Insight Into Iceland is your daily recap of the 2021 Mid-Season Invitational.

Look below for Recaps and Takeaways from today’s games, or watch the video version of the Takeaways.

Recaps

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DK vs. MAD: DK 3-2

Game 1: DK win
DK Ornn Rumble Yone Varus Tahm Kench
MAD Jayce Udyr Zoe Kai’sa Rell

Ghost/BeryL pressure bot very hard. Armut solo Ks Khan. Humanoid solo Ks ShowMaker. DK have lots of pressure, get H1; MAD get 2 dragons. DK take over the team fights, outscale to win.

Game 2: MAD win
MAD Lee Sin Volibear Sylas Xayah Braum
DK Gnar Udyr Viktor Kai’sa Nautilus

Constant action bot, Ghost BeryL ahead ’til Carzzy Kaiser get several 2v2 kills. MAD work turrets, punish DK pushback effort. Baron dances: Carzzy steals!? BeryL ints at soul.

Game 3: MAD win
DK Gnar Rumble Jayce Varus Nautilus
MAD Wukong Udyr Orianna Kai’sa Leona

Carzzy Kaiser 2v2 BeryL for FB. DK FD+H1, FT mid. MAD nice double TP play into bot. Scrappy rotations. MAD Baron; DK ace. MAD macro gives adv. to win huge infernal soul fight.

Game 4: DK win
DK Lee Sin Rumble Sylas Tristana Rell
MAD Gnar Udyr Viktor Kai’sa Leona

Ganky early laning, MAD get some kills. ShowMaker roams top for a play that nets top plates. ShowMaker TPs bot to punish a MAD dive. ShowMaker is good. It’s over early.

Game 5: DK win
MAD Gnar Udyr Sylas Kai’sa Leona
DK Jayce Rumble Zoe Tristana Alistar

Khan controls top, avoids Elyoya gank. Canyon ganks bot, FB+FD. MAD get H1, lose plates bot. MAD TP flank gets 2-1 fight but DK still take H2. DK gold lead gets too big too quickly.

Takeaways

SHOUTOUT TO SHOWMAKER: When it looked like all might be lost for DWK KIA in this series, when Ghost and BeryL and Khan were stumbling through Cloud9-level mental lapses and the MAD Lions were pushing the pace and picking up kills all over the map, one player stood strong and carried his team across the finish line of this series and into the MSI Finals.

Okay, it was kind of two players because Canyon played well too, but ShowMaker was so great today, really.

ShowMaker’s Teleport into the bottom lane in game 4 was a direct game-winner. He was the best part of their game 3 loss, generating prio for crab control and setting up the mid outer turret for a Herald charge that secured the FT bonus. His Zoe in game 5 was classic ShowMaker Zoe, with clutch bubbles and good map presence.

ShowMaker’s direct skill advantages over RNG’s Cryin will be a potential path to victory in the Finals, even if ShowMaker showed respect to Cryin in the postmatch press conference by praising Cryin as a talented player. It’ll be fun to see how that matchup plays out.

HEAD HOME WITH PRIDE: The MAD Lions pushed DK hard today, going right at them and outplaying them in quite a few different scenarios. Armut and Humanoid had solo kills, Carzzy and Kaiser ate Ghost and BeryL repeatedly, and MAD used some good map control and minion wave pressure to make DK uncomfortable and secure objectives and wins. Even if DK inted a bunch, that doesn’t take away from all of the good things MAD did to be ready to catch those throws, or to squeeze DK hard enough to make those ints pop out.

Europe should be proud of what their team brought out. This was an eminently winnable series, and the main reason it didn’t go their way was that arguably the best player in the world willed it not to be.

Feel your feelings, MAD fans, and then head into summer with high hopes.

Photos courtesy Riot Games