What’s Next for MrBeast? Class Consciousness.

In the eighth episode of the reality competition show “Beast Games,” released last week, the YouTube superstar MrBeast — the show’s host, co-executive producer and mischief-maker-in-chief — asked the 10 remaining contestants to choose their share of a $1 million split.

By this stage of “Beast Games,” which streams on Amazon Prime Video, there was a surprising amount of good will and trust among the players, who are all competing to be the lone winner of a $5 million prize in next week’s finale, the largest amount ever given away on television.

The money was presented in a preposterous stack of bills, an almost cartoonlike array. The first contestant took one-tenth. The second took a little more. The third contestant to stake a claim was J.C., a man with a sob-story background who had previously appeared to be beyond ethical reproach. But the combination of quite reasonable greed and quite tragic desperation led him to take $650,000 for himself, leaving barely anything for the remaining players, to their collective repugnance.

The subsequent shots of J.C., alone in his bunk, weeping and surrounded by duffel bags of cash, was the first truly affecting note of this season. He was a villain, but a completely reasonable one. Resources are scarce, competition is everywhere — all you can do is grab what’s in front of you.

Typically, the YouTube videos for which MrBeast, born Jimmy Donaldson, is known steer clear of such psychic weight. He is 26, and has been the dominant star on YouTube for several years now, with 357 million subscribers. His stunt videos, in which people are prompted to do extreme tasks for money, are often viewed hundreds of millions of times.