurance: High Sierras, due to her own quiet nature and her hidden strategizing. She developed a strategy which she would use for Temple, only for Connor to leak it to Yellow.
  • Lilly, due to being a strong girl on her own right. Examples include her performance in the right to stay challenge where she was not only the first girl to complete the challenge but did so without falling into the water as well as being the runner up in the partner selection mission. She was also the only girl who did the bar holding role in the Fill and Spill mission.
  • Connor & Taylor in season five. They broke the 3 temple curse and overall did well despite being a target of the Purple-Green-Red-Orange alliance.
  • Cinnamon from Fiji. While she would only appear in one episode, she was well liked for her positive attitude, her interest in making friends and for providing encouragement to the girls during the right to stay even though she would have needed a couple of them to do badly in order to stay.
• Franchise Killer: Fiji.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • When the Gray Team left on Endurance: High Sierras, they left a note to the remaining six teams. While Darci had some nice things to say about Connor, Ike wished Taylor would "switch a trip to Hawaii for a trip to the Temple of Fate". In the final three, the Blue Team got the advantage for the final Temple Mission, but lost and went up to Temple for a fourth time, where they were eliminated by Green.
  • Skyler on E1: he would later appear on Intervention due to his addiction to bath salts, which partially stemmed because of his stage mother. Endurance was partially shown but never mentioned. It would get worse as he died in October 2020 due to complications.
  • Ashley and Sabrina's friendship is this, as Ashley mentioned being "blindsided" about Sabrina's tactics when watching it on TV. During the reunion, the two girls were seen staring at each other, implying they had a falling out since filming.
  • Tom regarding Vanetta in Hawaii: After Brown, along with their superteam partners Red and Orange, lost the "Bamboo Jungle" temple mission, Tom says they likely would have won if Vanetta wasn't there due to her poor performance in the mission. A couple episodes latter, Vanetta would have to be taken out of the game after injuring herself on the bamboo and thus leaving Tom as a one man team.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When Max and Jenna returned to Endurance 2, Scooter believed they should leave, because "this is Endurance 2, not Endurance 1 reincarnated". True, because the Brown Team ended up winning it all.
  • Sarah picking purple in Endurance Hawaii because she thought the ring looked like it was pink. JD and Lilly from High Sierras later produced a new teen competition show similar to Endurance called Karma which had pink as one of the available team colors.
  • When Kelsey befriended Taylor, Cealey railed about how if that happened, Blue wouldn't send Purple, but Green, her "true best friend." After the show, Kelsey and Taylor saw each other often and kept in touch.
• Memetic Mutation: "Run, HANNAH!" from Fiji.
• Periphery Demographic: Despite the age range being for kids (with the oldest competitors being 15), the show has somewhat of a following amongst college students.
• Retroactive Recognition: Some contestants have pursued media after Endurance ended and a few have found some notability outside of the show:
  • Jonna Mannion of the first Endurance appeared in a season of The Real World and several seasons of The Challenge.
  • Alejandro Rose-Garcia, eliminated on the first season's Right to Stay game, is now a popular Americana musician under the stage name "Shakey Graves."
  • Glen Powell was only briefly on Endurance 2, being eliminated in the Right to Stay challenge. However, he has since established a career working in various film and television programs.
  • Also from Endurance 2, Scooter Magruder has found success as a YouTube vlogger, his channel gaining over 35 million views to date and has over 400k subscribers.
  • Alex Reid from Hawaii has become a member of the K-Pop group Rania, making her the first African-American to join a K-pop group.
  • Tom Maden from Hawaii took up acting after the show and has landed roles in various television shows, including a recurring role in Scream: The TV Series.
  • Chris from Tehachapi has also taken up acting, having roles in Meet The Browns and the Disney Channel original film Avalon High.
  • Aeriél Miranda from High Sierras got a recurring role on Pretty Little Liars and a supporting role in Straight Outta Compton.
  • Jonathan Young from Fiji would eventually get to appear on Survivor, playing on the show's forty-second season.
• The Scrappy:
  • Nicole from season three. Many felt her actions were way too mean, particularly with her treatment of Bryannah from Yellow. She would go from swearing she would eliminate them to begging (sometimes crying) to either join an alliance or spare them from the temple despite the fact Nicole and her partner, Demian, had sent yellow to temple with their best friends on Green. By the halfway point, even Demian was having issues with her when she tried to prevent him from talking to the yellow team members and even exposed a proposed alliance they had with Yellow and Brown to the Gray Team. These actions made her one of the least popular contestants on the show.
