‘Dancing With the Stars’ crowns Season 32 winner in first finale with 5 finalists
The “Dancing With the Stars” Season 32 winner has been crowned!
Xochitl Gomez and Val Chmerkovskiy earned the Len Goodman Mirrorball Trophy Tuesday night after a history-making five duos competed in the dancing competition’s finale.
Aside from the winning pair, the other finalists included Jason Mraz and Daniella Karagach (second place), Ariana Madix and Pasha Pashkov (third place), Charity Lawson and Artem Chigvintsev (fourth place), and Alyson Hannigan and Sasha Farber (fifth place).
This week’s finals featured all five couples each performing a freestyle dance, in which they were given complete creative freedom to do whatever they wanted in one last effort to impress judges Carrie Ann Inaba, Derek Hough and Bruno Tonioli — along with the voters.
This is the first season the Mirrorball Trophy has been named in Goodman’s honor; the longtime judge died in April at the age of 78 after reportedly losing his battle with bone cancer.
During last week’s semi-finals, co-hosts Alfonso Ribeiro and Julianne Hough shocked audience members and viewers alike by making it seem as though either Madix and Pashkov or Gomez and Chmerkovskiy would be eliminated.
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However, they quickly revealed that no one was going home.
“That pretend elimination was the most terrifying thing. It was sick and twisted!” Madix, 38, exclusively joked to us after the show.
“I was like, ‘I love you guys, but also, I hate you guys for that!'”
The “Vanderpump Rules” star 38, was near tears as she awaited her fate, telling us she was “fully convinced” in that moment that she and her partner were going home.
“In the pretend bottom two, it was between us and Xochitl and Val, and she has the power of teenagers on the internet,” Madix said of the 17-year-old Marvel star.
“And I’m an elder millennial! I was like, ‘There’s no way!’ So that was where my head was at when my life was flashing before my eyes.”
