We've come to the end of the eighth annual SpoilerTV Episode Competition, and as we knew going into the final, we have a brand new winner...
It was "Bellweather Season", the top-ranked seed, which triumphed over fellow Motherland episode "Witchbomb" in a supremely tight final... which would appear to have fallen into the hands of bots. It continues to baffle me as to why some people decide that turning these fun summer competitions - which exist largely to pass the time during the quiet period of TV - into something unnecessarily over-competitive and resort to cheating the system. What's the point? The idea is to get fandoms activated and engaged throughout this time, not to work out who has the best understanding of bots. We will have measures in place to try and prevent this from happening during the Series Competition next month, but suffice it to say it's extremely disappointing to see this competition end on such a sour note this year.
Anyway, Motherland: Fort Salem becomes the sixth different show to win this competition (Lucifer, Timeless, Outlander, Person of Interest and Beauty and the Beast are the others). This is the first time a show has won the competition with a first season episode, a testament to the sudden popularity boom of the show.
A couple of thank yous. First to DarkUFO, who is typically assisting in making this competition run smoothly and who maintains the site on which it runs. But just as important is you, the readers and voters (those who didn't use bots, anyway), without whom this competition couldn't possibly exist. We need involvement to make it happen and you bring that, so thanks to everyone who showed enthusiasm towards voting, sharing, commenting - anything throughout these last few weeks.
This competition is over, but there's still plenty to come. The Character Cup, run brilliantly as ever by Dahne, is on the verge of getting fully underway, so get around that. It's usually the most popular of the competitions we run, so if you want your character to win, you definitely need to get involved and spread the word.
I'll be back in August to run the Series Competition. That's always a very entertaining five weeks as people look to support their favourite shows for the biggest of SpoilerTV's prizes. In the meantime, there's plenty of news and content for the summertime shows here at SpoilerTV and looking ahead to whatever kind of Fall programming we get amidst a global pandemic. I might even write something sometime soon - if I do, you can find that here under my author label. As usual, if you'd like to get in touch with me, my Twitter and email address are below.
For now, though, thanks to everyone who took part, and join us again in 2021.
Full spreadsheet link
