MTVAfter last season's The Real World experiment—when MTV decided to employ a twist for the first time since the show's inception 29 years earlier—the reality show is throwing its seven new cast members a curve ball when season 30 heads to Chicago for The Real World: Skeletons.
Except this time, instead of bringing each of the cast members' exes to live in the house for the entire season, The Real World is taking things one step further and bringing the absolute last person each roommate wants to see and having them live in the loft anywhere for a few days up to a whole week. That means exes, ex-BFFs, estranged family members and much, much more are all fair game.
So why did the MTV reality show decide to employ another twist instead of going back to the original formula for the milestone 30th season?
"The twist just makes the show all the more watchable, and it adds a depth of storytelling so it's not just about the roommates getting along," Real World creator Jon Murray tells E! Online. " It's actually forcing them to deal with aspects of their life they may have walked away from or didn't want to deal with. In most cases, dealing with that will ultimately make them better human being."
While the twist does add a new layer of drama to the show, Murray promises that it is still the same Real World that viewers have come to love over the past few decades.
"The exciting thing about this twist is that it gives you another reason to watch the show in addition to it still being the core DNA of the original show," Murray says. "It's still seven young people from diverse backgrounds moving in together, but now we have this story engine because we have this outside element that's coming into the house."
But that doesn't mean the original version of the show is dead and gone forever.
"We certainly could [go back to a season without a twist], but we're taking it one season at a time," Murray says. "We like to see how the viewers react the twists and then we'll see what we'll do. We still have a pretty long list of interesting ideas for future seasons so we gauge how the audience reacts and then we'll chart our course for the next season."
In fact, watching how the audience reacted to Ex-Plosion helped create this season's Skeletons twist.
"Skeletons was derived from an option from last season," Murray reveals. "When we decided to add in a twist to the 29th season, we came up with a whole list of options. After Real World: Ex-Plosion did so well and was so well-received, we went back to our list for season 30 and something on that list grew into being this Skeletons concept."
Murray's favorite part of Skeletons? The fact that the drama is going to continue all season long, instead of in one big episode in the middle of the season.
"What I love about Skeletons is that the skeletons arrive not all together, but episode after episode," Murray says. "They just keep coming in waves, so it's like attack of the zombies."
But what he's most excited for viewers to see is one particular cast member's skeleton's arrival.
"We're going to build to a really powerful episode later in the season where one cast member not only finds out that a hookup of his is having his baby, but also growing up he didn't have a father because his father left his life when he was just a baby, so unknowing to him we were able to work with his mom and Jason's skeleton turns out to be his father who shows up at the door," Murray says. "It's such a timely issue for him because his father is someone he's been wanting to meet for years but also because this person is going to be the grandfather to his child. It's an amazing episode."
Real World: Skeletons premieres tonight at 10 p.m. on MTV.