Why FlyQuest vs Gen.G is NA’s best LoL moment in 15 years

North American League of Legends has been the butt of many jokes for a long time, even those made by NA fans, but FlyQuest’s quarterfinals performance this year felt like the culmination of a decade and a half of struggle.

North American success in League of Legends often feels as though it’s discussed in relative terms. Making it into the knockout stage of an international event has become the bar that most teams aim for as international success. But this Worlds changed everything, perhaps permanently, for the region. Long gone seem the days of MSI 2019, Team Liquid’s victory against Invictus Gaming, and the hopes for NA supremacy. Instead, that quarterfinal win into finals appearance feels more and more like the region’s grand Icarus moment. Too high, too far, too close to the burning star that is the LCK and LPL.

But, this Worlds, FlyQuest delivered a quarterfinals performance against the LCK’s best team that made those wax wings seem stable enough to hold the dreams of an entire region and raise them to the sunlight, if only for four brief hours.

NARAM in the Howling Abyss

North American League of Legends on the international stage has long been an affair in fandom and futility.

The region’s brushes with international glory have always felt like temporary reprieves from the regularly scheduled floor-moppings from Korean and Chinese organizations. Teams would exit Group stages only to be shellacked by the LCK and LPL, often looking like less effective, less coordinated imitations of their eastern betters.

So much so that the term “NA-RAM” was coined to describe the scuffed macro and unpurposeful posturing in the middle of the map done so often by North American teams. And, much to the chagrin of NA fans, the criticism was oft-warranted critiques of the region’s consistent struggle to play the Asian meta at a given tournament at a sufficiently competitive level.

In 2024, the hope of the region has sat with a reinvigorated Team Liquid, pioneering the lane swap meta in a way few other teams in the World could hope to replicate. The revelation that North America’s presumptive emperors were playing some of the best macro-strategy seen in the region, especially around lane swaps, was a shocking one for long-time NA fans.

To many, this Team Liquid was the region’s shining hope for the impending year-end international. And yet, the LCS 2024 Summer champions and eventual heroes of Worlds 2024 weren’t glad in the blue and white of Liquid, but the green of FlyQuest.

The teams viewed as sprinting to keep up to Team Liquid finally caught up. Come LCS finals, FlyQuest proved itself indubitably the better team, and that unexpected showing snowballed into a consistent advantage for FlyQuest. For all its struggles, FlyQuest had sharpened itself against the whetstone of Team Liquid and was suddenly the best team.

It wasn’t the heralded heroes of the region, the sole undefeated team come end-of-split, that would bring the region its best performance that year. It was the underestimated rival, doubted and discounted, that would rise to the moment.

From the jaws of defeat

The Quarterfinals match was meant to be a one-sided stomp. Gen.G are the LCK’s best team, and should, by every metric, walk through FlyQuest like a hot knife through butter. But that’s not what happens.

Game one, FlyQuest led with Ashe into Seraphine. Seraphine simply hadn’t been played at Worlds, and suddenly things are interesting. Gen.G opens with Skarner, Rumble, Ahri, to which FlyQuest rounds out its first picks with Galio. Gen.G finish off with Jinx and Leona, while FlyQuest opts for Xin Zhao and Alistar. With the exception of the Seraphine, these are stock-standard team fight compositions.

However, unlike many times before it, FlyQuest starts winning and doesn’t stop. FlyQuest plays the lane swap more effectively than Gen.G and, come that inevitable midgame, is simply outfighting the Korean favorite. When game one closes out, it’s a game lead for the North American underdog.

Game two felt like the series many expected, Gen.G ban Quad’s Seraphine that was stifling its engages and rips back a game from FlyQuest. Despite the Nunu and Willump pick, Kim “Canyon” Geon-bu’s Nidalee is simply too much. Eyes on the game wonder if the first game a fluke. Will FlyQuest come hot out of the gates only to fizzle and fall 3-1? The answer is a resounding no.

This time, it’s a Zeri mid pick from Song “Quad” Su-hyeong that breaks the draft open for FlyQuest. Whatever Hyperbolic Time Chamber the NA champ went into between Swiss and the quarterfinals, it worked. Game three is another masterclass from FlyQuest. No gimmicky picks or shallow strategy, its choosing to fight Gen.G on even ground and coming out ahead. Even LoL mega-streamer Marc “Caedrel” Lamont can’t believe his eyes:

“I don’t think FlyQuest is playing anything egregiously cheesy right now!…This is just outperforming [Gen.G,]” said Caedrel.

Belief, brethren, battle

As FlyQuest departed that stage, the anticipation and disbelief of a world with its eyes glued to the Parisian venue could be felt, surging like a monstrous swell bound for the shore. In that moment, it felt inevitable. It wasn’t just real, it was pre-destined, willed to be by fate itself. To many fans, seeing that 2-1 emblazoned on the Worlds stage felt, momentarily, like assured victory. It could not have been more real if the match record had been scored into stone with a chisel. FlyQuest had made it this far, and with just one win in two more games, it could become real.

