It's been 18 years since Aviv Melmed was last seen on The Challenge, delivering one of the best rookie seasons of all time on 2006's Fresh Meat.

Partnered with Darrell Taylor, Aviv dominated challenge after challenge. And thanks to her puzzle skills, the pair easily won the season, getting Darrell his fourth championship in a row (a record that still has not been broken) and cementing Aviv as one of the best rookies to ever play the game. But in a shocking twist, Aviv disappeared from the franchise after that.

Now she's finally back for season 40's epic Battle of the Eras, her first appearance since her legendary win, so Entertainment Weekly caught up with the old school champ to find out why it's taken so long to see her return. Below, Aviv tells EW that she wanted to prove that she wasn't as "boring" as the Fresh Meat edit made her seem, and she teases how season 40 went for her after almost two decades away.

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: To be honest, I can’t believe that we're talking about your return to The Challenge after 18 years. I never thought that would happen.

AVIV MELMED: It's crazy.

You might hold the record for the longest time in between seasons.

I think it's the longest. I know, I've had three lives.

Why didn't you return after winning your rookie season?

I think I got one availability call and then I never got called back, until I missed [one] like in 2021 when they started All Stars. They had reached out via Facebook Messenger, it was like the middle of COVID, and I don't really check Facebook Messenger anyway, but nor was I expecting it after, I guess it would've been 15 years at that point. After a couple years of not hearing and knowing that some of my fellow cast members had been returning, I just went on with life because I was like, "Well, I have to work and I have to make money and I have a college degree and a master's and I should be doing life." So that's mostly the reason why I didn't come back.

I am shocked to hear that you weren't invited back for every season after winning because your rookie performance was one of the best of all time.

Thank you. It feels like it's changed a little bit. Back then I was very quiet. I was very nervous about what the response was going to be. I thought I was going to go to med school and I didn't know much about reality TV or what the edit was going to look like, and I was worried about how that may negatively impact my life — which feels a bit silly now. Smart, but silly. So I didn't talk very much. I was also a rookie on a season where it was all alumni who were very vocal and very loud and very much had their own relationships, and part of the game and my strategy at that point was to lay low because Darrell had that piece handled. As long as I didn't piss people off, I should be in a better spot.

I do remember being upset that I won [and wasn't invited back] — I didn't understand how I could have done well and still not been called back, even if the feeling was that I was sort of boring, which, no one ever said to me, but that's sort of what the edit was. I was like, "I'm so cool and so fun and none of that showed." I think that they were more focused on people that made better TV. At the time it wasn't like it is now where the athleticism or the puzzle smarts and that kind of stuff is looked upon a different way now and embraced differently, not only by MTV, but also by fans.

Maybe you debuted in the wrong era.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see even after this [season]. This is definitely something that came out of the blue. Never in a million years did I think, especially at this point in my life: I am 40 years old, I have two kids, I've had multiple careers — I pretty much established my life. I definitely still stayed physically [fit]. I've always done races and stayed into physical fitness. My master's is in exercise physiology, so luckily from that perspective, I'm still in shape, because I didn't really have a lot of notice for this, and I didn't have time to train, and I wouldn't have even known how to train because it's changed so much.

You said that you had gotten a call for one other season. Do you remember what season that was?

I don't. It was within probably the first year and it was an availability call, so it probably would've been The Ruins or something of that nature that was one or two seasons after my show. I never got that far in casting and then that was it. So I was like, "Well, that was a fun part of my life."

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So when you did finally get the call for season 40, what made you say yes after all these years?

I'm such a person that loves the unknown and challenges in life. If I'm like, "Oh, this is crazy and I probably shouldn't," then I'm going to. Also just having just turned 40, having been in the corporate world for so long in that hamster wheel, I found myself on Zoom calls all day working crazy hours, I was sick of it. I was like, "This is not me. I'm sick of it and I'm ready to do something for myself." Weirdly, the timing of all of that lined up with this random opportunity that was coming back in my life. I didn't really understand why, and I still don't understand why, but I was like, "This is amazing and fun. And because I don't understand why and it sounds like fun, I have to do it." So I'm glad I did.

I'm also glad you did because you're one of the most anticipated returns this season.

[Laughs] Well, probably for half of you. The other half is like, "Who is Aviv? Why don't I know who she is?" I love that though.

Since you didn't have much notice, what kind of training or preparation did you do?

I actually got the formal call 10 days before we left for Vietnam, which is, I know, insane. I know. "Bye-bye family. Good luck husband." I was able to watch one season, because they're so long now, mostly just to try to understand what the games were and maybe some of the people, analyze it a little bit as an adult. I don't think we had trivia back then. It wasn't a thing, and it's clearly a thing now that TJ's very fond of. And then I had been running some races locally from a training perspective anyway, so I feel like from an endurance standpoint [I was okay]. Now they do 3D puzzles, which is a whole other level, which is so much pressure for someone who's supposed to be good at puzzles, because I clearly need to work on some of my 3D skills.

