The Masked Dancer: Brian McKnight revealed under Cricket Mask!

Before we dive too much further into this The Masked Dancer episode, is anyone else surprised that one even aired tonight? Every other major network was like “okay, we’re going to sit this one out” due to inauguration, but the Craig Robinson-hosted show just danced right back onto the screen. We saw the Exotic Bird, the Tulip, the Hammerhead, and the Cricket strut their stuff, but one of them had to take their final bow at the end. Enter Brian McKnight!

As you probably guessed (odds are, you read the title to this article!), tonight we said farewell to the Cricket. Honestly, this shocked us! He had such a positive vibe — maybe a part of it was that enormous smile that was smacked at the front of the mask.

We’ll be honest — we thought that this was Ian Ziering. There was TOO much humor in the idea of it being Brian Austin Green’s former co-star. Some of the judges’ guesses were way too big of stars in our book. Do you think that Ashton Kutcher was going to be on a show that was this untested? We at least got slightly more on board Michael Phelps as a guess — a decent one from Ken Jeong, who is shockingly better on this show than The Masked Singer.

The moment that we heard Phelps, though, our mind swam right over to Ryan Lochte, who ironically we thought was the Hammerhead earlier this season. He checks off the box of having appeared on a ton of other reality shows already; there was no reason to think Michael Phelps would dive into these comedic waters.

So for it to be Brian McKnight … we were shocked. Even after Paula Abdul guessed it, we still inexplicably didn’t see it. Why wouldn’t Brian McKnight do The Masked Singer? Well, in his words, it would’ve been too obvious it was him!

Want to see other big reveals from The Masked Dancer season 1?

Then be sure to head over to the link here. We’ll have more updates all season long and you don’t want to miss them! (Photo: Fox.)

This article was written by Jessica Carter. Be sure to follow her on Twitter.