Autistic contestant on Amazon Prime reality competition show

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Samantha Harker was 13 years old when she decided to challenge herself.

Harker, who is in her fourth year of her PhD in neuroscience at Arizona State University, where she’s researching autism and aging, knew at a young age that she was gifted.

She scored in the 98th percentile in mathematics on the GATE Exam — the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering — earned a perfect score twice in California state testing for mathematics, and while being assessed by a psychiatrist for neurodivergency, was told that she had autism and possessed “savant-level intellectual skills and near-eidetic memory.”

The challenge? Oh, nothing really. Harker just memorized 1,294 digits in three days for a pi memorization competition.

“I felt like I excelled at remembering numbers,” Harker says.

You think?

So, when Amazon Prime Video was seeking contestants for its second season of "Beast Games," a Survivor-type competition that pits 100 of the smartest people in the world with 100 of the strongest — Harker wanted in.

She submitted a video application in which she recited about 150 digits of pi from memory, went through an interview process and eventually was invited to be on the show, which premiered Jan. 7 on Amazon Prime and awards a $5 million prize.

“I watched Season One of the show and thought the concept was really interesting,” Harker said. “Many of the challenges in Season One dealt with agility, quick thinking, as well as problem solving. I was excited to apply because of these large-scale challenges.

“Additionally, I applied in hopes to win the grand prize of $5 million and develop support programs for older autistic adults, congruent with my PhD research, as there is limited funding in this area.”

Harker said her experience on the show was positive.

She became friends with several of the competitors — “I think it was really unique to bond with others over these challenges,” she said — and enjoyed the challenges, one of which involved a tower of colored blocks. The blocks were knocked over, and players had a limited time to recreate the towers from memory. Those who failed to match the tower exactly were eliminated.

Harker said she was surprised by the amount of time filming took. A challenge that lasted just a few minutes on TV could take 12 or more hours to film. In addition, much of the filming was done at night.

“One of the hardest adjustments was the inverse sleep schedule and being unplugged from reality,” she said. “We turned in our devices and had no communication outside of the games. It is also mind-boggling to be inside of the game and the intensity that comes along with that mindset.”

Samantha Harker earned a bachelor's degreen in English from ASU at age 18 and is now a doctoral student in neuroscience. Courtesy photo
Harker said that when she was diagnosed with autism as a teenager, it motivated her to accelerate her educational timeline because she wanted to begin supporting the autism community as soon as possible.

She started taking community college classes at the age of 14, graduated high school at 16, attended two universities simultaneously and earned bachelor’s degrees in English (from ASU) and medical humanities when she was 18 years old.

“There are limited resources available for the older autistic population, especially women, and I wanted to help curate tools to support (them),” Harker said. “I think my biggest goal has been to help others understand the divergence of autism. The spectrum of autism means that no individual is identical, and there are a variety of symptom presentations and support needs.”

Harker said that women are often told they don’t “look autistic.” To clear up those misconceptions, Harker has shared her own experiences on outlets like the Organization for Autism Research and given a TEDx Talk titled, “I DO Look Autistic.”

“I hope that my research and my presence on the show help demonstrate the diversity of autism and helps others understand that support can help everyone thrive, regardless of your neurocognitive status,” Harker said.

“Additionally, I hope that my intentions are shown and that viewers can see the bonds that the cast formed with one another. One of my favorite parts of this experience is the friendships I made, and I am grateful to have met so many exceptional people.”

Beast Games is a reality competition television series created by YouTuber Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson, Tyler Conklin, Sean Klitzner, and Mack Hopkins. Hosted by Donaldson, Beast Games follows 1,000 contestants—the largest cast for a reality show—as they compete for $5 million,[a] advertised as the largest single cash prize in reality television history.

Inspired by the viral Netflix show Squid Game and Donaldson's viral video "$456,000 Squid Game<in Real Life!",>the first two episodes of Beast Games were released on Amazon Prime Video on December 19, 2024, with the full series consisting of ten episodes released weekly on Thursdays. On the same day, Donaldson also released a video of tryouts for the game show on his YouTube channel titled "2,000 People Fight for $5,000,000", where he cut the number of people participating from 2,000 to 1,000 in a series of challenges. On January 25, 2025, Donaldson uploaded a video titled "Each Minute One Person is Eliminated", following 20 people previously eliminated from the Beast Games show to participate and compete again for $500,000, later reduced to $431,000.

