NÃO PERCA: ‘Beast Games’ Co-Creator Sean Klitzner Dishes On How He Pulled Off Season 2’s Highly Anticipated Jeff Probst / ‘Survivor’ Crossover Episode: “It’s A True Collaboration In The YouTube Sense” 🍿
In 2024, MrBeast made the leap from his thriving “Hey guys” YouTube challenge universe to hosting a reality competition on TV. Taking its Squid Game inspiration to the natural extreme — no bodily harm or actual violence, but lots of booby traps and trapdoors — Beast Games featured an initial 1000 contestants all vying for a record-setting grand prize of $5,000,000. It was an eye-popping sum made even more visual by having Jimmy Donaldson stand on top of the pile, as if Heath Ledger’s Joker was also one of the world’s biggest content creating YouTube personalities.
Beast Games was a fast hit for Prime Video, and the streamer quickly renewed it for two more seasons. And when Season 2 premieres today with three new episodes, the show’s scale will still be gigantic, but its competition has been streamlined. This time around, 100 of the strongest players will take on 100 of the smartest. Will it require brawn or brains to become millions of dollars richer? Decider figured Sean Klitzner, co-creator and showrunner of Beast Games, was the right guy to talk to about making the series even bigger. In our chat, Klitzner shared his reaction to the first season’s success, his team’s inspirations in the Season 2 writer’s room, and the big Beast Games Season 2 crossover event with Jeff Probst and Survivor.
DECIDER: For Beast Games Season 2, your vision board at the start just had to say, like, “Go bigger. Go huger. Go larger. Invent a new word for BIG.”
SEAN KLITZNER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you’re opening up a lot of boxes here, and it’s as if you were in the room. So when we were signed on to do Season 2, we got picked for 2 and 3, right? So my partner is [series co-creator] Tyler Conklin, who is incredible. And the way I describe this, just for context, is a Venn diagram, where the middle part is massive and there’s a little edge on what he and I both do. In other words, I understand everything he does. He understands everything I do. I’m gonna make sure that the creative vision comes to life; I’ll be that creative engine for him. He’s the director on site, moving the event, and I’m there making sure, like The Truman Show, people are on standby to kind of move where they need to, right? We get in a room. We are the only two human beings who are on Beast Games Season 2. At this point, we literally watched the whole season multiple times again, little parts of each episode. We throw everything on the wall and say, “This is everything we failed at.” Like we really came down on ourselves. And that’s the nature of what the brand is. We’re going to take the data and we’re going to see how we can make it better. We wrote everything on a wall. And we literally looked at all of that and went, “We’re gonna change everything.” We’re gonna fix, not change. We’re gonna fix all of these things that we feel subjectively fell short. And we’re gonna use data to make it more objective.
Give me an example of something that you think failed in Season 1.
Ooh. I think that the attachment that the audience has to individuals happens very, very late in Season 1, and by the time the show concludes, we do fall in love with the winner and the second place person, Jeff Allen and Twana Barnett, right? However, we had to kind of do this recap where it was like, “Hey, remember, they were here, here, here, and here.” We didn’t really get to know a lot of people in those early [episodes], but it’s the nature of having 1000 people.
Right, the sheer scale of this thing, even before you get to the money. Is the smart/strong setup for Season 2 more dialed in for clarity reasons?
I had always said this a lot. Season 2 is our franchise season. This is going to be the season that we make decisions that allow us to do this for as long as they let us. 10 years, 20 years, whatever that is, right?
We said, you know, Season 2 is going to be bigger, as defined by what bigger means to us. So let’s redefine bigger, just like you said. Bigger as in more evolved. So that’s taking the story and diving into a more evolved story. That’s taking our sets and making them visually a little more interesting, in different ways that aren’t necessarily bigger, but maybe it’s more visual. So Season 1, we reused a couple of sets a few times. We were like, well, what if we had more sets, right? What if we had more visuals? So everything was more evolved, the graphics, the explanations, the editing. You know, even the island. It’s like we had these nuggets that we wanted to do for Season 1 – let’s evolve it for Season 2.
I’m glad you kept the trap doors for Season 2. The trap door situation, I think, was a breakout sleeper star of Beast Games Season 1. People just love to watch other people fall through trap doors.
