Here we are folks. This is the final weekend of the 2020 season. Its Grand Finals time. Four teams remain in the final bracket. Two of them will face off in a grand finals match. One of them will be our 2020 OWL champion.
Let’s get right into it!
The End of the Story Lines
In my previous post about the playoffs I talked about various story lines for teams that formed over the course of the season or the playoffs. All of them have now come to a end.
More specifically the following four teams made it to the Grand Finals weekend:
- Seoul Dynasty
- San Francisco Shock
- Philadelphia Fusion
- Shanghai Dragons
I am going to talk about them in the order that they were eliminated in.
Philadelphia Fusion
The Fusion were by far the weakest team in the grand finals weekend. That sounds like quite the strange thing to say considering their season record and performance but when it came to facing their competitors in the grand finals weekend, they seemed completely outclasses and outmatched. They faced the Shanghai Dragons in the winners bracket which they lost 3-0, then they moved down to the losers bracket to face the Seoul Dynasty where they again lost 3-0 and were eliminated.
This is quite frankly quite a sad way for the Fusion to end their season. It felt like the excellent performance throughout the season was almost for nothing. This is of course not the first time something like this happened to the Fusion, they have come close before and every time the championship title has eluded them.
That said, if I was a Fusion fan I think there is a lot to look back on positively, the 2020 regular season was a stellar one for them and the team’s roster is the strongest they have ever been. I am curious as to what roster changes they will be making in the off season if any.
Shanghai Dragons
The elimination of the Dragons before the grand finals match is the one that made me the saddest. Their first series against the Philadelphia Fusion showed their dominance in a way that was perhaps a false sense of security for fans like myself, with a 3-0 victory behind their back they faced the San Francisco Shock in the winners bracket and lost 3-2.
The first signs of worry from me began at this point. Down into the losers bracket, they then faced the dark horse of this weekend, the Seoul Dynasty. Yet again, they lost in a close 3-2 series and were eliminated.
The look on the faces of the Dragons players after that loss was heartbreaking. To have come so close, yet so far has got to be painful. Either of these 3-2 series could have gone the other way but here we are.
As a Dragons fan, while I am sad they are not the 2020 champions, I am happy about the excellent season they had. Perhaps next year.
Seoul Dynasty
The Dynasty were the dark horse team this weekend. Before going into this I was predicting that they would be eliminated early but they surprised us all. After initially losing their match to the San Francisco Shock in a close 3-2 they moved down to the losers bracket. There they demolished the Philadelphia Fusion with a 3-0 and then moved forward to face the Dragons. The series with the Dragons was a close one but ultimately they won the series 3-2 and moved to face the San Francisco Shock in the finals.
After the Dragons were eliminated, I was cheering on the Dynasty to become the 2020 OWL champions, it was a fairly close series but the Dynasty lost to the Shock 4-2. This was by the far the best season overall for the Dynasty and I am happy to see the improvement after the disappointing performance from the last two seasons. Here’s hoping the 2021 season is even better for them.
San Francisco Shock
The Shock are our 2020 OWL Champions. This year they did not even make a run through the losers bracket, they just won all their matches in the winners bracket in the grand finals weekend. Their competitors, the Dynasty and the Dragons proved to be worthy opponents and the series were not stomps but ultimately the Shock proved to be the best Overwatch team in the world.
This is the first time a OWL team has won the championship title back to back. I am really really curious what is going to happen in the off season with this team and if any players become free agents and leave the team. I’m sure there are going to be some bidding wars for any players on this team that become free agents.
Until Next Time
That is it from me this time around. I have very much enjoyed writing these posts every week from the 2020 OWL season and I am looking forward to writing these again in 2021. There may be another large post with a retrospective on the 2020 season but that is not a given, I want to turn my writing focus onto other things for now.
For now I will leave you with further reading that you will find interesting:
- Grand Finals Film Room Pt. 1: Breaking Down the Meta by Luke Beggs
- Shock Win 2020 Championship, Establish a Dynasty of Their Own by Emerald Gao
- After Long Road Back, Seoul Stopped Just Short of Grand Finals Triumph by Bonnie Qu
- Overwatch League 2020 offseason trade tracker by Liz Richardson
See y’all in 2021!