Big Brother 26, Finale Review- And Then There Was One

The Big Brother journey for Cam, Chelsie, and Makensy ended on Sunday night as the winner of BB26 was crowned. With three parts of an HOH Competition and much more left to determine the winner, the final three duked it out and spilled their guts about their games to ensure they would receive the confetti and the $750k prize. On one of the most exciting nights in television, the entire cast was back in the studio to celebrate, reminisce, and crown a winner.

The Final 3 Battle for Control

Part 1- Big Brother 16 winner Derrick Levasseur interrupted the Final 3's dinner to kick off the final HOH Competition of the season. Derrick requested the houseguests' help by ending Ainsley's reign of terror by shutting down her power. This entailed Cam, Chelsie, and Makensy enduring goo, spinning, and tilting during an endurance competition. Makensy was quick to fall, lasting just 26 minutes before Cam eventually fell 11 minutes later to help Chelsie earn the win, ensuring her spot in Part 3 of the competition.

Part 2- Instead of another competition surrounding their days in the house, Cam and Makensy went head-to-head in a competition to destroy Ainsley's brain by completing a set of puzzles. The first required them to navigate a spinning puzzle to retrieve three pieces, while the second saw them connect wires of varying lengths. Makensy made quick work of the maze, finishing before Cam secured his second piece. She then solved the wires to win the competition and set up a battle with Chelsie in Part 3.

Part 3- It was only fitting that Chelsie and Makensy, the season's ultimate competition beasts, met in the final part of the competition. The two most likely players to win the season duked it out by trying to discern which statement about the jurors was incorrect. Through five rounds of constant talking and guessing, the two were tied at five before Rubina's question closed it out. In answering the question, Chelsie second-guessed herself and changed her answer. When they showed their cards, Chelsie and Makensy had chosen differently. The answer change proved costly as Chelsie swapped out the correct answer for a wrong one, handing Makensy the final competition win of the season.

Thoughts on the Final Eviction of the Season

At this moment we all knew who the winner of Big Brother 26 would be. With the final eviction vote of the season, Makensy chose to bring Chelsie to the end with her, almost completely killing her chances of winning the game. Cam took it in stride, though he acknowledged that Makensy made the wrong decision. I also appreciated his candor in saying he would've cut Makensy had he won Part 3. 

Despite his physical presence, Cam couldn't win competitions. He won a veto to take himself off the block, but he was a classic example of "always a bridesmaid, never a bride" when it came to competitions. He couldn't win when it mattered, which put his game in everyone else's hands. Fortunately, he got in good with two competition beasts, allowing him to make it to the Final 3. He called playing Big Brother a humbling experience, which proves that even the biggest dogs in the crib have their days.

Bring in the Jury

The jury plays three big parts in finale night. First, there's the jury roundtable, headed by Big Brother 24 winner Taylor Hale. Along with the reveal of Rubina as the fourth-place finisher, the six jurors sat down and discussed the merits of the Final 3. The edit did a good job of making it seem like people were undecided, giving Cam his flowers for being able to adapt to never winning competitions. If anything, they tried to cast doubt on Chelsie's win by having Angela talk about her lack of jury management. Quinn was the most outspoken detractor of Makensy's game, especially her "decision" to evict Leah during her HOH. He wanted Makensy to own up to her decisions.

Next, the jury questions the finalists, giving them a platform to lay out their games and why they should win. Outside of waffling with the first question, Chelsie mopped the floor with Makensy. The moment that cemented Chelsie's win was her response to T'kor's question. She dissected her own game by pointing out week after week of her manipulating the people in charge to do her bidding, citing Makensy using the veto on Angela to get Quinn out of the game and using Makensy's HOH to get Leah out. It also didn't help Makensy's case when she said that getting Leah out was her best move for her own game when it clearly wasn't. 

Lastly, they cast the votes to determine the winner. While no one outright stated who they were voting for when they stepped up, it was almost set from the moment they stepped on the stage and Cam was revealed as the final juror. The only real question marks on the jury were Leah and Angela, which still would've only been two votes when four were needed to win. Instead of who would win, it was more a question of whether the vote would be unanimous.

The Pre-Jurors Join the Fun

The liveliest segment of the night was when the rest of the houseguests came out. The star of the segment was Tucker, who was in the middle of quite a bit. He acknowledged that he was wrong for lashing out at Tucker after a veto ceremony early in the season. He had flowers for Rubina and seemed genuinely excited to pursue a relationship with her. He was revealed to be the AI Instigator while trying to justify why he used Quinn's avatar to out his and Rubina's relationship to the rest of the house. It fit perfectly with how large his personality was on the show.

There was a lot of apologizing, too. Along with Tucker's apology to Cedric, we got a segment regarding Brooklyn's charcuterie theft. Bog Brother came with the receipts, showing that the entire house joined in on the meat and cheese consumption while Angela was a have-not for the week. Angela also received an apology from Matt, albeit an incredibly awkward one. I had to watch Angela and Matt interact through my fingers, shielding myself from the unbearable levels of cringe. The awkwardness was only ramped up when turning to Matt and Makensy's future, to which Makensy pointed out that he was in the house for ten days before being evicted. If I never see Matt on Big Brother again, I'll be a happy human.

Did the Jury Get It Right?

The writing has been written on the wall for weeks, but it was finally confirmed on Sunday. Chelsie was the frontrunner for most of the jury phase and hammered it home by becoming the first woman to win unanimously and only the fourth ever in BBUS history. She's also the third winner to win unanimously without earning a vote to evict, Chelsie is the perfect person to represent this season. She was the most dynamic player in the house, a fact that she pointed out many times during her speeches. The way she navigated the game was incredible. She won competitions when she needed to, but didn't have to rely on them to ensure her victory. Chelsie earned every bit of this victory and that it was unanimous was the icing on the cake.

Did America Get It Right?

The last piece of business at the end of the night was crowning America's Favorite Player, an honor bestowed to one of the 16 by the American people. Julie revealed the Top 3 to be Tucker, a casual favorite, Angela, Twitter's favorite, and Quinn, a deserving third candidate. The gap between the three finalists was probably large, but the right man won. Even if I didn't always see eye-to-eye with Tucker, he was the right man to win the $50k prize, upping his total to $70k after his AI Instigator work. He was a main character during his entire stay, becoming the first pre-juror to win the honor, though he would've been a juror with a nine-person voting body. It was the cherry on top of an incredible season overall.