I got to give [co-creator Mack Hopkins] credit. You know, Tyler’s vision of that one shot, you’ll see with the drone where it goes, right? I knew he wanted that. And we were told up until, like, a few days before, constantly, we can’t do it. It’s not possible. We can’t do it. And it was hard to figure it out. Tyler’s like, “I have this vision,” and you see why. But Mack, Mack is a cinephile. He loves, like, the biggest movies with a story. And I remember the vision Tyler had, which we tried to create, was just like he said, the trap doors need to be its own character. And so then in the editing process, you see it’s like this mystery, “Where did they go?” Or, you know, it’s that shock. And Tyler described this as, when you watch Squid Game, and you think it’s a fun game, and then all of a sudden they’re playing Red Light, Green Light, and somebody gets shot. And you’re like, Yeah, BANG. We need to have that “BANG” moment, where you don’t know people are going to drop.
I think that’s also a great way to bounce the gameplay in Beast Games off something that people are more familiar with, like American Ninja Warrior or Wipeout. You know, where someone gets clobbered out of nowhere. Like the big reveal is that they got subjected to this.
You’re jumping on we talked about before, that franchise season. It’s what elements are going to make it to Season 2, and then what elements are going to be introduced and named in Season 2? You’ll see a lot of naming mechanics start coming out, where we’re referencing what we’re doing. So that we have the option, or the franchise has the option in the future, to reference that again.
How much did Survivor mean to you as a showrunner, in terms of influence on the Beast Games concept? Because Survivor‘s been naming things like that for years, right? Contestants come on, and they are invested in Survivor by being game players at home. With Beast Games Season 2, you must have had experience with players coming in and wanting to invest in the game as to how they might beat it.
So you talk about Survivor. I’m a huge fan of Survivor. I get exactly everything that you’re saying here. Of course we’re going to reference this show because they’re the godfather of challenge television. Like, the immunity idol, the hidden immunity idol? Survivor invented that. In my opinion, they invented the Alliance, right? And now every show does it. So, of course, we take a lot of inspiration from that. That’s the base, the core, of every successful competition show.
Along with that gameplay, in the first season of Beast Games, there were these extremes between people forging fast friendships and then being forced to work against those friendships. How much of allyship is important to your game as it evolves, or are you using it as a tool to, you know, seed conflict?
I love the question, because it’s as if I want you in my writer’s room, because you get the mechanics behind building a show, which is amazing. Season 2 is going to really define what this game is. Because if we end up not having – if you don’t need friends and alliances and allies in order to make it further in the game, then you’re going to see that in Season 2. But of course, that’s the nature of what Beast Games is. It’s not just a show about making it to the end. It’s how far are you willing to go to win whatever money you would want to win in this show?
Let me explain this a little further. Yes, the grand prize is $5 million right? People want an island. People want hundreds of thousands of dollars. Throughout, people quit the game to say, “I am leaving with this.” And therefore they became a winner in their own right. What Beast Games could end up being, we don’t decide, it’s really the viewers. Is Beast Games a show marketing that we’re giving away over $10 million? So these games, it’s how far would you go to win X amount of dollars? So this dynamic of making friends to get you further, and then having games that challenge those alliances and friendships, is really challenging the player and where their end game truly ends, right?
That’s a good point. Because they have to consider all that going in. It can’t just be about this hard number, this dollar sign.
It is to some people. “I’m adhered to the five million. I’m not taking anything less.”
Then there’s a guy in the early going of Season 1 who sort of clowns on the folks who say they were gonna give their winnings to charity. He’s like, “I’m getting jet skis and gold.”
Oh, totally. You have to support both of those inside the show, you know? That’s the levels. That’s the dynamic you end up having here. My favorite thing is, when Season 1 ended, the biggest question I always asked anybody I met was, would you have taken the million bucks up on the towers? Every single person goes, “Yes.” Every one of those players I talked to said that there’s no question, if they made it on top of the tower, they would have eliminated 62 people. You have no cell phone. You have made it through thousands, if not tens of thousands, of applicants to get there. So there’s something really powerful in your experience. Now, you put them up there, it’s a whole different game.
I was reading something about the first season that referred to it as a full scale social experiment with a cash prize, which when you really consider that, it takes it out of the reality space entirely, right? It’s like, now you’re dealing with a literal experiment. I wonder how much you think about that as you’re going forward with the project. Does Beast Games need to be defined as reality competition TV as we understand it? Or can it be something that’s open-ended, defining itself as we go through it?
Yeah, it’s a great point. We look at Season 1 as, you know, we were just a bunch of kids outside of the traditional who came in and really helped. We were a bunch of kids making YouTube videos that were given a show, and we gave it our best shot. I think it was good for that. But that context is so important when people watch it, if you hear me say that, and then watch the show. I think you have a little bit more of a heart, you know, a little less of an expectation of this needs to be a flawless television show. And you watch it for what it is, and it’s enjoyable. Season 2, we said, “Okay, now we did it once. Let’s make a TV show.” And I think, you know, I think we did.