Several contestants alleged they were mistreated during production, resulting in a lawsuit against Donaldson's company and several others. While the show was received poorly by critics, it became one of Amazon Prime Video's most viewed shows.

In May 2025, Beast Games was renewed for two more seasons, with filming for season 2 running from June until August. The second season premiered on January 7, 2026.

Filming
The filming broke 44 Guinness World Records, including the largest physical cash prize on set ($5,000,000), the most prize money turned down on a competitive reality TV show ($1,000,000), the largest prize fund awarded for a competitive reality TV show ($10,000,000), and the most money won in a single episode of a competitive reality TV show ($2,020,000), and a page in the 2026 Guinness Book of World Records was focused on the show.

Filming for season 2 began in Las Vegas in June 2025, and was completed in August 2025.

Part of season 2 features a crossover with the CBS Reality Series Survivor . Filmed prior to their 50th season, the Survivor production team hosted a series of challenges for Beast Games with Survivor host Jeff Probst appearing as a co-host as part of the crossover. As part of the crossover Beast Games presenter Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson is set to appear in an episode of Survivor 50 as a Celebrity Fan, introducing a twist.

Legal issues
Contestants complained that they were denied food, water, medication, and beds during the production of the show. Additionally, dozens reported that various injuries took place during the first filming sessions, as well as mistreatment, sexual harassment, and not being paid for overtime. On September 16, 2024, a class action lawsuit was filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court.

According to a December 2024 Rolling Stone report on the working conditions for Beast Games published earlier that month, a portion of a tower exterior fell on a crew member on September 9, 2024. Later that month, the Ontario Ministry of Labour confirmed that it had opened an investigation into an on-set industrial incident on September 11, 2024. It stated that two of the employers, Blink 49 Studios and Manhattan Beach Studios, were each issued a "requirement". The Toronto Police Service also released a statement saying that they had been called to set for the incident but were not investigating as there was not a criminal element.

Reception
The series became Prime Video's most watched unscripted series ever and its second largest series debut of 2024 behind Fallout, getting 50 million viewers over the course of 25 days. Amazon noted that half of the show's audience came from outside the United States.

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the series has an approval rating of 20% based on 10 critic reviews, with an average rating of 5/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, gave it a score of 38 out of 100 based on five critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.Several reviewers critiqued Donaldson's performance as loud and shallow and the show's lack of focus on its contestants. Naomi Fry of The New Yorker wrote that the use of contestants' numbers instead of their names made it difficult to empathize with them, unlike other reality shows. IGN, The Guardian, Vox and PC Gamer criticized the show for closely following the premise of Squid Game while stripping away its dystopian tone.

The financial aspects of the show have also come under scrutiny. Katie Notopoulos of Business Insider enjoyed the show, but she worried that it could communicate to children the lack of value in money.Lauren Saunders of the National Consumer Law Center and Andrew Kushner of the Center for Responsible Lending criticized sponsor MoneyLion, a financial tech and cash advance company, for advertising to a young audience, which Kushner said were more susceptible to "the slick marketing" of the finance industry. Jeff Yang similarly argued that the sponsorship would allow MoneyLion's owner, Gen Digital, to target groups in MrBeast's audience facing "dire economic precarity".

Some critics have analyzed the political implications of the show. According to Yang, while Squid Game was creating contextual critiques of oligarchs and exploiting disadvantaged people, Beast Games is unwittingly glorifying these concepts.;Patrick Freyne of The Irish Times compared the giving away of islands to contestants in the fifth episode to colonialism.

In response to IGN'’s negative review, Donaldson wrote "Yeah, sad one person who doesn't like me can just label something a thousand people poured their lives into a 2 out of 10 when it's clearly not." Donaldson similarly questioned the gap between audience and critic scores on Rotten Tomatoes.