  • Vanetta from the same season could also be seen as one. While she did outlast Taylor and Eleanor in Headstrong, which is what convinced Tom to pick her as his partner, she didn't perform well in other missions. Most notably was Bamboo Jungle where she got stuck which turned the mission from a close race into a rather easy win for the Yellow-Purple-Gray superteam. Even the other members of her superteam blamed her for the lost. Her friendship with Nicole also costed Brown and their allies a win in Squaring Off which ultimately resulted in the elimination of the Green team, one of the fan favorites of the season.
    • Alas, Poor Scrappy: Fans do however feel sorry for the fact that she had to leave the game due to an injury, marking the only time someone was eliminated from Endurance that didn't involve gameplay.
  • Garret from Endurance: High Sierras. This even extended to the other contestants. He was shown to be rude to many of the other contestants (Taylor claimed he called her names and gave similar treatment to any woman that wasn't Cealey or Kelsey) and demanded that Cealey be his partner despite the fact that she did not want him (she even scream this to him to try to get this point across) and threaten to mess up the other agreed teams over this. When he was paired with Anna instead, he did not even talk despite her attempts to at least get some cooperation. These made him widely hated by the contestants and fans of the show. Ironically, that season had poll where fans could vote from a selection of hopefuls where the top male and female hopeful would get a spot as a contestant in which Garrett won the male poll (Kelsey won the female poll).
  • From the same season, Alex and Cealey, to some extent. When the eliminated teams voted on whom should get an advantage in the last Temple Mission, they got zero points each. The fact they won the game despite winning only one mission prior to the finale and being good friends with purple who won most of the temple missions doesn't really help their case.
  • Briana from Fiji, who didn't get along with the other contests, and her constant whining about having Kyle for a partner.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The twist in the Stand Bags mission in Fiji, where the winner of the temple mission still had a chance of going to temple and get eliminated, proved to be unpopular with many Endurance fans. Interesting, this mechanic was similar to the regular elimination style in Moolah Beach where a first place team was still at risk of being eliminated, they just were less likely to be eliminated.
• Seasonal Rot: Season 6, Fiji, and to a certain extent Endurance: Tehachapi from Endurance: Hawaii, due to the relatively lack of drama in both seasons and the lack of challenges in the former season. Some also felt Fiji may have suffered by having too many twists throughout the game, especially given the reduction in teams (6 instead of the usual 7 or 8) meant it was a shorter season.
• Signature Scene: There are several contenders throughout the series
  • Endurance 1: The Gray team's elimination after losing to Green which noted that no one is safe when being sent to the temple of fate.
  • Endurance Hawaii: Monroe winning Out on a Limb as it showed how a contestant that was initially dismissed as weak in the beginning proved that Yellow was indeed a strong competitor.
  • Endurance Tehachapi: Either Erika winning the drop out mission where she outlasted everyone else or the huge fight between Isaac and Jeszie on who to give the samadhi to after they won Hang 5.
• Shocking Elimination:
  • Yellow from Moolah Beach as they were the only to team to be eliminated while having more offerings than another team.
  • Gray Team from Endurance when considering no one knew what was at the Temple at the time. The reason they were sent was that Blue wanted Green gone and knew Gray was a strong team and thus it was assumed they would be the ones that would come back. Instead, Green won while the Gray team curse claimed its first victims.
  • Purple Team from Endurance 2, on a missions level, as they had the most pieces of anybody left. However, this made the Green Team want to send them up with Brown to give Green a better chance of winning.
  • Arguably, Green Team from Endurance: Tehachapi. They won a number of missions and had the most pyramid pieces at that point. They had also avoided the temple up until they lost the final 3 temple mission (though they were handicapped by their friends on the Purple Team during the final mission). They ultimately lost to Purple.
  • Red Team from High Sierras since they were up against Blue who had been sent to temple twice already and thus seemed destined to be the next victims of the alleged three temple curse (no team up to that point survived their third trip to temple). Blue however still managed to win, eliminating Red.
