WARNING: MAJOR Spoilers ahead for the season nine premiere of “The Masked Singer”
“The Masked Singer” returned for its ninth season on Wednesday night and, as has become custom, sent home a pair of competitors. But if you’re here, you know that already; you just want to know who they were.
If you’re trying to avoid spoilers, now would be the place to turn back…
Now, let’s get into it. Sadly, a veritable Hollywood icon was the first competitor of the season to be sent packing, as the first elimination was Gnome. Ahead of the show, it was teased to be “the most legendary unmasking in history,” and indeed, that was the case. Gnome sang his heart out but it wasn’t enough to move on, and the man behind the mask was revealed to be… Dick Van Dyke.
Yes, you read that right. At 97 years old, the “Mary Poppins” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” star hit the stage to sing in a giant gnome costume, because he’s simply a national treasure.
But, like we said, he wasn’t the only star sent home on night one. Mustang followed him, after performing Whitesnake’s hit song “Here I Go Again.” You can watch that performance in the video below.
Fans of this particular singer were able to pinpoint her voice before the show even aired, and by the end of the night, the mustang was unmasked to reveal country singer Sara Evans. And if you were wondering, yes, that horse head was as big and heavy as it seems.
“I’m really claustrophobic and so I was nervous about the costume, but my costume ended up being probably one of the least restrictive of all of them that I’ve seen,” Evans told TheWrap.
She added, “The first time I put it on, I was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna panic a little bit’ and I took a half a klonopin, just so I wouldn’t freak out about being in it. And it was so heavy that they had to keep adding straps. So once they put it on me and I had to go and do stage blocking, I was completely strapped in it. I could not have taken it off if I wanted to.”
“The Masked Singer” airs Wednesdays on FOX at 8 p.m. ET.
