A 3rd Place Shocker, A Heartbreaking Performance And A Worthy Winner

Three months after it all began, Season 21 of American Idol came to a close Sunday night with star-studded performances, a last look at the hopefuls who’ve left the competition, a tear-jerker ballad and a shocking early elimination.

Oh, and a new winning Idol, too.

The live three-hour event opened with Pitbull and Lil’ Jon performing together just before the show’s Top 12 singers came out to join Mr. Worldwide for a group performance of his “Give Me Everything.”

Other big names to grace the stage with and without former contestants included Kylie Minogue, TLC, Keith Urban, Ellie Goulding, Jazmine Sullivan, Jelly Roll, Lainey Wilson, Lauren Daigle, James Blunt, Season 2 finalists Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken and celebrity judges Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie.

But, of course, none of them were the main attraction. Despite all the high-quality musical filler, finale night was all about the last three contenders—Colin Stough, Megan Danielle and Iam Tongi. And by the night’s halfway point, only two of them remained in it to win it.

After each belted out their mentor songs and hometown hits, host Ryan Seacrest announced that the third place finalist would be revealed—and it wasn’t the performer most would have suspected.

Tongi had been a fan favorite all season long, and Stough had been considered his stiffest competition as this year’s requisite “country idol” finalist. And since both of them had far more followers on social media than Danielle, by many thousands, it seemed she was the safest bet to be the first out.

But in a surprise result of the live vote, it was 18-year-old Stough who took third place, leaving his fellow finalists to vie for the top honor.

Viewers who like a little suspense might have appreciated that unexpected exit, as it briefly left the feeling that anything could happen. Heck, maybe Danielle, 20, actually had a shot to go all the way. After all, her renditions of Urban’s “God Whispered Your Name” and Journey’s “Faithfully” were among some of her strongest performances of the season.

However, ultimately, those finale performances weren’t strong enough to give her a last-minute edge against the young man Richie dubbed “a true phenomenon.”

Each time 18-year-old Tongi took the stage, the audience chanted his name, “I-am! I-am!” They cheered him through his takes on Urban’s “Memories of Us” and Kolohe Kai’s “Cool Down.” And when he stood up alongside Blunt to perform a heartbreaking duet version of the the singer-songwriter’s father-son ballad “Monsters,” the song that launched Tongi’s viral fame back in the auditions, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

The audience wept, the judges had tears streaming down their faces and Tongi himself was so choked up, he couldn’t sing all the words.

But the ones he did sing were beautiful.

Tongi won it all, and while that’s a predictable end to a season in which he’s been the most buzzed-about singer all along, no other end would have seemed fitting for Season 21.