BLAST Bounty Season 2: Spirit shut the door on 100 Thieves to grab the last Malta ticket

The upsets never really stopped at BLAST Bounty Season 2, and the RO16 threw in a few more for good measure. Spirit were in no mood to become another headline, though. They took a rough one on Mirage, shook it off, and then dropped a 13-0 on 100 Thieves on Dust2 to claim the last ticket to Malta. Harsh way to send a team home, and a tidy little warning to everyone already packing their bags.

Spirit vs 100 Thieves went from dream to disaster

For about a map and a half, the upset was on. 100 Thieves had already knocked out reigning Major champions Falcons earlier in the run, so the belief was real, and they backed it up by taking Mirage 13-4 to square the series at 1-1.

Then they walked onto Dust2, and donk woke up. Spirit did not just win the map. They won every round of it. 13-0. That is the sort of number that trails a team around for a while.

Ouch does not quite cover it.

The 2019 reunion nobody ordered

The top half of the bracket read like an old LAN poster. MOUZ, Astralis, Liquid, and FaZe all came through, four names that owned the pre-COVID years and have spent plenty of time since watching the deep rounds from the sofa.

Liquid barely broke a sweat, holding G2 to 11 rounds on the way to a 2-0. MOUZ were just as clean against FOKUS, taking Dust2 13-10 and Mirage 13-8 with no need for a third map. Astralis and FaZe each dropped a map, to HOTU and Dendele, but neither result ever looked shaky. jabbi did the heavy lifting for Astralis, and Twistzz was the difference for FaZe, both of them going to work on Cache.

paiN, 3DMAX and The MongolZ punch their tickets

Day two filled the last four seats. paiN got there first, seeing off Snappi’s NIP 2-0, though map two made them sweat before they closed it 16-14 in overtime. 3DMAX were the shock of the afternoon, knocking out a FUT side still finding its feet with new signing xfl0ud.

The MongolZ wrapped things up with a tidy 2-0 over Wildcard, 13-7 on Dust2 and 13-9 on Inferno, and young gun tikuak looked right at home doing it.

The BLAST Bounty Season 2 Finals field is set

So the eight are locked: Spirit, MOUZ, Astralis, Liquid, FaZe, The MongolZ, paiN, and 3DMAX, all now Malta-bound. Here is the wild part. Spirit are the only top-10 side who made it, with world number 11 MOUZ the next best ranked in the room. The draw happens Wednesday on a live show, and since the teams get a say in who they face, that alone is worth the watch. There is $1,150,000 on the line at the BLAST Bounty Season 2 Finals, and after that Dust2 beatdown, Spirit are the name nobody will want pulled out next to theirs.