Season 5 of Special Forces has officially come to an end — and the winners are breaking their silence on their near-eliminations and more.
During the Thursday, November 12, episode of the hit Fox series, Alexia Umansky, Candace Cameron Bure and Collin Gosselin had all made it through the final test. The trio passed the Special Forces experiment, and each of them crowned winners.
“The moment I got out of there, I looked for the first person with a cell phone. I said, ‘Please let me call my family. Let me call somebody,’” Alexia exclusively told Us about the accomplishment. “I just said [to my family], ‘I won,’ and everyone started crying.”
Alexia recalled thinking she would “just make it to day four.”
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“[I said], ‘If I make it halfway, I’ll be so proud of myself.’ But the moment I looked at the DS, I feel like I was locked in,” she shared. “And I even had it in my journal and I read it the other night. It said, ‘By day four, I think I can make it to the end.’ When my dad [Mauricio Umansky] left, I was obviously sad, but I still didn’t want to go.”
Alexia recalled one instance when she had her doubts about staying. “It was in the swamp. I started, like, sobbing, crying because I thought this was it and it wasn’t because I wanted to leave. There was no part of me that was going to give my number,” she said. “But I thought that I was going to collapse and pass out face first into this mud and they were gonna have to medically withdraw me because I was so pushed to my mental and physical end. I was like, ‘They’re gonna take my number away. This is the moment.’ … They pushed me forward and I kept going.”
Special Forces, which premiered in 2023, puts celebrities through harsh training based on actual military selection processes. The cast faces intense physical and mental challenges designed to push them to their limits.
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“I was honestly shocked when I passed,” Candace told Us. “I remember when I was standing there and I was looking around and saw that it was Alexia and Collin and me. I couldn’t believe that the other people weren’t there. So I was trying to process that while they were talking, and I almost thought that they were separated from me.”
She continued: “That whole night — it was a 24-hour day, so you are so sleep deprived and you don’t know what’s going on. I genuinely thought the other people were separated and it was still a part of the day. I didn’t know we were at the final selection. … When we were all declared winners, I was so happy, but I was so confused. Because I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ Once the reality hit, it was just a big sigh of relief and like, ‘Wow, it’s over. We did it. This is incredible.’ And it was just fun to share it with the others too.”
Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test is streaming now on Hulu.
