‘Hell’s Kitchen’ finale review: Was Ja’Nel, Mary, or Jon the winner?

We went into tonight’s “Hell’s Kitchen” season finale with three chefs remaining: Ja’Nel Witt, Mary Poehnelt, and Jon Scallion. However, as the saying goes, there can only be one winner. But before we come to that, there can only be two contestants to have to go through the final stages of the competition.

Seeing Ja’Nel and Mary being named the finalists was a shocker to absolutely no one. As good of a chef as Jon was, it just made sense this year for the final two to both be people from a dominant women’s team. It was the full-circle moment that made Gordon Ramsay and the producers dance. It also (pats self on the back) was what we predicted going into this, and we also predicted that Ja’Nel was going to win the whole shebang. In the first hour of the finale, she did succeed in impressing the likes of several judges with her menu, and we kind of found it hilarious that this panel included a current contestant on “Top Chef Masters” who was given a pretty invisible edit (almost in hopes that viewers would somehow not notice).

But who emerged victorious from the culinary thunderdome when the dust settled? Given that Mary had to deal with the one-two punch of both Dan and Michael on her team, we thought Ja’Nel (even with Zach and his near-constant insanity) still had a pretty substantial edge to take this home. In the end, we were right on here! Ja’Nel has seemed like such a frontrunner for really the entire season, and despite Mary at least rising to the occasion and putting up a pretty a good fight, it was not enough to overtake Ja’Nel in the end.

Do you think that Ramsay picked the right person at the end of the day to win? Just in case you want to get some inside scoop on the finale, we chatted last week with the recently-eliminated. Cyndi. Check it out.

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