Who Won the Season 41 Premiere?

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Jeopardy! Season 41 premiere.]

Jeopardy! has returned for a new season, and while there’s plenty to celebrate—new episodes, new questions, regular gameplay (but tournaments are coming)—some fans are already upset about the broadcasts. In some places, the episode on September 9 was interrupted with breaking news—but it seems what made fans mad was that the news had already been revealed during a previous commercial break.

Season 41 kicked off with returning champion Rachel Bradley, an ESL instructor from Greenbelt, Maryland who had won $23,597 at the end of the previous season, facing off against Amanda White, a strategy consultant from Seattle, Washington, and Adam Reiffen, a Naval officer from San Diego, California. For the most part, fans cheered that the show is back on the Reddit thread for the episode, which seemed like a business as usual game.

“Solid game. Low-ish combined Coryat ($22,600) but Rachel made a nice run towards the end of DJ to keep it competitive,” one viewer noted on Reddit.

Reiffen was in first after each break, but at no point was it a runaway game. He also only found one of the Daily Doubles and White found the other two, but both were incorrect with their guesses for all three. Heading into Final Jeopardy, Reiffen only led $10,600 to Bradley’s $8,000 and White’s $4,000. That’s when some markets’ broadcast was interrupted, per fans on Reddit.

“Watching this now. Final jeopardy, about to find out who answered correctly. They Broke in with a special news report, that they had already teased with during the [commercial] break. It was about James Earl Jones demise. RIP, but they already told us during the commercial,” one person wrote.

“Same – kinda pissed, since the regular local news starts immediately after,” another agreed.

One viewer noted, “It was stupid. What did you think was the correct answer. I had to guess RBG.”

It seems to have happened at least in the Chicago area. “Chicago’s ABC7 interrupted into Final Jeopardy segment to announce that James Earl Jones had died,” according to a fan. “Sheesh, loved Mr. Jones, but is this something you break into programming to announce? (I came here to learn who won.)”

News of Jones’ death came just after 4:30 p.m. ET. The Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony-winning actor who was known as the voice of Star Wars‘ Darth Vader and for Field of Dreams was 93. A cause of death has not been disclosed.

The Final Jeopardy! clue, in Famous Women, read as follows: “Before her death in 2022, she pledged her collection of more than 200 pins to the National Museum of American Diplomacy.” The answer was Madeleine Albright. Reiffen was the only one to answer correctly and ended the game with a total winnings of $16,001.

The good news is if your broadcast was interrupted, you should be able to catch what you missed online: Assuming Jeopardy! does the same as last season, Final Jeopardy! is posted on the show’s official YouTube channel for each episode.

What did you think of the premiere? Let us know in the comments section, below.

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