Deal or No Deal Island winner (and Banker) revealed

Warning: This article contains spoilers about the season 1 finale of Deal or No Deal Island.

Last week’s penultimate episode of Deal or No Deal Island ended on a cliffhanger as Boston Rob Mariano and Amy McCoy were still out in a giant Panamanian maze, and the last one to arrive back to host Joe Manganiello with their briefcase would be immediately eliminated from the game.

Amy had been out on the course first after solving a number puzzle, while Rob had been last after being assessed a penalty for looking at Amy’s answer that forced him to wait three minutes after the last person left to enter the maze. Jordan Fowler and Stephanie Mitchell had already passed Amy, however, and Rob was hot on her heels.

Much in the same way Survivor: Panama once created a cliffhanger in its penultimate episode to delay the elimination of super-popular player Cirie Fields so that Cirie fans would still tune into the finale, the Deal or No Deal Island gambit was a tip-off that Rob would lose his footrace, and indeed he did. He was eliminated at the start of Monday’s finale on NBC. And after Stephanie’s case was shown to have the least amount of money, she too was booted from the game.

That set up a final excursion between Amy and Jordan, in which the two women had to walk from opposite ends of a shaky high-wire to grab a red rope in the middle and retrieve the final golden case. When Jordan eventually won that race, that meant she would be facing off against the Banker, with a final case worth $13,857,000. But first, she had to meet the Banker.

In a twist even less surprising than Boston Rob being eliminated, the Banker was finally revealed, and it was none other than original Deal or No Deal host (and current Island executive producer) Howie Mandel. An oddly confrontational Mandel attended the final Temple battle and presented his offers in person, but also attending was the entire eliminated cast, for once all in unison and rooting together for Jordan to take home as much cash as possible.

After declining the first offer of $203,000, the second offer of $607,000, and a third offer of $1,197,000, Jordan finally accepted a fourth offer (that somehow kept going up even though she continued to pick high cases off the board) of $1,230,000. When that amount was higher than the money in her selected case, Jordan walked away a millionaire… at least before taxes.

And it seems that money is already being put to good use. All season, Jordan talked about needing the money to fund her “fertility journey” — especially after enduring a devastating late-term miscarriage — and a cut to five months after filming revealed a pregnant Jordan and her husband showing off an ultrasound of their soon-to-be born child. Sounds like that was a “good deal” on many fronts.

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And thus concludes the first season of Deal or No Deal Island, a restructuring of the classic game show that had some wonky, nonsensical game mechanics — contestants were supposed to root for low value cases in the Temple even though that made their chances of survival much worse — but was nonetheless compelling viewing due to a charismatically confrontational cast that feuded early and often, and the easy, breezy charm of host Manganiello, who served up just the right amount of cheese in his role of Banker conduit and games-master.

No word on if Manganiello will actually start making the tea in season 2, or just continue to watch the contestants spill it.