How Is ‘The Masked Singer’ Going to Work For the Rest of the Season?
NBC Reading Time: 3 minutes
The Masked Singer has been a big success for FOX so far, but now that we’ve “met” all 12 contestants, how will the show prevent the novelty from wearing off?
The Masked Singer is a uncommon entity in the reality talent genre in that it’s a show that’s very much about the journey rather than the destination. The main appeal of the program isn’t finding out who wins, but finding out who the celebrity under each mask is. So once that element is gone, the show is as good as dead.
It’s looking like some fans may already be onto some good leads as to who the remaining 10 mystery singers are, so the show is going to have to make it more difficult, and possibly throw people off the trail a bit. Showrunner Izzie Pick Ibarra spoke with The Wrap about what we can expect from the clues in future episodes.
“[…] one of the great things about the show when we were taping it was everybody was so convinced that they knew who somebody was — on the panel and the production crew as well — they’d go, ‘Oh, we all know who it is.’ And then a whole load of new clues come in and suddenly it throws your first guess completely out the window for somebody. […] We can’t just have the panel sit there and give clues in the first two shows and then expect everybody to stay engaged throughout the series,” she said. “So, you know, we had additional ways of giving clues. For example, in one of the episodes, the singers brought an object onto the stage from home that was a clue as to who they might be. So we were doing different things as we went along, adding new stuff all the time.”
She also explained how the format of the show will work in the coming weeks, which is something a lot of fans have been wondering about. Doing the math we have 10 contestants left as we go into the third episode tomorrow. An hour-long show doesn’t have room for five battles, but if the show were to split the singers in half and do battles that way again, someone from each group would be left out. So how did they decide to handle it?
“Basically, the show moving forward you’ll see Group A again [the contestants from the premiere] in Show 3 and they will — essentially we give you a whole load of new clues. They will perform individually, and the panel and the studio audience vote and the person that was not everybody’s favorite — the worst singer of that night, the worst performer of the night — will go home and be unmasked. And that format will follow on until the seventh show and on Show 7 we combine the cast essentially for the first time. So you’ll be down to six singers in Show 7 and they’ll be the remaining six from the series.”
The Masked Singer returns for its third episode Wednesday at 8/7 c on FOX.
