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Luke Dimyan lands in Castle Valley after jumping from a helicopter at roughly 10,000 feet, announces that he thought he might die, then carries on with the cheerful nervousness of someone who has accidentally agreed to the world’s most elaborate team-building exercise. It tells you almost everything about The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls. The danger is carefully managed. The reactions are considerably harder to control.
Across six episodes, Grylls takes actors and creative figures from The Chosen into deserts, forests, rivers and canyons for a mixture of physical challenges and personal conversations. Luke Dimyan, Paras Patel, Elizabeth Tabish, Noah James, Jonathan Roumie and creator Dallas Jenkins each get their turn hiking, rappelling, ziplining or attempting some variation on wilderness survival while discussing faith, family and their work on the Biblical drama.
The format is hardly mysterious. Each episode gives us a route, a handful of obstacles, several pauses for conversation and an extraction point waiting at the end. There are occasional clips from The Chosen and behind-the-scenes material, making the promotional connection impossible to miss. What saves the series from feeling like a six-part publicity feature is how lightly it often wears that purpose.
Luke Dimyan Finds the Formula
The premiere understands something later episodes occasionally forget: the guest has to provide the story. Dimyan arrives admitting that he possesses essentially no survival skills. He worries aloud, names rocks while trying to orient himself and reacts to each new challenge with a useful mixture of fear and curiosity. Grylls gets him parachuting into the desert, searching for scorpions, crossing a ravine by zipline, filtering water through a sock and climbing toward their extraction point.
Then comes the MRE. Grylls tells Dimyan that urine can activate the meal’s heating pack. Dimyan eventually turns his back to the camera and discovers that performing this particular task on command is harder than acting. His observation that he can normally take direction is the funniest line because the show gives it room to land instead of decorating it with unnecessary editing.
The quieter material works for the same reason. Dimyan discusses growing up in a Coptic Egyptian family whose response to his acting ambitions was essentially practical: get paid, stay safe. Their later admission that they were glad to have been wrong gives the conversation emotional weight without requiring a dramatic musical cue to explain it. His reflections on playing Judas also allow faith to enter naturally. Discussing Jesus through ideas of acceptance and generous love feels connected to Dimyan’s life and work, rather than attached to the episode after the fact.
The Structure Starts Showing
A reliable television structure can be comforting. Six repetitions make it visible. Episodes usually begin by establishing the terrain and route before moving through some combination of hiking, heights, improvised food, survival instruction and reflective conversation. Animated maps are a small but useful device, giving the geography enough clarity that the journeys feel shaped rather than assembled from attractive wilderness footage.
The problem is tension. Viewers are repeatedly told that Grylls and his guest need to reach an extraction point, yet the series rarely creates a convincing possibility that they will fail. Rappelling down a cliff may scare the participant, but the editing gives us little reason to fear for the outcome. The spectacle resembles jeopardy while functioning closer to supervised adventure tourism.
Dallas Jenkins’ outing around the Ausable River exposes the limitation. Jenkins calling himself a “rugged indoorsman” gives the episode an obvious comic premise, and his reaction to pickled herring supplies an amusing beat. His stories about his upbringing provide substance too. What never develops is the easy rapport Grylls finds with Dimyan.
That difference matters because the machinery stays nearly identical from episode to episode. Once the route, obstacle and extraction structure becomes familiar, guest chemistry has to produce the variation. Sometimes it does. Sometimes you can practically see the template underneath.
Gentleness Works Better Than Jeopardy
The series becomes considerably stronger whenever everyone stops pretending the wilderness is trying to kill them. Grylls is open about his Christianity, and his guests respond with unusually relaxed conversations about scripture, anxiety, family, fame and spiritual uncertainty.
The questions themselves can be basic. Some exchanges lean heavily on familiar metaphors involving mountains, valleys and perseverance. Grylls occasionally connects a survival lesson to scripture with such determination that one suspects the scorpion never had a chance of remaining merely a scorpion. Still, the sincerity survives.
One of the program’s more distinctive qualities is its willingness to show men discussing fear, tenderness and belief without constructing an emotional collapse around them. Grylls compliments gentleness. Dimyan speaks openly about worrying. Vulnerability exists without becoming another endurance challenge to overcome.
That choice separates the series from harsher celebrity-survival formats, where the entertainment often depends on exhaustion, humiliation or panic. Here, nobody needs to break. The physical challenges create just enough discomfort to loosen conversation while the spectacular Utah formations and Adirondack forests give those exchanges breathing room.
Fans of The Chosen will naturally find extra value in watching familiar performers shed their costumes and reveal the personalities behind Matthew, Mary Magdalene, Andrew, Judas and Jesus. Viewers arriving without that attachment may find the repeated survival structure increasingly thin. By then, the series has already revealed where its real interest lies: not at the cliff edge, but in what people say once they have climbed away from it.
The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls premiered on Prime Video on August 9, 2026. The docuseries follows the cast and creator of the historical drama The Chosen as they join survivalist Bear Grylls for expeditions through rugged landscapes, sharing personal reflections on their lives and faith along the way.
Where to Watch The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls Online
Full Credits
Title: The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls
Distributor: Prime Video
Release date: August 9, 2026
Rating: TV-14
Running time: 60 minutes
Director: Robert Austin Vanover
Producers and Executive Producers: Bear Grylls, Dallas Jenkins, Brad Pelo, Katherine Warnock, Ben Simon, Delbert Shoopman, Ben Mitchell, Rick Murray, Brent Ryan Green, Ryan Swanson, Tyler Thompson
Cast: Bear Grylls, Jonathan Roumie, Paras Patel, Elizabeth Tabish, Noah James, Luke Dimyan, Dallas Jenkins
The Review
The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls
The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls works best when it forgets to manufacture danger and lets its guests talk. Luke Dimyan’s premiere finds the ideal balance of comic discomfort, physical challenge and candid reflection, while later episodes reveal how rigidly the series repeats that design. The obstacles rarely generate real suspense, yet Grylls creates enough space for conversations about faith, anxiety and family to feel sincere. Existing The Chosen fans will get the richest experience. Everyone else may notice the structural seams rather sooner.
PROS
- Excellent Luke Dimyan premiere
- Warm, candid conversations
- Likeable cast chemistry
- Beautiful wilderness photography
- Easygoing episode pacing
CONS
- Repetitive episode structure
- Manufactured sense of danger
- Uneven guest chemistry
- Occasionally simplistic questions
- Heavy reliance on existing fandom
