Cold Wars: These Are The Chilliest Challenge Conflicts Ever

Do away with the notion that Challenge warfare has to center on battle cries like “I will smash his head and eat it!” Sometimes, the most intense combat plays out quietly and behind closed doors, and in the case of Tori and Amanda on Spies, Lies and Allies, there’s a particularly cold war a-brewing. But is it the chilliest ever?

On the show’s latest episode, and amid a season with plenty more explicit clashing, Amanda and Tori continued to duel almost peacefully and typically while the other was not around. Amanda told good pal Josh that she was sick of Tori’s reliance on grit and grit alone to advance in the game, while Tori lit up Amanda in confessionals for playing an exclusively political game with little physicality to back it up.

“Amanda is a different style of competitor than me. Let’s just be real,” Tori said. “From what I’ve heard, Amanda talks a bunch of sh** about me…so I don’t trust her.”

And Tori had good reason to have misgivings. After Sapphire Cell finally broke Emerald Cell’s winning streak with a victory in “Submerged,” which challenged players to find puzzle pieces in a sunken fighter jet before correctly assembling them on dry land, Amanda — desperate to defect from Ruby Cell — pled with The Agency to nominate her into The Lair so she could choose her elimination-round opponent. And, if she won, she vowed to oust Tori and join Nany and Kaycee among Team Green’s women.

“They’re gonna need brains, and Tori doesn’t have any,” Amanda said. “Tori is all brawn. It matters if you’re in the game and you have the heart to win it.”

And, when it came time to battling Big T in “Vault Escape,” a climb up a telephone pole littered with puzzle work, Amanda showed she wasn’t all talk and defeated Big T handily. True to her word, she proceeded to steal Tori’s place on Emerald Cell, demoting Tori to the struggling Ruby Cell.

“I just want to throw up. My heart just hurts,” Tori said in a confessional, though she politely congratulated Amanda in person. “I’m pissed that [she] took my spot.”

Quietly biting, Tori and Amanda will likely go additional rounds, but they certainly aren’t the first Challenge contestants to go to war without razing the cast’s house to the ground.

In the early days of The Challenge, cold-warring was often the preferred method of battle. Who could forget Emily and Veronica secretly going rounds on Battle of the Sexes, or Adam trying to oust Sarah from The Gauntlet with secret voting, only for Sarah to win five elimination rounds, often with the goal of spiting Adam?

Gauntlet 2 similarly had intrateam (and equally quiet) warfare between rookies Kina and Cara *and* veterans Montana and Beth. Carley and Laurel were queens of throwing darts at each other in Fresh Meat 2 confessionals, and if there was a tenser grudge match than that between Averey and Nany on Rivals III, we’d like to see it.

Jenn and Aneesa on Duel 2? Zach and Ninja Natalie on War of the Worlds 2? Frankly, the list goes on and on and serves as proof that sometimes, the most vicious attacks travel as quietly as mice.

But which is the most memorably venomous? Is Tori’s and Amanda’s Challenge cold war the chilliest ever? And who will best the other? Share your thoughts, then be sure to catch a brand-new Spies, Lies and Allies on Wednesday at 8/7c!