Korea’s best team, better even than the defending world champions, was struggling to meet the NA scramblers on even ground. For years, seemingly no matter the advantage that had been procured, Asian teams would meet NA’s representatives at an objective and simply, cleanly, outfight them. Fans have seen it year after year, fragile NA gold advantages that disappear in furious melees around a Dragon or Baron Nashor.

FlyQuest is taking the screws to Gen.G, and its doing it with unique drafts, pocket picks, and excellent macro play.

When Gen.G crack back game four in the exact same fashion as game two, the reality of Silver Scrapes set in. This entire series will come down to a single game, one bout, one single chance, that will determine if history takes its predicted course or the greatest upset of all LoL esports history crashes through the walls of the Parisian arena and cements itself in the history of the game.

End of men, first of ten

The final game’s draft was something nobody was prepared for. Gen.G, opting to target FlyQuest’s emergent picks, leaves Yone, the prime pick of the tournament, open. FlyQuest snaps it up, to which Gen.G responds with Skarner and Smolder. It’s a relatively expected draft, with Smolder being an interesting counter to Yone introduced by Gen.G. However, as picks rotate back to FlyQuest, things get wild.

FlyQuest’s second and third picks take a turn that nobody saw coming. Kalista, a consistently strong pick in the tournament and well within Massu’s comfort zone, is up. Pairing ADC and jungle before the second round of bans in response to a jungle-mid lock by Gen.G, FlyQuest pull out the Kalista and, the spiciest pick of the series, Fiddlesticks for Kacper “Inspired” Słoma.

It’s not that Fiddlesticks isn’t top-tier, or that he has specific counters, it’s that nobody, literally nobody, is playing the demon at Worlds. As Inspired picks it, Riot’s overlay flashes “0.o% pickrate.” In its potentially final game of the year, NA’s last hope locks in a champion that hasn’t even appeared in a champion select screen all tournament. FlyQuest is cooking with gas, and somebody’s getting burned one way or the other.

And there’s no better way to send off the series.

A warrior’s death, the halls of your forefathers

The fifth game isn’t close. Gen.G gets ahead early and keeps it that way, all whilst the doomsday clock of Jeong “Chovy” Ji-hoon’s Smolder ticks ever closer to the apocalypse of 225 stacks. But, for what seems like the first time in five years, it doesn’t feel ignominious. FlyQuest aren’t trying to play the same game as China and Korea, as NA teams have often done, falling behind in the attempt to reverse-engineer the LCK or LPL style.

It feels like a throwback to 2018 Vitality’s miracle performances post-elimination from Worlds Group stage. FlyQuest is picking what it wants, playing how it knows, and that doesn’t change when it gets down to the wire.

To quote Jacob “YamatoCannon” Mebdi’s famous 2018 speech, born of that same Vitality upset performance:

“Stay true to yourselves, don’t chase anyone, don’t try to copy anyone, just be confident. Don’t limit yourselves either, go into this tournament, go into your next games, believing you can win f—ing everything.”

It’s losing, but it’s losing on its terms, on its spicy meta-defying picks, and dying on its sword in the final game. If FlyQuest is to go into that good night, it will not be quietly or comfortably appeasing another region’s view of the game.

NA hasn’t ever been able to consistently best these regions playing its game. This time, at least, the region go out on what feels like its own terms; Raging against the dying of the light. For the first time in years, the region feels distinct, separate, and competitive at the highest levels.

Online roster purists be damned, there was something ascendant about watching a Belgian, a Pole, a Korean, a Canadian, and an American stand side-by-side and trade haymakers with the best team in the world, and almost, almost, win. If NA is to go out, its fans desperately want to see it go out swinging, and FlyQuest buckled Gen.G twice with proverbial hooks.

Wax wings

If NA’s success at international must remain the crushing story of Icarus from now on, so be it. It is better, then, to be Daedalus’ son than the mythical craftsman.

To dare to fly, to strap crafted wings born of ingenuity to mortal arms and climb upwards, ever upwards, towards the blistering light of the sun. After nearly 15 years of earthly binding, it is better to dare to reach for the raging star than to shrink from it. For, in their loss to Gen.G, FlyQuest dared to fly.

Some will remember only the fall to earth, the moment the wax strips and boils and gravity takes hold once more. But as the series ended, FlyQuest and North America knew to treasure the infinitesimal moment of glory, hand outstretched to the celestial heat of contention, in defiance of gods and men alike.

Even as the wings melt, there is a silent nobility, a sacred importance, to the defiance required to meet outrageous fortune with dreams of flight.

That series, that day, FlyQuest soared.

The fall isn’t nearly as important.