‘Beast Games’ Season 2 Episode 7 Recap: Between The Buried And Me 

A nearly empty Beast City echoes with the sound of final hearts shattered. With Bryleigh and Tyler X’d, The 11 remaining players of Beast Games Season 2 wait apprehensively to see who Nick and Monika will X out next. And well, once it happens, you’ll probably figure it like we did: “Yeah, that seems about right.” With so few contestants left, the Smart vs Strong metric is like an echo, too – in this game, all that now stands are relationships forged in pain, plus personal gain.

“I can’t have somebody gunning for me, or trying to trick me,” Nick says of his decision to shatter Catey’s heart and send her packing, and Monika backs him up. “I know you don’t open up to people,” she tells her, “and it’s about having people we both fully trust here.” So apparently they couldn’t see a way forward with Catey’s personality as a wild card. We don’t understand the philosophical gymnastics it requires to parse trust like this. Everyone in Beast City and all of us watching at home saw Monika’s personality in action, saw her publicly forsake the trust players put in her during the Episode 6 challenges. But “It is what it is,” as a departing Catey says. We’ll always have her funloving faceplant.  

SUP FAM

And trust as a concept remains the name of the game. In 24 hours, MrBeast tells the last contestants standing, “You’re gonna need to know who you can trust.” But first it’s time for some external stimuli, and to fill up an emptied-out Beast City with the loved ones left behind by those who remain. Ever-gregarious Jim is the first to be surprised by his visiting family members, who rush in from the cleft between Beast City’s walls. “Yo! I’m top ten in this!” he tells his mom and brother. It’s the “Yo!” that lets us know Jim’s TV personality is just an extension of his real life self. Because this is how he introduces his season-long reality show love affair to his mother. “Dude, that’s my girlfriend,” he says, pointing out Monika.   

There are emotional hysterics and jump hugs happening all over the city’s main activity space. Tyler greets his adorable little ones, and it’s a nice touch to have the family members also clad in Beast Games jersey blue. Auguste says the elation he felt seeing his wife and parents is what he imagined winning the whole show would feel like. And Hannah’s dad is hyped to hear how she met PROBST. (Who wouldn’t be?!) It’s also notable how Monika, brandishing the money coin, characterizes to her parents her decision-making and gameplay. “You guys are thinking so logically – you haven’t lived inside these walls.” We think trustability must be an organic, experiential thing from the perspective of these players. Beast Games and its black-hoodied host amplifying the pressures and choices we all face in society, inside the crucible they have constructed.   

A GRAVE CONCERN

“Guards! Bring in the torches!” It’s kind of a visual homage to Survivor as the last ten grab fire and are led outside the walls. But the rest of this new challenge is pure, uncut MrBeast. First they arrive at a fleet of tombstones lit in red. “Here lies,” etc., like pun-filled Halloween lawn decor, only these correspond to every past player’s departing demise. Beast even narrates a mini-retrospective of this season’s most notable X’s. The whole setup feels unnecessarily morbid. And that’s before he points out the line of graves, these lit in white, with open hatches. Players must pick a captain by voice vote, who won’t be buried, and they all coalesce around Nick. They are all anticipating some kind of money split, based on their understanding of this point in the game during Beast Season 1, and believe in Nick’s integrity. After all, he did turn down a million bucks during Captain Bribe. With the captain chosen, MrBeast banishes the rest to be buried. “Everyone else – to your coffins!” 

There is Nick’s all-dude alliance, which includes Tyler, Jack, and Auguste. There is Hannah, Kady, Monika…and Jim. And there is Brett and Cory, who Beast calls “the straggler’s alliance.” Inside these factions are their own echoes, of the obstacle course experience, of the Fiji experience, of just being personal ride-or-dies for one another. But no matter the group to which they adhere, inside the sound-wired coffins, they express how sure they are that the remaining Top Ten-ers will all be fair to one another. A million bucks on the line means 100K for everybody.

LONELY ON THE MONEY THRONE 

MrBeast reassures the coffin floppers. Kind of. “As a guy who’s been buried alive a ton of times, after a few hours, the terrifying fear starts to subside. A smidge.” But he also crowds into Nick’s headspace with his piercing, social media-branded “Hey guys!” energy. As they stand before the million-dollar money cube, you can feel Beast’s excitement through the screen. Tempting people with greed is what this dude really loves. The challenge is indeed a version of “Split or Steal,” just as the now-buried suspected, but as captain, Nick has exclusive early access. “You don’t have to eliminate anyone, or hurt anyone,” MrBeast tells him. “Nothing is stopping you from taking the full million.”

Earlier, with his mom and sister, Nick apologized for turning down the Captain Bribe million. The financial challenges he has faced in life have become an episodic talking point. And as he climbs into the money cube to rest on the pile like a throne, the physical embodiment of MrBeast’s greed is great ethos, the host continues to badger. Nick can take the whole cash pie, cut it up evenly, or some variation thereof; the other players’ trust is all on him. “You’ve always put others before yourself,” Beast says, and refers to himself honestly as a devil on the shoulder. “Now, for the second time, you have a million-dollar opportunity. Are you going to take it?” Beast City reverberates with the heavy sound of Nick weighing trust against gain.

10 players remain. Only one above ground.

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.