For most viewers, the Dancing with the Stars finale was a huge hit, but some fans believe that the end results were rigged.
Streamed live on Nov. 25, the finale of Dancing with the Stars (DWTS) season 34 was highly anticipated. While the show celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, its popularity has only grown, with hosts Alfonso Ribeiro and Julianne Hough announcing that the number of votes received during this year’s finale broke records.
By the end of the night, the five finalists had been whittled down to just Robert Irwin and Alix Earle. Although many people felt that Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles should have made it into the finale too — rather than earning third place — it isn’t hard to see how Irwin or Earle ended up where they did, considering both dancers have large and ever-growing fan bases. This is not where the controversy stems from.
Instead, it was Irwin being named the winner of the Len Goodman Mirrorball Trophy over Earle that led to a conspiracy starting to swirl.
To understand where this came from, one must first understand the structure of the finale. This year, the show was broken up into three sections: the judge’s choice round, the instant dance round and the freestyle round. Earle managed to score herself 90 points by earning perfect scores on each round. Irwin scored one point lower, receiving 89 out of 90 points due to receiving a nine from judge Carrie Ann Inaba for his judge’s choice Quickstep. Furthermore, while Irwin received a perfect 30 points for his instant Cha Cha, many fans felt that the judges overlooked sloppy footwork and missed steps. Had he been judged as fans felt appropriate, his 89 out of 90 would likely have been even lower.
Still, judges’ scores don’t mean everything. Showrunner Conrad Green told The Hollywood Reporter that the scores that decide who is going home each week are weighted 50/50.
“When you see the judges’ leaderboards, say there’s five couples and you’re in first place on that leaderboard, you get five judges ranking points,” Green said. “We do the same with the number of public votes. You add these two [separate] ranking points together and the couple with the lowest combined total of those ranking points goes home.”
This means that the amount of votes a celebrity receives also directly impacts whether they are going home, or in this case, whether they win the whole thing. Therefore, if Irwin had more votes, he would have been crowned the winner fair and square. Still, some fans of the show don’t believe it.
Die-hard Earle fans feel that she was the better dancer and that Irwin only won because his squeaky-clean image made him the better choice for Disney. Others point to Irwin’s win as being a result of his sister, Bindi, who won the show with Derek Hough 10 years earlier. Some even claim that Irwin relentlessly touted the death of his father, legendary wildlife conservationist Steve Irwin, as a strategy in his win. The online narrative that has been born out of the show’s newfound TikTok audience only continues to grow.
In the end, some online users have suggested that while the younger audience that DWTS has acquired is strong, the large voting base the show has been building for 20 years may have been even stronger this year. This is not to say that Irwin, who is only 21, didn’t sway younger audiences as well. At the time of writing, Irwin has 1.8 million more followers than Earle on TikTok alone.
All in all, this season has been ripe with controversy, so it isn’t unbelievable that the overall winner would be too.