The Masked Singer season 3 premiere shocker: Find out the huge star under the robot mask
Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Masked Singer season 3 premiere.
The Super Bowl may be a big event, but as host Nick Cannon said, it’s really the pregame to what we were really looking forward to: the season 3 premiere of The Masked Singer.
Cannon was joined by four other familiar faces: Robin Thicke, Jenny McCarthy, Ken Jeong, and Nicole Scherzinger returned as panelists. They were joined by someone Jeong wrongly guessed (more than once) was under one of the masks last season: Jamie Foxx, whose show Beat Shazam returns to Fox this summer.
As EW revealed previously, this season is slightly different from previous editions. Instead of 16 contestants like in season 2, we’ll be meeting 18 throughout the course of this new installment, with Group A kicking off the first three episodes to whittle six competitors down to three.
Tonight we met the members of Group A (in order of appearance): White Tiger, Turtle, Llama, Miss Monster, Robot, and Kangaroo. The show also gave us a sneak peek at who will be in the other teams. Group B will comprise Banana, Elephant, Frog, Mouse, Taco, and Kitty; while Astronaut, Night Angel, Rhino, Bear, Swan, and T Rex make up Group C.
White Tiger performed first (“Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice), followed by Turtle (“Kiss From a Rose” by Seal), Llama (“She Bangs” by Ricky Martin), Miss Monster (“Something to Talk About” by Bonnie Raitt), Robot (“Are You Gonna Go My Way” by Lenny Kravitz), and Kangaroo (“Dancing on My Own” by Robyn).
White Tiger started the show off strong, with a fiery (literally, with the background props) performance. A punk-rock Turtle then took the reins by singing a classic Seal track (the crooner was under the Leopard costume last season).
The Llama, followed five seconds later by his rear end, was joined by dancers of the same species. Then, we saw a love story blossom as Miss Monster was accompanied by season 1 winner Monster on stage.
Robot wasn’t rusty at all during his set, and Kangaroo had it in the bag (or pouch) with a show-stopping performance to end an exciting premiere episode.
Finally, the audience and panel got to select their favorite performers, meaning the contestant with the least votes got the boot.
The contestant who was eliminated was… Robot. And it turned out to be a huge star.
Cannon lifted the mask to reveal Lil Wayne! The rapper — who just put out a new album, Funeral — is a Masked Singer fan according to season 1 winner T-Pain. Some of the most telling clues included the image of a firetruck (referencing Wayne’s song “Fireman”), his love of skateboarding, and of course, the rapper’s recognizable gravelly voice.
“This is the most shocked I’ve ever been on this show,” Thicke said of Robot’s true identity. And he should be since he’s actually worked with Wayne in the past, on the songs “Shooter” and “Pretty Lil’ Heart.”
Come back next week as five of the six Group A contestants battle it out in the second round.
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