Episode Recap: Living the Dream

Everything has led to this moment: the Face Off finale. The final three contestants, Anthony, Kris, and Wayne, are greeted with video calls from their loved ones, an event that makes them all realize why they're here and what they're working for. They meet McKenzie in the lab where she tells them that the finale will be taking place in Las Vegas! Their work will be part of the spectacle "Le Reve The Dream", a high-flying/aquatic show at the Wynn Resort. Artistic Director James Santos tells them about the main players in the show, Dream Thieves and their victims, of which each contestant will have to make a pair. The contestants select their themes: Anthony chooses "sinister," Wayne goes for "supernatural," and Kris grabs "ethereal." McKenzie drops one last bomb: because this is an aquatic show, the makeups will have to be completely waterproof.

To make things easier, they each get to pick two of the most recently eliminated contestants as their teammates, and all three teams get the basic sculptures blocked out in record time. Mr. Westmore comes in with McKenzie the following day for a final consultation, hammering home the notion that everything MUST be waterproof. Going into the third day, Wayne is worried that his sculptures aren't further along since it means that the prepainting he was counting on is not going to happen on schedule. Anthony is also stressing since one of his face pieces "second skinned," meaning air bubbles appeared in the foam as it dried, and to make matters worse, the mold is cracked, meaning he has no other option but to re-sculpt the face.

In an attempt to make up for lost time, Anthony has Autumn, his teammate, mold the chest while he makes a new face, but Autumn wraps the cement-like material too far around the neck, locking the piece. If they can't get this mold off, Anthony could be out of the running. Autumn feels awful as she and Eric Z., their other teammate, pry the mold away from the form, finally getting it loose and saving the piece. 

Then, it's off to Vegas! The finalists are wowed by their suite at the Wynn Las Vegas and have a celebratory drink on their last night as competitors. On the day of the finale, they have just a few hours to get everything painted and applied. When it's time for brushes down, 

Kris's creations are the first to walk on stage, and his gleaming, silver dream thief makes a striking impression. The red and yellow dreamer next to him also looks dramatic, and the judges are stunned by how smoothly his edges are blended. Next is Anthony's work, a ghoulish thief and a sinister, yet lovely, dreamer. They both look very much of the same world, though that world looks very far away from our own. Although Wayne was behind on his painting, he still managed to get a color scheme with depth, and his sculpture, which included demon horns that extended all the way into the back of the character's skull and adolescent wings that were just starting to birth out of the angel's back, was exemplary, as usual.

McKenzie steps on stage to introduce the show, an exhilarating escapade through the air and underwater. The characters step out of the performance looking just as striking as they did at the beginning, a tremendous feat for any artist to achieve. 

The judges have a very close race on their hands, but they announce Anthony as the winner of a Fiat 500, $100,000, and the title of Face Off Champion. He's thrilled to tears, and Kris and Wayne clap him with hugs, amazed that they made it as far as they did and proud of their own achievements on this show.