It’s interesting that it will perhaps function like a traditional reality competition, while still being this show that’s reaching for something. I mean, I kept being struck by that during the first season, how you guys weren’t really reinventing the rules, but you weren’t using a rule book, either. Or maybe the rule book came from YouTube, right? And now it’s being applied to reality. We all get the frame, but inside the frame, it could be a lot of different things.
So what you’re referencing from the YouTube part of things, it’s what I do really well. Tyler does really well. It’s what when we’re creating this content, it’s what our focus is, understanding how the next generation of viewers consume media. That includes video games, right? That includes television, that includes eating food at this point. It’s any sort of like, “How is the next generation even thinking?” It’s the psychology behind that, right? So when it comes to TV now, the biggest compliment I hear is not even directly related to any of the work we did. It’s, you know, a grandparent going, “It’s the first time I sat with my grandkids and watched TV with them.” It’s a parent going, “‘”I can’t connect with my kid, who’s on YouTube, but we all sat together and watched TV and had popcorn and dinner.”
We hear a lot today about shows that were designed for people to watch while they’re scrolling on their phone. You know, distracted attention spans. You’ve got a show where you’re putting QR codes in the show. Embedding it, right? Participatory play. That seems like a way of keeping eyes on the screen, right? Keeping people in your universe.
You know, 12 years ago, I was working at Game Show Network, and we had the problem of phones in the hands, right? Everybody’s tried to solve it. I’m on here half the time, you know, playing a game, a mindless game. My wife’s on IMDB, looking up who is in our shows, right? And so we tried to create this interactive experience at Game Show Network, and it was fine, and it was good, but what I learned very early on at that point is: let people be on their phone. Accept it. We can’t change the masses, and we’re trying to do what’s a cat-and-mouse game, because then a new app is going to come out that’s going to get even more addictive. There’s going to be something that’s going to draw them to their phone, so accept it. What we have to do is one of two things. Either encourage the phone, sure, be on your phone, take a picture, like, interact with our people. Your phones are already in your hand. It’s good integration. But the second thing is, what’s going to win out always is good content if you are doing this, because I see it with my kids. I see it with myself and my wife. You know, my research is, if we’re watching a really good show, scripted, non-scripted, and we’re in our phones, and then all of a sudden, you stop, and you’re just looking up whatever that moment was. We try to capture without being, like, hyper content.
I mean, your host is almost hyper enough, right? That’s his whole thing, so you can let that be what draws the eye while all these other relationships are building on the show. Like, take us inside the strong versus the smart. Obviously, two huge traits in anyone. But were there other options to limit the Season 2 casting?
Oh my God, right, yes, and I will tell you as much as I can tell you, without spoiling potentially anything. But the short answer is, you don’t just start with strong and smart and go, “Well, we got it. That’s it.” Like the nature of creating our content, we put everything on the wall. We toyed with a third, and we had a different two. At one point, I think it landed with strong versus smart, because as Tyler was cooking on a whiteboard, and I’m following up. “Hey, we could really do this.” And look what we could do. We’re crafting this whole thing. We sat there and we looked, and we said, “It’s the bare nature of competition. It’s physical, and a brain, and that is it. You have to move with this, and you have to do something physical that makes a good challenge. Let’s take it to an extreme.” And then we signed on Jeff. We just dropped a trailer that revealed it. It’s a story, man. I’ll give you the shortest possible version.
Yeah, give me the short version.
We had a nugget, which was we gave away an island in Season 1. Wouldn’t it be great if we got Jeff Probst to be a little guest star? Huge Survivor fan – let me have this. I closed the door behind me. I said, I got this. What I came back with was, I flew to Fiji. I did an experience on Survivor, where I got to play Survivor, just so I got 10 minutes with Jeff. And this minute, and it even started prior to that on the airplane, I was talking to his publicist, and was asking. And she was very interested. It turned into, we have a full episode of Survivor in Beast Games, where the island episode is literally, you transform into Survivor. It’s a true collaboration in the YouTube sense. And I mean, look, you’re a TV junkie. I’ve read your stuff. I mean, you know your shit, and I have never seen anything like what we do with Survivor.
Beast Games Season 2 premieres with three new episodes on January 7, 2026. (That’s today!)
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.
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