With just seven contestants remaining in MasterChef: Back to Win this season, it is – so the saying goes – business time. The End Game is very much afoot, and the cream is slowly rising to the top.
Winning MasterChef is certainly no mean feat; there’s a good reason why only 11 people have managed to do it previously.
It’s a rare combination of traits that ultimately pushes people to the MasterChef promised land, and it’s not something that form, by itself, can necessarily predict. And so picking who’s gonna win MasterChef this year becomes a process not of selecting the one person who’ll do it, but by first eliminating those that will not by assessing a number of different factors.
And I’m about to do exactly that.
Stay with me on this one.
FINALS EXPERIENCE
It’s a cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason: Those who have gotten agonisingly close to the Holy Grail previously before falling ever-so-short will always have the edge over those who never made it quite that far before.
The final seven is stacked with contestants who, in their original season, finished either second or third. That means they’ve either been to the Final Challenge before, or least know what it takes to get there. They know where they went wrong the last time, and they’ve likely learned from those mistakes. In a one-on-one matchup between someone who has been within a sniff of the Final Challenge before and someone who hasn’t, the championship experience wins out every time.
There are only two contestants remaining who don’t fit that bill. So going by that, we can eliminate both Reece and Reynold.
CALM UNDER PRESSURE
Three rounds of increasing difficulty, including a hectic Pressure Test. The Final Challenge is as much a mental challenge as it is a culinary one. It requires patience, skill, and grace under fire. But most importantly, it heavily favours organised chefs with clear ideas and even clearer plans on how to execute them.
It is not an arena that lends itself to haphazard methodology, poor time management, and forced improvisation. It demands a laser-like focus and a calming inner energy.
This eliminates Poh.
VERSATILITY
The MasterChef end game is not the time to be sticking with the one note that got you this far. It’s a deft dance of fleet feet. The Final Challenge, in particular, requires a massive breadth of knowledge and know-how; demanding chefs extend themselves beyond their specialties.
But frequently it’s a challenge decided by the most perilous of desserts. Notorious dishes so dizzyingly difficult that without a solid dessert base in your arsenal you barely have a hope. Confidence alone can’t get you through it, and time and time again it has broken chefs running Savoury-First Offence throughout the rest of the competition.
Going by that, we can run a line through both Callum and Laura.
FORM
Ultimately, determining a MasterChef winner is a process of looking at all of the above, and running it up against the form line of the remaining chefs. Who’s been producing the most consistent performances across the past handful of weeks? Who seems to be building at just the right time? Who, even in the toughest of Elimination or Mystery Box challenges, remains totally unflappable?
Really, there’s only one person left in the competition who ticks all the previous boxes, while still running a MasterChef-winning form line.
And it’s not Tessa, who we can eliminate here and now.
That leaves Emelia Jackson as your MasterChef: Back to Win champion. That’s who I’m tipping to take the whole thing out.
Not only is Millsy in red hot form at the right end of the competition, but she covers every base needed to dive into the meat grinder-like Final Challenge and emerge with all limbs still intact.
Millsy was second in her initial MasterChef season. She’s been at the end before. She knows wha she needs to do to go one step further. That’s a tick.
Millsy is calm under pressure to an absolute fault. Nothing the show throws at her seems to rattle her that much anymore. If anything, she’s revelling in it. That’s a big tick.
Millsy is not only an absolute fiend on the desserts, but throughout this season she’s flexed her savoury muscles to untold degrees. Many tools in the belt. Versatility out the wazoo. Tick. Tick, tick, tick.
Emelia is who I reckon will win MasterChef: Back to Win. No doubt about it.
