Jeopardy! Second Chance: Pete Johnston takes the win after a surprising slip

Jeopardy! Second Chance finals was a nail-biting thriller that kept viewers on their toes. 

In the final episode of the two-part finale, viewers saw a close match between Dave Widmayer and Pete Johnston. 

After a surprising fumble from Widmayer in the final round turned the game around and made Pete an unexpected winner. 

This won’t be the first time Pete has won the competition due to a certain surprising twist of fate in the last round. 

In the semifinals, Pete won against Chris Turner Neal after the latter gave a wrong answer. 

After the win, Pete Johnston got a chance to compete in the Champion Wildcard tournament in 2026. 

Jeopardy! Second chance recap: Pete won against Eugene Huang and Dave Widmayer in the finals

The episode began with the introduction of the players in the competition. 

Three contestants who were competing in the deciding game were Pete Johnston, Eugene Huang, and Dave Widmayer. 

Both Pete and Dave started the game with $0, and Eugene Huang started with $6000 that he earned in the last game. 

Ken Jennings started the game, stating:

“Welcome everybody to this week’s deciding game at Jeopardy! Second Chance competition. It seems appropriate, given today is officially National Underdog Day, that one of these second-chancers, Pete, Dave and Eugene will be advancing to the Champions Wild Card as a true underdog success story.” 

He further continued:

“The scores you see in front of them will now be wiped clean and will be added back to their total at the end of the show to determine our winner. Good luck you three.” 

In the Jeopardy! Round the categories were 12 Days of Christmas, In Cash, Historic American, Job-Breviations, Broadway, That’s (A Word from The) Italian! and Landform Ho. 

In the first round, Dave got a Daily Double after winning $1000 for the first question. 

He bet the complete amount and answered incorrectly, which brought his score again to a zero. 

But he quickly gained the momentum in the game. 

At the end of the first round, Dave was in the lead with $36,000, Eugene was in second place on the leaderboard, and Pete was at the bottom with $800. 

The second round started with Dave. 

In this round too, Dave maintained his position in the competition. 

The final clue for this round was:

“In 2017 and 2018, B. Midler was simply Divine as the matchmaking M. Levi in this show.” 

The answer to the question was correctly answered by Eugune who said:

“ What is Hello Dolly? ” 

After this round Dave was on top with $6,600. 

Eugene, with $3,200, was in the second spot, and Pete was again in the last spot with $1,400. 

In the Double Jeopardy! the categories were 19th-century women writers, Vocabulary, In London's National Portrait Gallery, Cop Rock, Ye Old Science and Pulling your Wait. 

Pete came back to game with a bang. He even got a chance to answer Daily Double. 

The question was:

“ An older sister wrote about this younger one’s ‘Tenant of Wildfell Hall,’ ‘The Choice of Subject was an Entire Mistake.’”

Pete answered:

“ Who is Anne Bronte?” 

This answer brought his winnings to $13,000. 

By the end of the Double Jeopardy! The scores were:
Pete Johnston $13,400

Dave Widmayer $20,000 

Eugene $11,200

The final Jeopardy! clue was:

“ A store’s mingling of displays of two different holidays inspired a poem & years later, a 1990s film with this name.” 

Eugene and Pete both answered correctly. 

Eugene’s final total was $25,800 after adding the last episode winnings. 

Pete’s total came to $26,800. 

Dave, though, answered correctly, but a simple mistake cost him his win. 

He wrote, “What is the nightmare before Halloween?” 

The correct answer was:

“ The night before Christmas.” 

This small fumble brought his score to $11,599 and placed him third. 

Ken Jennings concluded by announcing:

“ Pete Johnston has come from behind once again.” 

Stay tuned for more such updates.