Australian Ninja Warrior boss reacts to viewer backlash

FOR the second year in a row, some viewers were angry that Australian Ninja Warrior failed to crown a winner. Now the show’s executive producer has hit back.

THE executive producer of Australian Ninja Warrior says she was just as disappointed as many viewers were that there wasn’t a winner for the second year in a row.

None of the remaining 24 Ninjas were able to make it past Stage 2 of the grand final course and some fans vented online saying they felt “cheated” and that it was “the most anticlimactic season finale ever”.

Speaking to news.com.au, executive producer Julie Ward said: “We were disappointed that someone didn’t get up there too.”

@NinjaWarriorAU I feel cheated investing my time in #NinjaWarriorAU. No one even came close to finishing the course

— Martin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (@giveusaW) July 31, 2018

What a flop! Massive anti-climax on #NinjaWarriorAU Who tested this thing? It’s too hard. Just makes for a very boring show! @Channel9

— Kerry (@kerrygoonie) July 31, 2018

I don’t get it they compete for three weeks and there’s no winner what’s the point #NinjaWarriorAU

— Sumo7769 (@sumo7769) July 31, 2018

The Ninja Warrior boss said she was “kind of surprised” by the backlash from some viewers over the grand final result and thought viewers had a better understanding of how the show works given there wasn’t a winner on last year’s season either.

“Coming up to the season two finale, I think I thought, ‘People will kind of know what to expect,’ as I think they did,” Ward said.

“What I think is interesting is when you look at the actual competitors and they’re disappointed but it’s not the end of the world. Their motivation is to get up and push on and try harder next time. I think we at home sitting on the couch, who are we wanting to win for? Is it for ourselves and the happy ending that we like? Or is it for the competitors?”

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Some viewers felt the grand final course was simply too tough, but Ward denied that was the case.

“We make it tough but we don’t make it unbeatable,” she told news.com.au. “We want somebody to win.

“The funny thing was that at the end of it quite a few of the Ninjas came up to me and they just said, ‘We’re so sorry, we just should have done better. We could have done it.’

“The people that line up to do that course could have done it but on the night … many of them were looking ahead to see to see what was next rather than dealing with the obstacle they were on.

Ashlin Herbert bombed out during the Ninja Warrior grand final.

“In testing, that course was do-able. It’s just that nobody did it on the night. There were several of them that could have gone all the way and done it.”

As was mentioned several times during Tuesday night’s grand final, it took seven seasons for a competitor to defeat the grand final course on the US version of Ninja Warrior and it’s yet to be achieved on the UK version.

“We’ve done better in our first two seasons than our international counterparts,” Ward told news.com.au.

Given the backlash, will producers be tempted to make the course slightly easier for the next season in the hopes of crowning a winner?

“I don’t think we would dumb it down,” Ward said. “We wouldn’t want to.

“We expect more successes year on year and they did get further down the course this year than last year. We had just expected, as did they, that they would get further, if not all the way.”

Applications for the third season of Australian Ninja Warrior are now open.

Rob Patterson went the furthest, fastest in the Australian Ninja Warrior grand final.