Finlay Anderson and Marie-Louise Nicholson have been crowned Gladiators champions after a tense final showdown.
The duo went up against finalists Wesley Male and Bronte Jones for one last time this series, but after 11 weeks of gruelling challenges emerged victorious.
They’ve been taking on challenges against the likes of Sabre, Fury and Steel, as the hit competition returned more than two decades later.
Originally running from 1992 to 2000, Gladiators was first hosted by Ulrika Jonsson on ITV, and has now seen father-son duo Bradley and Barney Walsh at the helm, with a new batch of superhumans following in the footsteps of icons Wolf, Jet, Hunter and Lightening.
The final programme on Saturday saw personal trainer Marie-Louise enter The Eliminator with a two-second head start on firefighter Bronte, leading her to take home the win.
The 28-year-old later told host Bradley: ‘Bronte was on my tail the whole time, what a competitor to go up against, she was so close to the end there. I think we’re both winners in my eyes.’
Meanwhile, army officer Finlay went head-to-head with wrestler Wesley in the final event but ran faster to the top of the travelator and burst through the paper to become champion.
‘This is definitely the most surreal moment ever from five-year-old me playing The Eliminator in my granny’s living room to lifting the real deal, this is unbelievable,’ the 34-year-old said.
To reach the final, the contenders had to do battle against the show’s 16 Gladiators in games testing strength, speed and dexterity that continue to be family favourites from previous versions of the programme.
Finlay, from Edinburgh, said the most challenging moment of the final was on The Edge, because he injured his ‘ribs quite badly on that event in the quarter-finals so naturally I was cautious as I didn’t want to get hurt again’.
He also said as a Crossfit fan, he wanted to ‘excel’ against Steel during the series, because the athlete is a star of the fitness regime and won the title of UK’s Fittest Man in 2020.
Meanwhile, Marie-Louise said her favourite moment from the series was the ‘biggest comeback of the year’ when she got herself into the final four despite starting nine seconds behind on The Eliminator in the quarter-finals.
She said her favourite game was Powerball because of the ‘agility and speed and being tackled by a Gladiator, having a bit of rough and tumble’, while her least favourite was Duel.
‘Winning means to me that things that you’re scared of in life, things you don’t want to go up against, if you throw yourself into it you’ll either learn something if you lose or you’ll gain something from it if you win. I always think that, even if you lose you’ll gain something from it,’ she said.
Dublin-born Marie-Louise added that if she was to become a Gladiator she would call herself ‘Shamrock’, having previously told Metro.co.uk that she’d be keen to return, with Finlay echoing the same sentiment.
Earlier today, the army officer had explained he’d be watching with his company’s troops from overseas, where he’s been deployed.
He said on BBC Breakfast, via video link: ‘I have been deployed in an operation overseas with my company, so we do have a way of watching it, fortunately.
‘My soldiers and I will be watching while we are out here, so I will be getting encouraged and heckled in equal measure.’
It was announced earlier this week that Gladiators will return for a second series, with Kalpna Patel-Knight, head of entertainment at the BBC, saying: ‘It has been wonderful to hear how much families have loved watching this together, as part of the BBC’s Saturday evening entertainment offering. We can’t wait for more action from the Gladiators.’
The finalists had previously revealed that viewers have no idea how bad their injuries actually were, with Wesley and Finlay admitting to Metro.co.uk that they wore makeup to cover up their bruises.
Because the episodes were filmed back-to-back and not weeks apart, they didn’t have time to physically recover in between heats.
‘They put makeup on to cover our bruises!’ Finlay added, highlighting how sore they were: ‘The contact events, day after day, that wear and tear.’
The live shows were filmed last year in Sheffield, with the contenders recalling how the long days were actually harder than the games themselves.
‘For me, the hardest part were the long days,’ Wesley told us. ‘Managing your emotions through the whole week, obviously and the night before you’re super excited, it’s like Christmas, you can’t get to sleep! And then you wake up super excited, but by midday you start to get that little bit of fatigue, and it’s just managing the body and your mind, and bringing your a-game, even if it’s for 30 or 60 seconds… there’s just so many emotions.’
Finlay added: ‘To echo that, the days were as long as eight or nine hours, because setting up and taking down the events in the arena took them a long time. So there was quite a lot of extreme activity to complete lull, that was quite tricky to manage.’
Gladiators is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
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