But you never know with anything, honestly, because even the athletic stuff, I have endurance and these people don't, but it's the most random assortment of stuff. You can train but you can't really train. You just don't know what's going to be thrown at you. And the older you get, the more likely you're going to get injured when someone is like, "Go do this thing that you've never done before and you haven't trained your muscles for, but good luck."

I got there and I was like, "What the f--- am I doing?" But it was awesome. I'm all about having experiences in life and I think the older that I'm getting, it sometimes feels like with two kids and work and life that you don't have as much opportunity. So having the opportunity to go do something like this, it felt like I couldn't say no, and I had a wonderful time.

In the launch special, your Fresh Meat partner Darrell said he was shocked to see you. Did you two not talk before filming began?

I found out so late in the game that I didn't even really know who was coming or what was happening. I was really nervous. I was very quiet about it. Most of the people that were going didn't know me. I ended up telling him two days before. I just was uneasy about telling people because I don't want to ruin my chances. It was more fun that way because I was like, "I'll see you in two days."

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What has your relationship been like with him since you won together 18 years ago?

We kept in touch a little bit at the beginning and we just lost touch. It's been 18 years. We still always were friends on social media and we would see each other's posts like his kids, my kids, and we always liked each other's stuff, but we hadn't really talked until I reconnected with Derrick Kosinski, who wanted me on his podcast for Challenge Mania. After talking on the podcast and finding out about All Stars, because I didn't really know about All Stars, they were having something where Darrell was going to Seattle and I ended up going and surprising him and it was really cool moment. After that we kept in touch again and we just reconnected, which was fun.

What was it like competing on separate teams this season?

I never felt that we were on separate teams. I'm closer to Era 1. Those were all the people that were on my season, and since I didn't do any other seasons, I was like, "I should be on Era 1. This is a mistake." I didn't know any of these people in Era 2, except for Ryan who was on Fresh Meat as well. I knew it would probably come to it at some point where we couldn't work together, but usually the beginning you can still work with a lot of people. I thought, "This is someone I can trust and this is someone that knows that he can trust me." And Darrell was Darrell, even 20 years later, he was still quiet and just focused on the game and I think for the most part I had the same mentality. We were still who we were then, just 20 years later.

You stayed out of the drama and were really under the radar in your first season. Did you come into this season with the goal of doing the opposite? Or did you still plan to play under the radar?

I didn't want to get into the drama. I just wanted people to know that I have a personality. What upset me most about the edit that I had — and it wasn't necessarily even the edit because I really did stay away from everything on purpose — it's just this time, I don't care, I am not going to med school. And if I was going to med school, who cares? This is who I am. Being an adult, you just don't care anymore. That's really freeing. I'm not worried about getting a job, I can just be who I am. I really just felt disappointed, like I never had the opportunity to show my personality at all. This time I was just like, "Have fun. Just be yourself and don't be afraid to talk. You don't have to go and badmouth. You don't have to cause drama."

But it was almost like I was afraid of the camera my first season. And it's still really weird to go back and be on camera. You have to let go of always thinking about what it's going to look like and you have to find a balance of being in the moment. Obviously I wasn't going to do anything crazy that I would regret or would ruin my life, hopefully. But the big thing is I was like, "I just want to be me this time."

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What can you tease about how this season goes for you?

I knew going into it that one of my biggest obstacles was going to be the fact that [my team has] not played with me, they don't know me. And I knew that especially my team had a lot of very strong women and previous champions, so I knew I was going to have the disadvantage of people not feeling bad throwing me in. I knew I had to make friends quickly. And I also needed to observe because I knew it was like, "Play with everyone, trust no one," kind of thing until you get to a point where you have to make your alliance. Overall it worked out well for me. It was pretty natural for me. And I think it helped me a lot because there's vendettas and things like that, so if people liked me enough or they hated someone else more than me, that was an ideal situation that would allow me to ride it out until I did start to have real relationships and real alliances.

Yeah, there is quite a lot of bad blood on this cast. Especially on your team.

I was like, "This is f---ing great. You slept with this person, but then she slept with this person and you did this to this person. Wow." The problem was I didn't know any of the history so as things were happening, I'm like, "Oh, that's interesting." I'm learning as I go, but I'm not letting people know that I really have no idea and just taking it all in. That was a really fun part. I was like, "What happened 10 years ago? Wow, you're still mad about that? Do you have a therapist? Tell me more."

What shocked you the most about how The Challenge has changed since you were last on?

There was more production involved. When we did our shows back in the day, it wasn't as organized. It was kind of like, "Here are the cameras. Go." This is a lot more organized. There's a lot more pieces to production. It seemed a lot more corporate. Obviously there's a ton of liability with taking a bunch of crazy people in a house and alcohol and whatever else is involved — just their personalities alone being next to each other is probably liability in itself. And then the games themselves, it was hard. It was really hard.

Could we see you return for more seasons after this?

Ask MTV. That's a question for them. I hope so.

The Challenge: Battle of the Eras premieres Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on MTV.