It was a Big Brother season marked by the return of a legend, a havoc-wreaking masked adversary, and a controversial showmance, but the real drama hovered over the question of who would emerge victorious as the champion of Big Brother season 27. That question has now been answered.
Morgan Pope, Vince Panaro, and Ashley Hollis entered Sunday’s live finale as the final three still vying for the $750,000 prize. That prize would ultimately be awarded by the jury — a jury that was forced to answer some burning questions of their own thanks to our exclusive pre-finale interview. To win those jury votes, the last three players first needed to get there. That meant winning the final three-part Head of Household competition.
The first stage of the final HOH contest had the final three flying in drones off the coast of BB City searching for the Mastermind’s new lair. (I swear that last sentence at least kinda makes sense if you watch the show.) After Ashley and Vince both fell victim to motion sickness and jumped off, Morgan won and immediately got a fast-pass to the third portion of the competition.
Sara Mally/CBS
That meant Vince and Ashley would face off in part two, a contest that would end in an explosive outburst after Vince did not properly read the instructions. Vince and Ahsley had to fly around knocking down Mastermind puzzles and then reconstruct a puzzle using the faces of previously voted-out houseguests. They could then open an envelope with a clue to imputing the correct code.
The clue read, “The password is the order each player pictured left the game,” but Vince thought that meant to put in the day numbers that each of the players were voted out. He became increasing frustrated, yelling “It’s f—ing right!” and “What f—ing day was it?!” Ashley was also confused by the password, but eventually figured it out to win stage two, which sent Vince into depressed rage, yelling “I don’t deserve to win. I’m f—ing awful! Loser!”
That meant Rachel and Ashley would face off in the third and final stage of the HOH competition in which the contestants had to play a game of two truths and lie, figuring out which statements from jury members about their time in the house were fibs. Ashley dominated the contest, correctly answering the first four questions, while Morgan only got one correctly.
That meant Ashley had won her first Head of Household all season — and her first competition since week 1 of the game. It also meant she was in the final two and got to choose who sat next to her. She had been saying in the final days that she wanted to win the final HOH and then make the big power move of cutting Morgan and bringing Vince. But would she actually do it?
She would. After Vince and Morgan made their final pleas, Ashley chose to evict Morgan, explaining “I don’t think I can beat you in a final two. I think it will be a toss-up with Vinny.”
CBS
That sent Morgan to the jury, where she and the others would get a chance to ask questions to the final two before casting their votes. It was clear from those questions that the jury seriously doubted Vince’s sincerity and jury management skills, but the true knockout blow occurred when Ava asked Ashley why she deserved to win over Vince. Ashley answered by touting her social game and explaining, “To me, a Big Brother winner is someone who turns their enemies into allies, not their allies into enemies, which the counterpart next to me did.”
Morgan then ended the Q&A session by throwing Vince a softball question by asking what he thought the strongest part of his game was, to which Vince answered “I think I was on good terms with almost everybody” — which caused Kelley to openly start laughing.
The jury then cast their votes, and those votes were ultimately for Ashley, who was officially crowned the champion of Big Brother. It was a remarkable comeback for a player who was slated to be voted out in the very week and only stuck around because she saved herself with the Veto. She would not win another competition until the season’s final day. And that proved to be a $750,000 win.
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