After four months of uncertainty, the prayers of LCS fans have finally been answered: one of the most notable faces in all of professional League of Legends will be returning to the screen for the biggest NA event of the spring.
In a new hype video for the upcoming 2023 LCS Spring Split Playoffs finals, Riot Games has revealed that James “Dash” Patterson will be returning to host finals weekend. Despite Dash’s long tenure in the LCS, this will be the first time he appears as a host this year on the broadcast following the change in direction to a host-less split and a new show for himself featuring many of the league’s players.
In his time away from the LCS, Dash has appeared on a variety of broadcasts for other titles, including VALORANT and Age of Empires 2, as well as continuing his presence through his Twitch channel. He has still been a part of the LCS, but in a different way through the creation of the show “Dash Made Me,” in which he has done stunts with LCS players such as skydiving as a means of showing their personalities more.
Yet this entire time, fans have been very vocal about how detrimental they’ve felt that Dash’s departure from the broadcast has been, despite the LCS’ experimental broadcast changes like the addition of influencers, analysis from the players themselves, and more. The LCS seems to have played into this noise with this video, making it clear that players and those behind the scenes are excited to celebrate Dash’s return.
The 2023 LCS Spring Playoffs finals in Raleigh, North Carolina will feature a lower bracket finals match between FlyQuest and Golden Guardians on April 8, with the victor moving on to compete against Cloud9 in the grand finals the following day. The winner of this first match will also earn a spot at MSI alongside C9 as the two LCS representatives at the first international tournament of the year.
