Team Liquid has eliminated TSM from the 2021 League of Legends Championship Series Mid-Season Showdown in a 3-1 victory. Team Liquid will move on to face Cloud9 in the finals of the post-season to see who will represent North America at the 2021 Mid-Season Invitational. 

Team Liquid initially came into the series favored against TSM, and for good reason. Despite an 0-2 record against TSM in the 2021 LCS Spring Split, TL dismantled TSM in the first round of the LCS Mid-Season Showdown 3-1 and gave the significant impression that it was the better team. In this rematch, TL added permanence to its initial impression against TSM in a best-of-five series, and even more impressively, did so at an unexpected disadvantage.

Less than a day before TL's match against TSM, TL jungler Lucas "Santorin" Larsen announced that health complications had affected his performance in the team's previous series against Cloud9, and because his health had not improved, he would be missing at least game 1 of the series against TSM.

While Santorin was looking to rally as soon as possible in case TL needed him, that scenario never came to fruition. Team Liquid Academy jungler Jonathan "Armao" Armao had arguably the best performance of his career throughout the series, which leaves Santorin potentially fresh to face off against C9 tomorrow as Team Liquid initially hoped.

Team Liquid nearly threw away its lead in the first game of the series due to yet another immaculate Baron Nashor steal by TSM jungler Mingyi "Spica" Lu and a lackluster performance from TL mid laner Nicolaj "Jensen" Jensen, but ended up pulling out the game 1 win. TSM had a massive lead nearing 9k gold after the early game of game 2, but ended up throwing the game away to allow TL to go 2-0 up in the series.

TSM managed to win game 3 thanks to a 1v9 performance courtesy of mid laner Tristan "PowerOfEvil" Schrage on Orianna, but in game 4, Team Liquid slammed the door as soon as possible. Of the 14 kills that occured in the first 20 minutes of game 4, 100% of them were on TL's side. A 14-0 lead is relatively easily to close out for any LCS team, let alone one of TL's caliber, and thus, TSM's final nexus shattered in its elimination from the Mid-Season Showdown in 19-0 kills.

Team Liquid will move onto the finals of the LCS Mid-Season Showdown against C9 after losing its first match against the 1st place LCS Spring Split team last week 3-1. C9 is undeniably favored in the matchup in terms of overall ability and recency, so it will be up to Team Liquid to carry its momentum and retain familiarity from its last matchup against Cloud9 to muster an upset.