Florida men win Overwatch League Grand Finals

theverge.com:

The Florida Mayhem have been crowned the 2023 Overwatch League grand champions. Their 4–0 victory over the Houston Outlaws disappointingly closed out what is likely the league’s last season as it currently exists.

But while the grand finals were a bit of a dud, the playoffs overall reminded me of how much I love this esport, its community, and its capacity to tell amazing stories.

Season six of the Overwatch League just could not hold me. Maybe it’s the fact that this season was the second to be played on Overwatch 2, a game that has itself failed to capture my attention because of some of the decisions made by its developers like canceling the highly anticipated “hero mode” and putting the equally anticipated story content behind a paywall. It could have been the season’s somewhat confusing structure. Or it could have been because of years of diminishing emotional returns exacerbated by reporting that overwhelmingly hinted that the league was not long for this world. For season six, it seemed like my heart just accepted what my mind would not acknowledge — the league is dying, it hasn’t been as exciting since its days as a weekly live event, and it’s best to just let it go.

But I have been present for every grand finals and, ho-hum season or not, I was going to be present for this one. My team, the Shanghai Dragons, did not make the playoffs, but I’m a fan of good Overwatch no matter who is playing, so I tuned in in hopes of getting just that.

And oh boy, for a moment, I got some good-ass Overwatch from two unlikely teams: the London Spitfire and the Hangzhou Spark.

Though the Spitfire won the OWL’s very first grand championship in 2018, they never quite returned to that level of quality. For a couple of seasons,