There have been several twists on Big Brother 24, and the biggest yet has been the unprecedented split house Double Eviction twist. The Big Brother format has proven to be quite malleable over the years, but the show has maintained its basic structure since season 2 while also adding new wrinkles to the game every season. Some notable twists the show has toyed with in the past include the Battle of the Block, the BB App Store, and the High Rollers Room, just to name a few.
Few of the twists the show has introduced have had the staying power of the Double Eviction. The Double Eviction was introduced in season 5 and cemented its most well-known format later on in season 7. With a few notable exceptions, the Double Eviction usually occurs on eviction night, when, following a normal week of gameplay, one player is evicted. Then, Big Brother host Julie Chen-Moonves announces that a week's worth of game will be played before the live eviction show ends, resulting in a second player being evicted.
Big Brother 24's Double Eviction took a very different path than the usual format. The unprecedented twist saw the house divided into two groups following the HOH competition and a schoolyard pick. One group ("Big Brochella") remained in the house, while the other ("Dyre Fest") was forced to live outside in the backyard. Each group played simultaneous weeks of Big Brother without having any contact with the other group, leading to two separate evictions on the live episode. The positive outcomes of this twist are that it has further complicated the alliance structures in the game. Instead of The Leftovers alliance dominating the rest of the season, the group has splintered into two warring factions, which could lead to some compelling back-and-forth gameplay if one side doesn't end up winning every competition.
On the negative side, however, the twist was borderline disastrous from a production standpoint. The biggest issue came with the rumored presence of a "wall yeller," a fan who attempted to influence the game by yelling to the Dyre Fest contestants from just outside the Big Brother house on the production's lot in Studio City. Wall yellers are a fairly common occurrence in Big Brother seasons, but the Dyre Fest players constantly being outside, coupled with some fans' vitriol toward Dyre Fest player Kyle Capener, is speculated to have led to a wall yeller disrupting BB24's production. The live feeds of the backyard were inaccessible for days, causing a fair amount of backlash from avid fans who were left in the dark about the strategy going on in Dyre Fest. Additionally, the new Double Eviction format jettisoned much of the excitement about traditional Double Evictions, which are usually thrilling and unpredictable. The house split instead just presented a prolonged, inevitable series of evictions that were solidified early in the week.
As a novelty, the split house twist was interesting, but ultimately, it didn't provide enough value to be worth the trouble for production. The production issues led to several days of frustration for fans, and there wasn't enough excitement to justify all the issues that accompanied it. It could come back in a different incarnation in future seasons, but it would be surprising if the twist returned in its current form any time soon.
Big Brother airs Sundays and Wednesdays at 8 p.m. EDT and Thursdays at 9 p.m. EDT on CBS.