2025 RSL Revival: 2025 Season Finals Preview

by Wax

The first year of RSL Revival is set to wrap up this weekend, ending its 2025 run with its first offline, live event. The two-day competition will take on a structure StarCraft II fans should be very familiar with: an open bracket qualifier feeding into the all-deciding playoffs.



Day 1 - Open Bracket: Saturday, Dec 13 4:30am GMT (GMT+00:00)

• 16-player single elimination
  
• Winner qualifies for grand finals bracket
  
• Qualifying match is BO7, all other matches are BO5

Day 2 - Grand finals: Sunday, Dec 14 4:30am GMT (GMT+00:00)

• 4-player single elimination
  
• 3 highest placing players from RSL Seasons 1-3 + Open Bracket winner
  
• All matches are BO7

The open bracket should allay fears of an all-Protoss playoffs, with the three strongest players in Maru, Reynor, and Solar representing either Terran or Zerg.

It's hard to say which of the three is the favorite to make it through the 16-player prelim. RSL Season 3 allowed Maru to partially clear his reputation of being a serial underperformer in online events. He dominated all of his opponents save for herO, and he just barely missed out on the championship after losing to herO in a tight 4-3, 1-2 series (two-leg double elimination finals). Depending on one's point of view, Maru's failure to topple herO could either point to the fact that he's still a few steps away from regaining his illustrious peak form, or simply be a reflection of how well herO is playing at the moment. Should Maru qualify for the final four, one key point to look out for is how he takes advantage of his beloved turtle Terran play becoming reenabled in the current patch. He already played that style successfully in RSL Season 3, and it could have become even more deadly with further refinements.

The resurgent Solar is possibly the most intriguing player in the scene at the moment. Whether it's due to the patch, new maps, or simply his own hard work, Protoss is no longer an impenetrable brick wall for him in competitions. Late-game ZvP can still be a struggle for him, but who needs late-game when you can deploy the widest arsenal of early/mid-game strategies in the game? While there's plenty of variance to fight through in a single-elim bracket, the potential for a qualification match against Maru is looking quite juicy. In the past, Maru regularly used Solar as a punching bag (next to his speedbag of SHIN), but given their recent trajectories, it could be a very close match.

Among, the 'big three' of the open bracket, Reynor is leaning slightly more on reputation than results. He hasn't been able to rejoin the ranks of the weekly cup titans since returning to being a regular participant, and his finishes in the larger online events have been middling as well (for example, being eliminated in 6th place in RSL Season 3). Still, his peak performances are more than worth getting excited about, as he took down Serral at Maestros of the game, fought Clem to a tie at Crank Gathers #2, and defeated herO to win the latest Kung Fu Cup.

Cure and SHIN are the two wildcards in the qualifier bracket, but they've both had the misfortune of being placed in the Maru half of the bracket. Both players have historically struggled against Maru, but at least in Cure's case, he does seem to have gotten over the hump (with a huge 3-1 win at EWC). Unfortunately for SHIN, his situation seems rather hopeless even if he can take down Cure.

Moving on to the confirmed finalists, Classic's chances of becoming the first RSL bonjwa are not looking great. After winning the first two seasons during his summer peak, he went through a post-EWC slump in the following months. His top four finish in RSL Season 3 is a good reflection of the level he's shown across all competitions lately—he's no longer the clear #1 Protoss in the world, and no longer a shoo-in title contender. That hardly means he's out of contention entirely—it just means he's now looking closer to Zoun than herO now.

Despite many TL.net previews hyping his potential, Zoun remains largely the same competitor he has been all year: a high ceiling player with consistency issues. November's Stellar Fest gave us one of those delightful peaks, where he defeated Clem 4-2 in the first leg of the grand finals before giving up an 0-4 sweep in the deciding leg. However, things have gone poorly since then, with Zoun's weak match-up of PvP catching up with him during his 8th place exit in RSL Season 3 (losses to herO and Classic). It's going to be hard to build much anticipation for Zoun this time around, as he begins the bracket against top 2 PvP player herO. Even though a grand finals against Solar or Maru (or maybe even Classic in his current form) would be winnable, it's hard to see Zoun getting past the first hurdle.

Finally, we introduce the tournament favorite in herO. His combination of being both the most unpredictable aggressive player and the best macro Protoss has been just too much for most opponents to deal with, especially those not named Clem or Serral. Still, the fact that herO will always gamble in a certain proportion of his matches means his status as favorite can be precarious—fast Blink-DT's or Carriers can be very entertaining when they work, but utterly silly when they backfire.

During the RSL Season 3 previews, we placed Classic ahead of herO due to past credit from EWC, even though herO was clearly showing better recent form. Well, the events of the past few weeks have confirmed that Classic is indeed in a slump, whereas herO has extended his run of great play. He has continued to be one of the top weekly cup players alongside Clem and MaxPax, and proved his prowess in larger events by winning RSL Season 3 and the recent WardiTV Korean Royale. Forced to make a prediction, I'm going with herO to win it all, but there are plenty of worthy contenders in the RSL Season Finals.

Prediction: herO to win the RSL Season Finals