‘MasterChef’ season 6 finale preview: Who should win?

The remaining three contestants on “MasterChef” have definitely been put through a wringer, but come next week, all of it is going to be over courtesy of a two-part season finale. Claudia, Stephen, and Derrick will square off for a chance to win the grand prize and the trophy, and there will be two separate stages to what comes next. (For those who are not regular viewers of the show, this is pretty standard.)

First, you are going to get a chance to see these three home cooks compete in front of an audience of thirty distinguished chefs from around the country, which is something on the level to what they have done before at this stage. They always for some reason bring an unnecessarily large amount of noteworthy people into the kitchen and then feed them someone’s cuisine in hopes of determining a winner from the group.

Then, you’ve got the final two showdown in front of friends and family, where only one of them will be declared the winner in the end. Kudos to Fox’s promo department for making a promo tonight that doesn’t accidentally give anything away.

As for who should come out on top, the fun thing this time is that it is really hard to tell. All three have been reasonably consistent throughout, and have poured their everything into just about every single challenge.

We will say this, though: If the idea is to create some sort of culinary star from the season, how do you not pick Stephen? This is the guy you want to give a cooking show to, since he’s got that crazy enthusiasm and zeal. A few times we worried that his head was going to explode, but in an age of hyper-competition across all forms of TV, you need a character who stands out.

Who do you want to see win? Vote in our attached poll, and head over here to read more of our take on tonight’s episode. You can also sign up here to have some other TV news on everything we cover, courtesy of our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: Fox.)