{"id":903295,"date":"2026-09-24T04:04:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T04:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/903295\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T04:04:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T04:04:18","slug":"game-changer-finale-sam-reich-on-season-8-episodes-season-9-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/903295\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Changer Finale: Sam Reich on Season 8 Episodes, Season 9 Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the Season 8 finale of \u201cGame Changer<\/a>,\u201d now streaming on Dropout<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGame Changer\u201d capped off its eighth season<\/a> Monday with a finale episode that was not at all sponsored by Chili\u2019s but ended with its winner taking home between $3,000 and $5,000 (host and Dropout CEO Sam Reich<\/a> isn\u2019t sure) in Chili\u2019s gift cards. Combine that with the fact the Season 8 finale (a talent show competition) is the longest episode of the Dropout series to date (coming in at just under 90 minutes) and boasts the largest number of contestants (23) and you\u2019ve got a wildly unprecedented undertaking for Reich and the \u201cGame Changer\u201d team.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe episode, titled \u201cLast Talent Standing,\u201d features nearly two dozen contestants performing in a talent show with a \u201cSquid Game\u201d-esque twist that \u201ckilled off\u201d eliminated competitors who then joined a panel of judges led by guest stars Kumail Nanjiani, Maria Bamford and Gianmarco Soresi. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat you see in this 90-minute episode is extraordinarily faithful to everything that actually occurred,\u201d Reich tells Variety. \u201cThere is not a single go that we lifted out of the show completely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t(It should be noted the episode does cut Katie Marovitch\u2019s answer to the way she\u2019d like to fake die upon her elimination, which was deemed \u201ctoo dark\u201d for Dropout\u2019s standards. \u201cYeah, I think Katie and I will probably take that one to the grave, so to speak,\u201d Reich says.)<\/p>\n

\n\tReich was willing to let the cameras roll indefinitely to capture the seemingly endless talents (from Japanese fan dancing to mind reading) of the Dropout players. But what he wasn\u2019t up for was making another two-part episode.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMost \u2018Game Changer\u2019 shoots go as long as they need to,\u201d Reich says. \u201cThe difference between this season and prior seasons is, if you\u2019re looking for how we\u2019ve creatively pivoted, we\u2019ve done episodes that we\u2019ve split in two. Many. In fact, if you look at other two-parters, the sum of their parts is not as long as this 90 minutes was. I have finally landed against two-parters, and the reason is that I feel like we set up expectations and then there\u2019s no way to surprise people as much with the second half. So their experience of watching an episode, waiting a week \u2014 actually two weeks \u2014 and then watching the second half is always going to be a funny kind of payoff where that second half better be, in some ways, profoundly different from the first half in order to still feel like \u2018Game Changer.\u2019 And I would rather wallop people with one experience. So now that we can afford to, that\u2019s basically what this comes down to. We\u2019re just doing longer episodes here and there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThough Reich says he\u2019s done breaking episodes into two parts, there is still a limit to how long he\u2019s willing to let an episode go based on his initial plans in a writers\u2019 room vs. what happens during the actual production.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere were game mechanics that we had to abandon because the day was immediately running so long and the biggest game mechanic that we had to abandon was mini games that were going to happen in between rounds and those mini games were going to be all players squaring off in the same talent,\u201d Reich says. \u201cFor instance, we were going to reach the end of round one and then the players were going to go heads up on beatboxing or heads up on best Scottish accent or heads up on runway walk \u2014 which Oscar did do for us later in the episode \u2014 and we were quickly running so, so long that was not possible. Winners of those games were going to get a \u2018one free death\u2019 or \u2018resurrection\u2019 certificate. Our thinking was they could use them on themselves or they could unselfishly use them on someone else, which might also create a funny dynamic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tReich says that those planned aspects had to be cut out to account for the lengthy production day, but there was a key mechanic he made sure could stay in no matter how long the episode got.