‘The Masked Singer’ Crowns Its Season 12 Champion: And the Winner Is…

“The Masked Singer” rang in the holiday season by crowning a new champion on Wednesday night. So, who took home the Golden Mask?

The finale saw Wasp go toe to stinger with the Buffalos, with performances from the men of “When I Was Your Man,” “Somebody That I Used to Know,” “I’m Your Baby Tonight” and “Too Good at Goodbyes.” Season 5 winner, Piglet (Nick Lachey) even returned to perform “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” to get everyone in the jolly spirit.

In the end though, only one could win — or, in this case, three. Yes, the Buffalos were indeed crowned the winners, making Wasp the Season 12 runner-up. And who was under the Wasp mask?

Well, despite past guesses of Jason Derulo or Anthony Ramos, Rita Ora clocked him correctly with her guess of Mario.

The singer told TheWrap that being on “The Masked Singer” took him back to his childhood (his favorite holiday is Halloween, after all).

“When I first started as a kid, my first audience was my family, you know, singing in the living room, my mother playing piano sometimes, getting my first karaoke at eight years old, singing at all the talent shows in elementary school, my family being there, singing at all my cousins birthday parties, you know?” he shared.

“So I think my voice has been kind of my language and my way to communicate with people since I was a kid,” Mario continued. “So it really does take me back to that, you know, back to the space where that was my way of having purpose in the world, even from a kid.”

So then, who were the Buffalos? That particular trio was unmasked to be Boyz II Men — and according to the singers, it’s been a long time coming.

They explained to TheWrap that this was their third attempt at doing the Fox show, after scheduling and then COVID ruined previous plans. They only had a small gap in their schedule to get it done though, so they tried to — unsuccessfully, obviously — self-sabotage by disguising their voices and picking odd songs.

“Hopefully, we’ll either do good and they’ll find out who we are, and we’ll be voted off, or we will suck, and they won’t want us on the show, and we’ll be off the show,” Wanyá Morris said with a laugh. “So we actually were trying to self-sabotage ourselves because, you know, it was like we had two weeks off, and they put it in there, and we were like, ‘This is really not what we were planning on doing.'”

“But when we got there and we got in those Buffalo suits, and we started getting the music and everything together, and we saw the energy of the whole atmosphere, we were like, as long as we here, we might as well, you know, take home the crown,” he added.

“The Masked Singer” returns for Season 13 on Wednesday, Feb. 12 on Fox.

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