Overwatch League Playoffs: London sweeps Los Angeles to earn trip to Grand Finals

On Friday night, the Overwatch League discovered the first team that would make the Grand Finals.

The London Spitfire and the Los Angeles Valiant concluded their semifinals series on Friday. By the end of the evening, one of those teams would be punching their ticket to New York City for a chance to play in the Overwatch League Grand Finals and crown themselves the first champions of the league.

The series kicked off on Wednesday, when the Spitfire shocked analysts by defeating the Valiant. While this meant that London headed into Friday with an advantage, their previous victory didn’t definitely show that they were the better team. If anything, it reinforced how evenly matched these two teams are. Every point on the control map was decided by a 99-to-99 percent overtime tussle, and one of the maps even ended in a draw. So while London just had to win one more match to win the series, Los Angeles certainly wasn’t going to give it up easily.

Match One

Map One – El Dorado: London was unstopped on their attack run until the end, with Profit on Hanzo running rampant on getting eliminations and farming his Dragonstrike. The Valiant put together a fantastic stall right at the end of the map but was ultimately unable to stop the Spitfire from completion. Nearly the same thing happened on LA’s attack run. Space almost helped the Valiant pull through with two very effective Self Destructs, but the Spitfire had enough time to recover to stop the payload short. Bdosin really did the work on Zenyatta in both damage and healing to help give London the edge.

Score: Spitfire 3, Valiant 2

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Map Two – Oasis: London completely set the pace at the start of Oasis, throwing Los Angeles off with a heavy damage composition with Soldier 76 and Reaper. Only once did the Spitfire look on the brink of losing control of the point, but that was also conveniently the moment when their Soldier had an Attack Visor available, which evened the score for London and then some. Los Angeles switched it up on the next point with SoOn on Zarya, and even though he was able to charge up his gun to 100 percent the Spitfire was able to handle him roundly.

Score: Spitfire 2, Valiant 0

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Map Three – Eichenwalde: London’s attack run was masterful, with Bdosin once again making the difference as the second-most damage dealing player on the Spitfire team. But this time Los Angeles was successful in fighting back, able to also complete the map in a slower and more grueling fight. With just a minute available to them, the Valiant miraculously took point A and pushed the payload slightly off the point before being gutted by the Spitfire. On their second attack run, London made their first elimination right away, seemingly in a hurry to finish the series off and make their way to the Grand Finals. Having played well all match, Kariv on Roadhog tried once again to be the miracle-maker by holding down the point but in the end the Valiant were overwhelmed.

Score: Spitfire 4, Valiant 3

Final Match Score: Spitfire 3, Valiant 0

Next: OWL Playoffs: Philly upsets New York to lead series 1-0

Had the Los Angeles Valiant been able to win the first of the two scheduled matches of the day, the series would have gone onto the second match to decide the definitive winner of the semifinal. However, because they instead suffered their second loss of the series, London officially had won the best of three contest.

The Spitfire will play whoever wins on Saturday in the Grand Finals. The Grand Finals kickoff on Friday, July 27 at 7 p.m. EST.