  • Also the Red Team from Fiji. The final temple mission had a twist where the first place team was not automatically safe from temple but rather they would take colored rocks from bags with the two colors drawed being who got sent to temple. The team's performance in the mission determined how many rocks of a particular team were in the bag: 1 for first place (Red), 5 for second place (Green) and 10 for last place (Blue). Red came in first but Jonathan managed to pull out the only red colored rock and had to go to Temple and lost to Blue. This marked the only time the temple mission winning team ended up getting eliminated in the same episode.
• Tear Jerker:
  • When contestants are eliminated in the Right to Stay: they were chosen among thousands of teenagers for such an opportunity and ended up going home on the first day. Some seasons though like Tehachapi and High Sierras did allow all contestants to stay for the first day with the right to stay challenge being held on day 2 instead.
  • E1: When Orange and Purple went up to Temple, Chelsea and Layla were particularly sad because they would split up as friends.
  • Also when Red and Yellow went up to Temple, which also ruined Sabrina's plans of a Red-Yellow final two. Even in the finale, she said her friendship with Ashley was the best thing on that season.
  • Calley losing "Cherry Picker" to the Purple Team at the last moment, then crying after losing Temple that same night.
  • Michelle losing at Temple, especially after we find out why she wanted to win the grand prize: her mother had to work all the time and winning the competition would have allowed Michelle to take her on vacation. Even more sad was that Orange had 8 pieces at the time out of a total 12 and so they would have had a significant edge in the finals if they survived the last temple trip.
  • Green and Yellow going up to Temple on Endurance: Hawaii. As they were each other's closest friends in the game, it amplified the sadness of that particular Temple of Fate. There were a lot of tears to go around that night.
  • Vanetta getting injured and having to leave the game.
  • In Hang 5, seeing Jeszie cry when everybody was upset due to the Green Team fighting over whom should receive the Samadhi. Considering that she was intense in her fight with Isaac, it was especially painful to see her open up.
  • Blue E5's elimination was especially heartbreaking. They had broken the third temple trip curse, had the lead in terms of pyramid pieces and received enough support from eliminated contestants to get an advantage in the final temple mission. However, they still lost the mission and ended up losing to Green on their 4th trip to temple.
  • Hannah and Jonathan's elimination on Fiji. By winning Stand Bags, they should've made it to the finale (to add insult to injury, they would've been the third team to make it through without going to Temple); even if they only had one teevee nut to draw. They end up drawing it and go up to Temple nevertheless, where they were eliminated.
• The Woobie:
  • Christa from E2, partially because of her partner, Scooter. While Scooter was very outspoken of his opinions (particularly of how he wanted Brown gone), Christa tended to be quiet and seemed to have a number of friends who felt that they had to target her team anyway due to fear of Scooter.
  • Michelle from season 2. Apparently her mom don't have enough time spent with her, fueling Michelle's determination to win. The Green and Brown teams even considered as such on the final day. Despite such a desire to win, she and her partner did not get along well at first and Tyler's homesick attitude even got Orange sent to temple twice. Eventually, Orange did win a mission and received Purple Team's pieces, giving them 8 total (out of 12). If Orange didn't lose to Green after the final temple mission, Michelle would have had a serious chance at winning due to having twice as many pieces as their would be final opponents.
  • The Yellow Team from Hawaii are Iron Woobies because of all of the crap they went through.
  • Darci from High Sierras. Girl gotten stuck with the Cursed Gray color and was gunned for elimination which was partially the result of her former partner Connor. The dynamics of the show resulted in Darci getting trust issues, as she didn't know whom to trust amongst her friends,
  • Arguably, Taylor from the same season. The Blue Team is immediately targeted due to her and her teammate. While they would win the first mission, she is duped into giving away the power to switch two teams, only to have Cameron go with Dakota's plan instead (though for Taylor, it ended up benefiting her as she got along better with Connor). Due to a few moves meant to placate the larger alliance, Blue is further ostracized, and got sent to Temple multiple times. And to add further problems, Cealey falsely accuses her of cheating on a mission, when in reality she bumped the ball on accident.
    • However, as mentioned before, she split the base for how she reacted and what she could've done differently.
  • Kyle from Fiji. There wasn't anything wrong with him, but no one wanted to be his partner (even Briana, who ended up being his and didn't even seem to want to give him a chance before the partner selection). He ended up getting thrown under the bus, and got sent home first.

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