SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the Season 11 finale of The Masked Singer, including the identities of the winner and runner up.
Goldfish and Gumball battled it out for The Masked Singer trophy on Wednesday night.
And, as is revealed during the finale, this is not the first time that they’ve shared the stage together. Some serendipitous timing meant that two former co-stars were actually going head-to-head for the win. Ultimately, Goldfish — aka Vanessa Hudgens — took home the prize, but not before learning that her Bandslam cast mate Scott Porter was behind the gumball machine mask.
“He cracked me up. He was like, ‘This isn’t the first time I’ve lost you. This is the second time!’ I was just gagged. I could not believe it was him,” Hudgens said of the moment Porter’s identity was revealed, admitting that she had no idea prior to the unmasking. “I would be a terrible judge on the show, because I had absolutely no idea who anyone was. So I was very surprised when he took that mask off.”
Meanwhile, Porter says he knew Hudgens was Goldfish “immediately.”
“[As] someone who had worked with her before, that voice was unmistakable,” he told Deadline, adding: “So I took a little moment walk up to her on stage during a commercial break…I told her, ‘I know you. You have no idea who I am.’”
Porter wasn’t the only one who was able to hone in on her voice, either. Before her unmasking, Rita Ora also correctly guessed that Hudgens was behind the Goldfish costume. To be fair, Hudgens says she wasn’t exactly trying to keep her identity a mystery. In fact, she was dropping more hints than anyone might have even realized.
“The first performance was a song by Olivia Rodrigo, who played Gabriella in the High School Musical series. And my second song was Baby Come Back. That was my first single, and I was literally singing some of the same ad libs and licks that I was singing when I was like 16 years old,” she explained.
Just as Hudgens was surprised by Porter’s reveal, so were the judges. None of them were able to correctly guess who was behind Gumball, although they did get very close. Ora, who appears surprisingly good at this guessing game despite being a new judge, posited whether Gumball might be Porter’s Friday Night Lights co-star Taylor Kitsch.
“In that moment when Rita said Friday Night Lights, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s really happening.’ I think it’s a badge of honor if they can’t figure you out. At the end of the day, to make it all the way to the finale with them not having any idea of who I am, I think I’ll take that as a win.”
As the Season 11 victor, Hudgens told Deadline she had her trophy next to her during the interview. Though she’s no stranger to taking the stage and performing for an audience, she said that this particular honor felt special “because it had nothing to do with what people thought of me or any preconceived ideas of me.”
“It was truly based off of what’s inside and what I bring to the table with my talents and that meant the world, honestly,” she said.
