Gen. G’s two-year reign in the LCK and the hopes to retain their LCK Summer Split final ended with their clash with
Hanwha Life eSports at the weekend. HLE’s win means they are climbing the ladder to LCK supremacy after dethroning the reigning winners.
HLE also claimed their first seed at Worlds in an explosive manner, but their win makes it the second successive year that a team will only come close and not achieve the elusive LoL grand slam of winning all their domestic splits and the Mid-Season Invitational. On both occasions, each team has gone only one more win away from achieving the feat with JD Gaming’s failure in the LPL last year with Gen.G at the latest.
Gen. G’s 2024 has been impressive before now as they won the LCK Spring Split and MSI title, looking unstoppable going into the Summer Split finals and looked well poised for the grand slam that no esports team has managed in the League history.
Thus, it looked upsetting that HLE managed a first win over Gen.G for the first time since 2021, doing it in a big way to stop Gen. G’s two-year dominance plus take the region’s first seed at the 2024 World Championship.
Hanwha Life defeated T1 3-1 in a convincing win in the semifinals before the grand final where they showed an excellent teamfighting to dispose Gen.G.
Interestingly, three former Gen.G players, Doran, Peanut, and Delight, were on the winning team just a year after being a part of Gen.G. HLE’s star jungler Peanut after an interview at the end of the game explained his journey to his seventh regional title, the first jungler to achieve the feat.
Meanwhile, his teammate Zeka also won the MVP award and his first LCK title after posting an incredible performance in the grand final. He revealed that he drew inspiration from his previous poor results against Gen. G’s Chovy to win in the final.
“The process of losing against Chovy up until this day is what allowed me to win today,” said Zeka, who had a poor 16-1 match record against Chovy before this series.
