Dancing with the Stars‘ season 16 winner is… KELLIE AND DEREK!

Editor’s note: This article was written by Irvin K.

This makes Kellie the third singer to ever win the show, after Drew Lachey (season 2) and Nicole Scherzinger (season 10, also with Derek). She’s the second reality star to win after last season’s Melissa Rycroft. Kellie dances as if she has been at it her whole life, and I wholeheartedly agree with Derek when he said, “You call yourself a dancer now.”

The runners up were Zendaya and Val. Zendaya follows a noble tradition of dancers who’ve come on the show and placed second – Mel B (season 5) and Mya (season 9) come to mind. This marks Val’s best finish yet, surpassing his third-place finish last season with Kelly Monaco. In fact, I’ll make the call now, that Val will win a season very soon – there’s a sense that he’s earned it. He did a great job with Zendaya. And he is behaving as a consummate professional (sort of the anti-thesis of his brother), which will win him the same votes that propelled Tony to the Mirrorball last season.

And this show has been great for Zendaya. Ten weeks ago, people all over the Internet were asking, “What’s a Zendaya?” Now she is known to an audience of 13 million, and that will help her once she decides to graduate from the Disney Channel. She’s certainly won me over. Yes, she had an unfair advantage going in. But her bubbly personality, great chemistry with Val, and superb dancing made me love her.

As for Derek – I feel like at this point, I should just applaud the man. He reminds us, time and time again, why he is the best professional on the show. This is his fourth win, breaking his own record for most wins by a pro. Moreover, if Wikipedia is to be believed, he just became the first ever four-time winner in the entire global DwtS franchise. Essentially, he has won a quarter of the Mirrorballs on the US version (and it’s not more because he’s competed for less than three-quarters of them). Derek’s average result on the show is 2.9th place – getting to third place and the finals would be below average for him!

Honestly, this season could have gone to either Zendaya or Kellie, right up until last night. The freestyle Derek made for Kellie was what won her the Mirrorball. It was so fantastic, it was chosen for the encore tonight… by Twitter! Twitter is the domain of Zendaya’s tween fans, yet Twitter chose Kellie for the encore. That was when I was 99% certain Kellie would win.

It was obvious it would be either Kellie or Zendaya for the final two, though – even the commercials for “Jimmy Kimmel tonight with the winner of DwtS!” always showed Kellie and Zendaya, before doing a split-second pan to Jacoby and Aly.

In the only surprising elimination the entire season, Aly was eliminated in fourth place, while Jacoby stuck around to claim third. Perhaps this is the reason we got four finalists? Because the producers knew that Aly would not have been a finalist otherwise, and realized the audience would scream bloody murder? Interesting…

You know what wasn’t interesting? Most of this finale. Isn’t the point of the bloated two-hour finale to give a chance for eliminated stars to dance one last time? Only three of the eight eliminated contestants actually danced! And Wynonna sang, so she gets a pass. The other four – including ones who can actually dance to an extent, like Ingo, Sean, and Victor – just sat around looking pretty after a cameo in the big opening number.

Instead we got some aimless celebrity singers and random group pro numbers. Psy ran around singing his new song “Gentleman,” which I understood about as well as I understood Pitbull’s foreign-language “Echa Palla.” I was further confused by a big group number by the pros in the middle of the show – not that it wasn’t fun, but why was it there? Was DwtS trying to get as much pro-dancing in as possible before the elimination of results shows next season?

That has to be the explanation for the “Women of DwtS” number, which showcased all the female pros and our three female finalists. I thought this was tasteless for two reasons. First, it was literally one commercial break after Aly got eliminated. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have her do a big group dance before getting eliminated? Furthermore, by having the three female contestants doing a number with pros, it underscored how much Jacoby does not belong in the final, and how Aly should have been in the top three instead.

Wynonna sang beautifully, wisely allowing Tony to dance with a professional partner in the meantime. I like her and all, but some people just aren’t dancers. We also got a hilarious Trio dance with Lisa, Gleb, and… Len! Yes, the Dancemaster himself got up to Foxtrot with Lisa, and he didn’t do too shabby.

Andy, apparently, has spent the last three weeks building himself a fortress of tissues while crying about his elimination. So he redid his best number, the Alice in Wonderland themed “Bad Romance,” which he then mixed with “Poker Face.” It was a delight to see this number. In general, I appreciated that we actually got to see the stars dance legitimately on the show, instead of the farces we’ve been getting the last few finales.

The best such dance, of course, was Dorothy’s. Tristan is injured, so she got Troupe member Henry instead. She was doing a beautiful Viennese Waltz, when she was abruptly joined by Season 6 champ Kristi Yamaguchi! Oh, how I’ve missed Kristi’s dancing – she probably was the best dancer (technique-wise) the show’s ever seen. It was a wonderful dance, and I love that Kristi and Dorothy look up to each other so much – I can’t wait to see them do an ice routine together! As Dorothy danced, there was a sense of what might have been. If only she hadn’t been injured!

Oh yeah, and the top three finalists also did an instant dance! They all did well. Jacoby, as usual, made a party on the dance floor. Kellie’s kicks were phenomenal, but the rest of the jive seemed curiously flat to me; however, Bruno compared her to Julianne Hough, which is praise indeed (and now that he mentions it, Kellie and Derek do remind me of the Hough siblings dancing together). Zendaya’s jive was also great, though I was offended by her bright pink sneakers. Would it kill this girl to put on heels?! Anyway, perfect thirties for everyone because this is no longer about the judges, and moving on.

Jessica Sanchez sang “Feel This Moment” to a montage of the three finalists. I will admit to tearing up during this part. For whatever reason, both Kellie and Derek and Zendaya and Val have had a really emotional journey this season, and that seeped through the TV. Maybe it’s because there was never any question of them making the finals, and the lack of surprise (read: unfair) eliminations allowed everyone to focus on the dancing, but it seems like this has been a great season for them.

Well, that’s it for Season 16! Considering they got a cast of nobodies, the season turned out pretty good in the end. Kellie is a worthy winner, and Zendaya a very worthy runner up. And I will commend Aly for barely ever rolling her eyes at Mark, and doing the best she could with what she had.

So, do you think the right couple won? Sound off in the comments, and let’s reconvene in the fall for Season 17!