Warning! The following contains spoilers for The Masked Singer. Read at your own risk!
After a couple weeks away due to baseball, The Masked Singer returned with a vengeance in a two-hour extravaganza. There was singing, lots of clues, and not one, but two eliminations. The first ended up being Penguin, who turned out to be actress Sherri Shepherd. The other was Black Widow, who was the person we always suspected: Raven-Symoné. It wasn't Symoné's elimination that was most shocking, but the fact that she was eliminated at all.
To be blunt, I'm a bit suspicious. While she may not be a professional singer, Raven-Symoné was one of the better singers in the competition, and certainly not the worst singer of her episode. That honor belonged to The Leopard, who has continued to slide by week to week despite consistently giving some performances that, while spirited, sound less than impressive. Yet at the end of this week the audience chose him to stay again, and Black Widow was out the door?
It all feels rather convenient, especially given that Raven-Symoné was performing with a broken arm. The incident happened after the first performance on The Masked Singer, which means she had two more performances as Black Widow before her elimination. Is it possible Symoné did the second performance, realized it was too hard with the broken arm, and then requested the producers find a way to take her out of the competition after the next performance?
I have no proof one way or another, but I do know that Black Widow performed better than Leopard. The audience should be voting for the performers who can actually sing, and I'd like to assume a majority of them are. It just doesn't add up that, if a majority of the audience is voting on musical ability, Black Widow would be eliminated. Her performance tonight was middle of the pack at worst!
Of course, this wouldn't be the first time audience voting has led to questionable decision-making. The audience vote has taken out many hopeful and exceptionally talented singers on other shows, so it's not crazy to believe the same thing could happen on The Masked Singer. It wouldn't even be that suspicious if it weren't for the broken arm, though maybe Raven would've gone to the finals in a cast if given the opportunity.
The bottom line is, we really have no way of knowing. The Masked Singer doesn't share its audience voting statistics, so really, producers can eliminate whoever they want. They may be doing the whole thing legit, and again, I have no evidence to claim otherwise, but it'd be nice to see the numbers on how close this elimination was.
It's also worth noting this isn't the only time The Masked Singer has done something slightly suspect in the competition. Season 1 featured a performance by The Unicorn that was heavily auto-tuned to improve the performance. The luxury was not afforded to other contestants that night, and resulted in her advancing while another singer who sang legit went home. Sure, The Masked Singer is more about the mystery than the competition, but perhaps the show needs to tighten up on rules to make the competition more legitimate?
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The Masked Singer airs Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET. Stick with CinemaBlend for more on the season, and for the latest news happening in movies and television.
