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The London Spitfire have secured the first ever Overwatch League championship, with a devastating 3-0 victory over the Philadelphia Fusion securing a 2-0 win in the best-of-three series in front of a sold out Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Having claimed the Stage 1 champions earlier in the season, many had written the Spitfire off following some average efforts across the third and fourth stages. A crushing defeat to the Los Angeles Gladiators in Game 1 of their quarterfinal looked to be the final nail, but they flicked the switch from there to storm through the opposition and claim the $1 million (USD) cash prize.
Their opponents can hold their head high after making the grand final from the lowest seed but, in the end, the gulf in class between the gallant contenders and their world class opponents showed.
After a day to forget yesterday in the first match of the best-of-three, Philadelphia needed a strong result on bogey map Junkertown to get themselves back in the series. They had surprising success running what can only be described as a budget pirate ship on the first point – with just Orisa on the payload to protect the Bastion.
A very risky resurrection by neptuNo’s (Alberto Gonzalez) Mercy on Boombox’s (Isaac Charles) Bastion paid off, with the subsequent configuration: tank ultimate helping the Fusion take the first point in good time.
They were stalled on the second point initially after Fury (Jun-ho Kim) and Gesture (Jan-hee Hong) combined D.Va’s ultimate with Orisa’s halt to net some kills, but the Spitfire were pushing too far in a surprisingly aggressive defence and were punished for it.
After losing the first team fight, Philadelphia needed a very strong second push to regain the ascendancy on a notoriously difficult final point, but instead found themselves wiped out by an incredible quintuple kill by Profit (Joon-yeong Park) using Hanzo’s ultimate – aided by a scintillating halt by Gesture’s Orisa.
That match-altering dragonstrike was enough London needed to keep the payload at roughly a third of the way to the final point.
On attack, they battled hard against a spirited defence to take the first point in similar time, but some overcommitment to the first point hold by Philly compromised the crucial high ground defensive area on the second point.
They recovered initially after a stunning triple-kill with D.Va’s self destruct by Poko (Gael Gouzerch), only for another devastating Hanzo ultimate by Profit to swing the momentum right back in the attackers’ favour.
From there, London were able to clear through a somewhat poor final line of defence by the Fusion – with EQO (Josh Corona) as Hanzo not electing to contest the payload at the death – to claim the 3-2 win in Map 1.
With the wind at their backs, the Stage 1 champions turned the screw on Lijiang Tower with a brutally easy 100-0 victory on Night Market. Gesture (Jan-hee Hong) gave Winston mains everywhere a lesson in how to use the character, hassling and distracting two of Philadelphia’s supports and a sniper for a tonne of time, allowing the rest of his team to pick off the shorthanded attackers.
They routinely punished the aggressive tanks of the Fusion, while the sixth-seeded team found themselves too distracted by the teamfight to contest the point in the end, capping off a horror loss.
It didn’t get much better for the American side on Garden, with two early picks by birdring (Ji-hyuk Kim) setting up an easy early capture for London who, incredibly, appeared to find another gear on the second point.
They were focusing Philadelphia’s MVP Carpe (Jae-hyeok Lee) down sublimely, while still getting very easy and early kills on the Fusion tanks. They did briefly lose the point at 99 per cent, but recaptured after Poko left the point following his own self destruct.
Profit smashed the incoming resistance, landing a clutch pulse bomb on Neptuno’s Mercy during Valkyrie before Poko once again bizarrely elected to leave the point at a crucial time, allowing London to wrap up the easy second map victory.
With the championship on the line on King’s Row, Philadelphia put together a very strong push on the first point, with Carpe’s Widowmaker and Boombox’s Roadhog picking the defenders off smartly to secure the payload.
London, however, were able to steady on the second point. Profit was landing kill after kill with Junkrat’s ultimate, but the resistance was eventually snuffed out. Philadelphia dug deep to overcome some spirited defence and, crucially, forced the Spitfire to use up both of their support ultimates just before the second cap.
That gave the attacking team a huge advantage heading for the third point and, although it took overtime, the Fusion picked up all three points for the first time since the first map of Game 1.
In reply, the in-game home team found the rejuvenated Fusion defenders hard to scrape off the point. With EQO’s Hanzo and Carpe’s Widow melting their tanks, the Spitfire pulled off a drastic composition change to get the ball rolling.
A vastly off-meta comp of Lucio, Moira, Zarya, Reinhardt and Brigitte (to go with Fury’s D.Va) paid dividends.
They were able to take the first point easily with the new team and, despite some brief resistance by Carpe as Doomfist, they ended up gliding through the next two points with ease to actually take the third point with a minute and ten in the time bank.
Needing just one tick to wrap up the championship – they did it with ease. Gesture’s newfound proficiency for Reinhardt proving crucial as the Spitfire wrapped up a slice of history – the first ever Overwatch League championship.
For his mastery with just about every hero in the game, Profit was awarded the playoffs MVP.