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere is a distinction between what I am willing to do and what, like a \u2018Squid Game\u2019 or a \u2018Beast Games\u2019 is willing to do and part of that for me at this point is trying to figure out, if I\u2019m going to do an elimination game, ways that eliminated players are going to stay involved,\u201d Reich says. \u201cSo turning eliminated players into judges was important to me for that reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce the game got down to its final four contestants \u2014 Jacob Wysocki, Kimia Behpoornia, Kaylin Mahoney and Oscar Montoya \u2014 Reich says the competition hit its \u201ctipping point,\u201d as the desire to end the very long production day and go home warred with everyone\u2019s goal to commit to the bit. This led to moments like Wysocki trying and failing to eliminate himself to, as he (the only \u201cstraight white guy\u201d left at that point) put it, \u201cgive voices to people who matter\u201d and so he could \u201cgo smoke a joint in my car.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe meta game of \u2018Game Changer\u2019 at any point is that probably everyone is just trying to create the best possible episode, regardless of if that means they\u2019re winning,\u201d Reich says. \u201cI think everyone\u2019s sort of producer brain is \u2014 meaning all of my players, and this is what makes for such a good show \u2014 probably a little higher than their game-player brain. Not all the time, but sometimes. Which means that I can count on players doing the funny thing, even if that means getting eliminated. Jacob, I think he was sort of saying to himself, \u2018I don\u2019t need to win this. The day is already going long. I want for one of my friends to win it,\u2019 and just no one would allow it. And that was, in some ways, the tipping point of the episode, where we went from running long to that being the spirit of the day. To everyone wanting to hang in there as long as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, Montoya walked away the proud owner of a Chili\u2019s gift card with \u201cunder $5,000\u2033 on it, courtesy of Dropout, not Chili\u2019s \u2014 though that was not for lack of Reich trying to get Chili\u2019s involved.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI absolutely did,\u201d Reich says. \u201cGranted, I could have probably pressed on that more than I did. There was something about the fact that all of that happened and we weren\u2019t sponsored by anybody, which is also funny. Just like if this ends up being the result, it\u2019s just the result.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Dropout has grown, the company has set a steady pace with production and release cycles for its expanding slate of TV shows, which also includes \u201cDimension 20,\u201d \u201cMake Some Noise\u201d and \u201cVery Important People.\u201d That means that even though \u201cGame Changer\u201d Season 8 has just concluded for viewers, the episodes were shot so long ago now that Reich\u2019s focus has shifted to the ninth season, which begins production in three weeks. And he is trying to limit how the response to Season 8 affects new ideas.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m so deeply entrenched in Season 9 that even to turn back and reflect on it, it\u2019s tricky,\u201d Reich says. \u201cIt requires me extracting my brain from one Frankenstein and putting it in another Frankenstein. There\u2019s a natural sort of built-in tweak to \u2018Game Changer,\u2019 which is the show itself is such an experiment and we\u2019re lucky to have fans who really care about it. But for the most part, I try to tune out the noise and to remain faithful to the experiment. And what to me that means is every season, it is a show that, like a cat, will always be exploring the perimeter of what it can do because it\u2019s always looking for new things to exploit. And because the show gets bigger and bigger, there\u2019s more at its disposal to be able to exploit season after season. So every season we have this conversation with ourselves, which is sort of like, what do we want to see a little bit more of? What do we want to see a little bit less of? And in some ways, every season is a response to the season that came before it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe focus between Seasons 7 and 8 was pushing the boundaries for game design, and Reich says he\u2019s \u201creally proud of what we came up with\u201d for Season 8\u2019s episodes, which has \u201csome of the truest games that we\u2019ve ever done with the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNow going into Season 9, Reich says these episodes are planned to be \u201cby a mile, the strangest stuff we\u2019ve ever done.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt is just like whatever those game design impulses were [for Season 8], [Season 9] hasn\u2019t left them entirely in the gutter, but it is like an acid trip,\u201d Reich says. \u201cThe show benefits not at all from consistency. So we\u2019ll continue to reinvent it, and it\u2019ll continue to shape-shift and that\u2019s part of the fun of being on this ride.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the Season 8 finale of \u201cGame Changer,\u201d now streaming on Dropout.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":903296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,210529,134,43010,254681,471529,427],"class_list":["post-903295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dropout","tag-entertainment","tag-game-changer","tag-just-watched","tag-sam-reich","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/903296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}