But the big question is who will win? After last week’s semifinals, it’s clear that the real competition is between Gabby and Charli, who both had perfect scores for both of their dances. Wayne had a bit of an off week and Shangela was in the bottom and was saved by the judges, so her chances of walking away the winner are slim. Looking at the scores for the entire season, Charli should be the winner. She came out strong on week one—and with the exception of one week—has been consistently at the top of the leaderboard. Neither Charli nor Gabby have been in the bottom two all season, and it is obvious from that that they aren’t just dependent on the judges’ scores, but also have the fan votes behind them. So, what it may boil down to is: Will Gabby’s fanbase from The Bachelor franchise be big enough to take down Charli’s 148 million followers on TikTok? Gabby does have the plus of dancing with pro Val Chmerkovskiy, who has his own fan following, while Charli is dancing with Mark Ballas, who returned this season after a several year absence, so he may not help her with the vote as much as Val will help Gabby. Prediction: The winner of season 31 of Dancing with the Stars is Charli D’Amelio— baring any problems with her dances on Monday night. Our earlier thoughts predicting the winner are as follow: On Prom Week, there were two perfect scores given out, which was early in the competition for something like that to happen, but Gabby and dance partner Val Chmerkovskiy and Wayne and partner Witney Carson were each give 10s by judges Len Goodman, Carrie Ann Inaba, Derek Hough and Bruno Tonioli for their respective tango and samba dances, giving them a total of 40 points. Neither did quite as well the following week on Michael Bublé Night. Gabby tied for second place with Heidi D’Amelio, as both scored 46 points out of a possible 50. Gabby for her samba; Heidi for her rumba. Charli, who has topped the leaderboard every week since the premiere, fell to second place for the first time with 38 points for her jive with partner Mark Ballas, but that is still close enough not to be considered out of the running, especially when you consider her huge fan base. She then made up for it the following week getting a perfect score for her foxtrot to “Fever” on Michael Bublé Night, and they definitely got the judges temperatures to rise, so much so that Derek said he would award them a 12 if such a thing was possible even though the reality is that the top score is a 10. And so saying, let us point out that, of course, judges scores aren’t the only measure by which the winner will be determined. Votes of viewers at home also are counted, so sometimes the Mirrorball Trophy goes to someone with a huge fan base—such as Bobby Bones or Iman Shumpert—who beats out the celeb who had the highest scores from the judges with a popularity vote. While the Top 3 do not have previous ballroom dance experience, several of them do have some dance background, especially Charli, which could work against her with some voters. Of course, there is the fact that she has 148 million TikTok followers, who are likely to vote for her, which could make her the one to beat! Wayne, on the other hand, has stage experience, especially in musicals like Chicago and Hamilton, so even though those shows may have required minimum dancing, it does add to his musicality when performing. It remains to be seen if his fan base, especially from his hosting job on Let’s Make a Deal, is sufficient to beat out Charli for the popular vote. It didn’t help that on Michael Bublé Night, he only had a couple of days practice as he had been laid up, and he finished in fifth place with a score of 44. But he should recover on Halloween Night. And Gabby, again while not having ballroom dance experience was a professional cheerleader for the Denver Broncos, which has to give her somewhat of an advantage, as does the fact that she will receive a huge amount of votes from Bachelor Nation, who helped Kaitlyn Bristowe in season 29 and Hannah Brown in Season s8 walk off with the Mirrorball Trophy. Running a close fourth place is drag queen Shangela, partnered with Gleb Savchenko, who was awarded 35 points on Prom Night for her cha cha. Shangela has shown steady improvement over the season and has a good shot at making it into the finale if her numbers keep going up. The rest of the celebs, including Daniel Durant, Trevor Donovan and Vinny Guadagnino are pretty much out of the running. Daniel and Trevor have finished in the Bottom 2 at one point, but the popular vote has pulled them through, so look to them to not make the finale.
Who’s left this season on Dancing with the Stars?
Wayne Brady and Witney Carson
Charli D’Amelio and Mark Ballas
Shangela and Gleb Savchenko
Gabby Windey and Val Chmerkovskiy
Dancing with the Stars streams Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on Disney+. Next, Here’s How To Vote This Season on Dancing with the Stars
