LCS Championship: FlyQuest earns its 1st ever title in NA

FlyQuest claimed their first-ever LCS title by defeating Team Liquid 3-1 in the grand final, ending Liquid's pursuit of the 2024 Grand Slam. The two teams have been fierce rivals throughout the year, exchanging victories in both the regular season and playoffs. Their head-to-head record now stands at a close 10-11 in favor of Team Liquid for 2024, while both teams each have won a Split. FlyQuest just became the 8th and last organization to win a LCS title as the Americas will take on next year.

FlyQuest can thank their minions. After a highly contested game 4 that they were about to lose following a disastrous team fight in the enemy jungle, which left only their support, Alan "Busio" Cwalina, alive on his Leona, Team Liquid rushed down the midlane for the final push. But in the most humiliating way possible, they were out-macroed by FlyQuest's super minions coming from botlane, which backdoored Liquid in what will go down as the last legendary base race in LCS history.

Despite this very peculiar finish, both teams have been delivering a very good League of Legends. Especially jungler Kacper "Inspired" Słoma who earned finals MVP with a 69% Kill Participation and a 15/6/25 KDA mainly by outplaying his direct opponent Um "UmTi" Sung-hyeon throughout the whole series. It is the Polish's second title in NA as he proved himself as one of the very best junglers in the West.

This also marks the end of a very interesting run for the LCS as a whole. Riot Games has used the LCS, which has been declining over the past two years both in international performance and in viewership, as a testing ground for content experiments and to evolve its offerings. Being one of the first to use fearless drafts, to share and broadcast more content during pauses between games and even to provide proviews to anyone subscribing to their Twitch channel, though these recents playoffs are one of the many things that brought more enthusiasm over the region recently.

Both teams will go to Worlds side by side after creating a rivalry this year. In Spring, TL dropped 2-3 to FLY and had to go through lower bracket. They then 3-0 Cloud9 to get a rematch in the grand final and claimed the title by winning 3-1 against FLY. As for Summer, you just have to switch the teams names and you get the same scenario. This proves how dominant these two rosters have been over the year as they barely have been contested by the others. This dynamic reminds a lot of what happened in LEC this year with the region being also mainly dominated by G2 (far ahead) and Fnatic.

Gabriël "Bwipo" Rau finally broke its curse and earned himself a new trophy after his last with Fnatic 6 years ago in EU LCS summer split. This also ends his streak of six lost finals since then, including the 2018 Worlds final. He had to go through the MVP of the split Jeong "Impact" Eon-young to give himself redemption.

Both teams will now have some time to prepare for Worlds and travel to Europe. Even if Team Liquid doesn't seem so dominant anymore, it is good for them to take a big loss now so that they can improve from it. Also, they still put up a great fight in the final and can be expected to go through Swiss stage as well as FlyQuest, which proved themselves as a team capable of great upsets. They will first have to wait for the Play-In stage to end to know more about their future opponent in Swiss stage. The Play-In begins on September 25, followed by the Swiss stage on October 3.