Warning! The following contains spoilers for The Masked Singer episode "Harry Potter Night." Read at your own risk!
It was a magical night on The Masked Singer as the show celebrated the Harry Potter franchise. There was a sorting hat, some fantastic cosplay, and – depending on who you ask – a potential controversy regarding who deserved to move forward in the smackdown round at the end of the night. Now, following his elimination, the man behind The Hawk, actor Tyler Posey, admitted he had some tension after feeling the victim of an unfair elimination.
Tyler Posey, of MTV's Teen Wolf fame, sat down with CinemaBlend to discuss his time in Season 10 and falling just short to Tiki in the smackdown round. The two contestants performed Lady Gaga's "Monster" in two wildly different styles, with Tiki going for a more traditional take while Posey did more of a rock music take. In the end, the audience advanced Tiki, and Posey confessed he couldn't help but feel a certain kind of way about it:
I felt a little robbed at first. So, there was a little bit of tension on my side just because I was very competitive. I love giving it my all. But then, immediately, that washed away. I was like, ‘What am I doing? This is a fun TV show. There’s no point in being competitive and silly.’ I was able to drop that pretty quickly and acknowledge it and realize I am pretty competitive, I like that nature about myself so it was cool to realize that.
While there was mild tension at first, Tyler Posey said the realization that The Masked Singer is more about fun than competition quickly pulled him out of that mindset. After all, the money to do the show isn't great, and the costumes can get hot. If you are there to compete, you might be there for the wrong reason.
At the same time, I couldn't help but agree that I felt Tyler Posey was robbed when it came to the audience and panels' votes. I asked the actor if he felt his elimination was potentially due to the audience leaning more toward traditional singing over stylized rockstar vibes and showmanship, and if that factored into his elimination. The actor had this to say:
I do think that a little bit. I was trying to think of [the performance] as a whole. This isn’t The Voice, this is a show about performing everything mixed in. And so I thought I could be okay with not having this classically trained voice. I don’t know. I thought I had it, so I did feel like there was something going on that I wasn’t aware of. Whether it was politics and I was being robbed or they were putting their attention on a certain element of the performance rather than the whole thing. I really don’t know.
Tyler Posey made some solid points. The Masked Singer prides itself on showmanship, and some of the show's most shocking eliminations of top performers have happened as a result of a less talented singer bringing more energy than their opponent. Of course, it all comes down to the audience in attendance, and maybe that night, they were just feeling the performance of Tiki more than Hawk.
If there's some upside to Hawk falling short, it's that he might not have stood a chance against this season's early frontrunner, Gazelle, in the next round of the competition. I'm not sure any contestant we've heard in Group B can stand against her, but there are still weeks to go and others to step up and possibly become the new favorite of The Masked Singer Season 10.
Catch new episodes of The Masked Singer on Fox on Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET, or binge the series with a Hulu subscription. Readers can also use their Hulu accounts to rewatch the smackdown between Hawk and Tiki and decide for themselves if he was robbed.
