Ink Master season 10 episode 12 review: The origin story of a future contender

Ink Master season 10 episode 12 was an episode that had a good bit of interesting content both good and bad. You had a Flash Challenge won by Team Steve in controversial fashion (were they really better than Team DJ?), and to go along with that, you also had an elimination challenge that got rid of someone who really was one of the biggest tattooing wunderkinds we’ve seen in this competition.

Tonight, we say goodbye to Daniel Silva, one of the most ambitious young artists that we’ve seen on the series. While his confidence at times has definitely teetered on arrogance, the more we learned about him in between this show and Ink Master, the more it was impressive what he’s accomplished despite limited experience and having an extremely rough life. He’s dealt with constant tragedy and hardship and has yet found a way to produce some incredible art. Tonight in the negative-space themed elimination challenge, he just found himself in a spot where he wasn’t equipped to handle the task put in front of him completely.

If Daniel had two or three more years in this industry we absolutely think that there’s a chance he could have won this season. With that in mind, he is one of the most interesting contestants to ever come back for an all-star season. With his exit, Deanna Smith is the only Angels winner still in the competition. (Did you know that Ink Master: Angels premiered tonight? Be sure to head over here to read some more coverage on that subject!)

With Daniel’s elimination it also means that we are getting at least one more week of Jeremy Brown in the competition. Jeremy is at this point clearly the biggest underdog on the show — he’s on an underdog team, he’s been in the bottom, and he’s not even fully getting along with his coach.

There are now two artists left conveniently on every team, and we do think that there are some pretty interesting battles that are left. For starters, Juan Salgado managed to get Tattoo of the Day for the second straight week, which helps in part to set up what could be a tattoo battle of the ages with him on one side and Josh Payne on the others. There are some other contenders who are out there, but they may need some more Tattoo of the Day wins in order to emerge.

Related – Want to get some other news when it comes to Ink Master, including a preview for what is coming up?

CarterMatt Verdict

Ink Master season 10 episode 12 ended up being an excellent episode on the virtue of a really cool challenge. Beyond that, the series is starting to do a better job when it comes to giving us a good sense of who these people are outside of the competition — even though they are telegraphing some eliminations in the process with that.

What did you think about Ink Master season 10 episode 12? Are you surprised that Daniel is gone? Share right now in the attached comments!

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