After 17 weeks of Premier League action, the best two players in the world reached the final and the bookies' overwhelming favourite prevailed, but as the confetti fell on Luke Littler once again, we glimpsed a different side of darts' champion.
Having dispatched a valiant Luke Humphries in one of the all-time finals, Littler's tearful interview "told the world" just how much the road to reclaiming his title has taken out of him.
The Premier League's gruelling four-month long format is a notoriously arduous tournament that requires little else but unceasing brilliance from its winner.
Victorious in two last-leg deciders on Thursday -- his 13th out of 15 in this year's competition -- Littler's hopes of winning every major tournament available this year remain intact.
Littler bares his soul after silencing his critics
Despite his everyman quality off-stage, Littler's world-building dominance at the oche can make him seem unrelatable to many of the 100% polyester-clad revellers in the crowd.
It's part of why his recent recasting as darts' villain after flashpoints at the world championship and with Gian van Veen on night nine in Manchester have taken hold.
The slightly pantomime nature to the booing that has welcomed him to every venue since has been the most notable development to have come out of this year's many weeks of Premier League action. But until Thursday night, we have been given little reason to believe the crowd's about face has truly affected darts' boy king.
And so the sight of a victorious Littler breaking down in tears onstage, and his subsequent explanation for the reason behind them, was clearly an outpouring of pent-up emotion.
"After Brighton I think I came off stage, and the incident in Manchester, I was sat at home saying to Faith [his partner] 'I don't want to do it anymore.' Just the crowd every week, week in, week out. I said to her, 'I'm down bad,'" revealed an emotional Littler.
There were words of support from his great rival who said he experienced something similar after winning his world title in 2024. "What he said there would have been emotion," Humphries told reporters. "You're never putting the darts down because you're not going to do that... I think the fans do want to see him play because I think darts needs Luke Littler, Luke Littler doesn't need darts. That's the truth.
"It's nice to see that he's bounced back with the fans. I think everyone thinks he's a robot -- he's not, he is a normal person, a good kid as well, and I think that's why he's trying to show everyone that."
After bearing his soul in such a public way for the first time, it will be interesting to see whether Littler's character arc has already come full circle.
- Tearful Luke Littler was 'down bad' before Premier League title triumph
- Report: Littler beats Humphries in thriller to regain Premier League title
An eventful finals night in which every leg was played
At the halfway stage of Thursday's showpiece event, the loser was set to do so despite posting an average higher than the Premier League final record set by Michael van Gerwen in 2018 (112.37).
By the end, Littler's averaged dipped a little to 111, despite him nailing 12 maximums in the match. Humphries, meanwhile, finished with an average of 105 and pulled off three 100+ checkouts.
It was a fitting final to round off a remarkable finals night in which all three matches went to last-leg deciders after Gerwyn Price and then Jonny Clayton threatened to pull off unthinkable comebacks against their higher-ranked opponents.
The eye-catching statistics were matched by the sight of tense incidents in both semifinals.
First, Price was spoken to by referee Huw Ware after performing Littler's trademark 'big fish' celebration within The Nuke's eyeline after hitting 170 on his throw.
The conversations that followed caused a brief delay in the match as all three parties discussed what had happened. Littler was clearly thrown off by it, ceding the next four legs to his opponent as Price almost got revenge for his opponent's comeback win over him in Dublin on night seven.
The other semifinal also went to the wire, with Clayton coming back from being 6-2 down at one point to throw for the match at 9-9. After missing his crucial last dart at the outer ring, Clayton turned to a section of the crowd, appearing to indicate that someone had been attempting to put him off by whistling as he threw.
Humphries, who stepped up and punished Clayton's missed dart to clinch his place in the final, also seemed temporarily perturbed by noises coming from the same section of the crowd in his showdown with Littler.
Is the current Premier League format a blast or a bore?
Despite Thursday night's drama, the Premier League has come in for criticism from some fans wanting a change to a league phase that can often feel repetitive.
Take the showpiece event between Littler and Humphries: before facing off in the final, they had played each other eight times across 16 weeks of league action in matches laced with varying degrees of mild jeopardy.
The lack of a slow-burn build-up before what should have been a highly-anticipated clash meant the meeting of two darting behemoths felt less like a decisive battle for supremacy and more like the latest flashpoint of a minor dispute.
The Premier League has undergone several evolutions since its introduction in 2005, with a 'judgement night' featuring in some and experiments had with 'challengers.' The PDC moved to the current format of eight players competing in 16 weekly mini-tournaments in 2022.
"I mean, I'd like to see a change," Littler told reporters on Wednesday. "I'd like to play in a Premier League where it's just one game a night. Get an extra two players in, get a judgement night back in as well because that's what I grew up watching.
"It was very interesting to see, obviously two Premier League players go with your 10th or ninth placed player and then the other eight can battle it out. But if it's not working, then change it, But if it's working for us, working for the PDC, then keep it in place."
Darts, as with every sport, faces a need to balance the wants of the die-hard fan, with the more occasional interest of a spectator just wanting to turn up and see the best against the best.
PDC chief executive Matt Porter has recently hinted that the Premier League format is due to change in the future.
"We will change it at some point, but at the moment you can only look at the numbers that are in front of you," Porter told the Metro in February. "The live crowd and the TV audience, the numbers are telling us that the format is working."
The regularity of the match-ups is a concern Porter accepted.
"That is the biggest criticism of it," he said. "There is a lot of repetition. But you're looking at it through the eyes of somebody who's perhaps watching it on TV every week.
"If you're in Nottingham, you want to see Littler vs. Humphries, and if you're in Aberdeen, you might want to see the same, and if you're in Brighton, you might want to see the same. It's very difficult to turn around to people and say, 'oh, sorry, you can't see the biggest matchup in your city.'"
After a relatively dour league phase gave way to a thrilling finals night, it remains to be seen whether this year has been the last for the current format.