Dance Monsters Finale: Who is the Winner of the Quarter Million Dollars Prize Fund?

Dance Monsters Finale concluded the run of Netflix’s latest unique reality dance competition on December 30, 2022. With all eight episodes now out, the finalists put on their dancing shoes for the last battle, with only one of them taking $25,000 home.

Lime Pictures and Netflix have collaboratively come out with a fresh take on a dance contest, with creative director Jerry Reeve, series editor Iain Peckham and executive producers Sarah Tyekiff, Andrew Jackman and Tamsin Dodgson. Hosted by Ashley Roberts, the show welcomes Ashley Banjo, Lele Pons and Ne-Yo as the three judges.

Netflix describes the reality show as follows:

In this feel-good competition, amateur dancers disguised as motion capture monsters bring their best moves, hoping to win $250,000 – and a second shot at their dreams.

We’ve always witnessed dance competitions before, but this one has a twist. Coming out as a CGI avatar, donning the persona of a monster, contestants get a clean slate to prove themselves and reach the sky for their dreams. The judges see nothing but the dancing but the awestruck and tech-inspired disguise in front of them, while back stage, the real person does the actual job of channeling their inner dance monster.

Using state of the art technology, the show allows the contestants to keep their identities hidden as they adopt a monster alias for their on-stage character. All of their real identities are only outed to the audience after the particular performer has been eliminated. So, how does the reality series achieve this task of keeping the real faces under wraps? By putting on motion capture sensors on the real people. As soon as they start dancing, or even make a single intricate move, it’s captured by the technology and is mirrored by the CGI monster on a screen.

Dance Monsters Finale: The Four Remaining Finalists

The last episode applauds the final four contestants left standing in the competition – Marsha, Grummy, Hammer and Chester. All four monsters give their all to score their place in the final dance off. The first performance is put on by Marsha, dancing to I’m So Excited by The Point Sisters, followed by Grummy breaking it down to Backstreet Boys’ Larger Than Life, then came in Hammer with an immersive routine on Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande’s Rain On Me, and finally, Chester impressed everyone while dancing their heart out to Human by The Killers.

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After the routines are all wrapped up, the three judges have to make the tough decision of eliminating two of them, while sending off the others to the final face-off. They appreciate everyone’s evolving hard work throughout the course of the competition and applaud Chester as the one having the best development of all, while Marsha is picked as the collective favourite, having delivered her best performance to date, Hammer is named as the most consistent performer and Grummy as the most entertaining one out there.

As the announcement is made, Chester is the first one to stay, and he’s joined by Grummy for the final moments. However, the journey ends for both Marsha and Hammer. The real person behind Marsha’s avatar is revealed to be Taryn, while Hammer relays his true name to be Harvey.

The final two are brought back for the last performance of the event. With Bang Bang by Ariana Grande, Jessie J, and Nicki Minaj blaring loud, Chester and Grummy dance beside each other and the judges catch the vision to evaluate them side by side.

Who is the Dance Monsters Winner?

Right after the performance, the judges dive into another heated discussion in order to pick the ultimate champion. Grummy comes out on top and eventually both his as well as Chester’s real identities are revealed. The former’s actual name is Chris and the latter is Tyler. And with that the one-of-a-kind dancing competition comes to an end with Chris aka the animated mummy avatar of Grummy takes away the prize of a quarter million dollars while having established his name in this new chapter of his life that has everything to do with dance, dance and dance!

All eight episodes of Dance Monsters are now streaming on Netflix.

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