Sometimes, watching Zest play can be frustrating. For someone looking to tease out the narrative of a series, he's a major obstacle. It’s not just that his style itself is relatively unremarkable — it might charitably be described as “phenomenally solid” — it’s that there are times in Zest’s career where he suffers from an age-old storytelling problem: invincibility. Like Superman, Zest's story gets stale fast.

Once Zest gets rolling, it's hard to believe that anyone can stop him, and his ultimate showdowns tend to turn into predictable slaughterfests. The Code S Finals this past weekend, viewers only had one question left: How far can Zest push his streak before someone learns how to beat him?

The answer depended on KT Rolster TY, Zest’s teammate, who's currently considered one of the best Terran players in the world.

TY: Moment of a lifetime

TY presented just about the best challenge to Zest possible. Just as Zest made an undefeated run through the playoffs to the finals, sweeping both Taeja and Dear, TY also swept both his playoff opponents, Dream and Cure. Before the final, he had only dropped three maps (all three to Protoss).

TY has spent his whole life preparing for this moment. Drafted to play Brood War for WeMade FOX nearly a decade ago, the 22-year-old has spent almost half his life playing StarCraft at a professional level. On WeMade FOX, then 8th Team, then Jin Air Green Wings and finally KT Rolster, he slowly gathered experience that could only be earned by playing with the best.

In StarCraft 2, he only truly hit his stride last year, when his undeniable skill finally manifested in tournament results. He regularly reached the main stage at the two Korean leagues, and stretched to semifinal finishes at IEM Shenzhen and the third season of Starleague. But a premier Grand Finals appearance still eluded him after nearly a decade of play.

This was TY’s shot to cap a period of amazing improvement with a victory, and to validate his lifelong commitment to the game.

Zest: Dominance

While TY has years of experience playing and practicing with the best, Zest has experience winning. The KT Protoss has been playing for just a fraction of his Terran opponent's career, but he has spent that time well.

Having been a strong Proleague player, Zest started his incredible individual SC2 performance in 2014, walking the Royal Road to win a GSL title in his first appearance there. A few weeks later he won the GSL Global Championship event. Over the rest of 2014 he reached two more semifinals, came runner-up to Flash at IEM Toronto and won a KeSPA Cup.

Then came a major trip-up in 2015, when Zest shockingly failed to qualify for either of the major Korean leagues. He redeemed himself with an equally surprising victory at IEM Katowice, defeating Hydra, INnoVation, Bbyong and Trap on his way to the title — but the spell was broken. Zest maintained solid results in 2015, regularly reaching the quarterfinals and maintaining his position as the top player in Proleague, but he didn’t reach another final that year. He'd cooled off, stabilized.

Legacy of the Void brought a renewal for Zest. Though he didn’t play in some of the expansion’s earlier tournaments, he quickly became one of its most feared players. Since the beginning of this year, Zest has won an incredible 81% of his maps — compared to a 67% overall map win rate during his 2014 hot-streak between February and April.

In 2016, he has an 85% win rate against Protoss, and a stunning 90% win rate against Terran. His biggest failing? An "only" 57% win rate against Zerg, including a mind-bending 0-3 loss to Snute. Only Snute, Classic, Rogue, DeParture, Journey and Dear have beaten Zest in four full months of competition. Over a period almost twice as long, Zest has been significantly better than his breakout era.

Which brings us to the first season of GSL in 2016. Make no mistake, we are living in another era of Zest dominance. That’s why, going into Sunday’s Code S Grand Finals, it was difficult to take seriously the notion that Zest could make a mistake and give up the title.

The Grand Final: Tide against the cliffs

Zest is generally a standard, defensive Protoss, of the style pioneered and perfected by Rain. In Heart of the Swarm, he was among the best at warding off mid-game aggression from a dropping Terran, splitting his army perfectly and multitasking exceptionally well.

TY is a far more aggressive player. His drop control and multi-pronged harass is the key to his success, and his tactical decision-making (when, where and how to take fights) is extremely well-tuned.

We saw the result of that clash of styles in the first game of the series, the best of the day. After an interesting bit of Hellion scouting/harassment from TY (a tactic he would maintain throughout the series) both players ramped up to a mid-game slugfest. TY took a very fast third Command Center, and Zest countered with a pre-six-minute fourth base and double Forges.

TY began his mid-game assault at 8:30 on the game timer, with a strong army lead because of his weaker economy, hitting before Zest could take a strong upgrade advantage and tearing him apart with some of the best multitasking we’ve seen this season. Zest tried valiantly to defend his spread out bases against the more mobile bio army, but TY slowly ground him down.

The scary part wasn’t TY’s multitasking, daunting as it was. What was more impressive was that Zest almost survived. While defending at home, Zest was still able to find the attention and resources to repeatedly deny TY a fourth base and keep the game within reach. Zest's tenacity in the face of such an onslaught showed that TY would have to play near-perfectly to take the series.

In Game 2, Zest showed us why he is feared as the best Protoss in the world right now. Rightly anticipating that TY would once again go for a greedy three Command Center build, Zest unleashed a precision all-in on Orbital Shipyard. Zest actually mismanaged his defense of the Hellion harass, but his excellent Warp Prism control and TY’s failure to adequately prepare for a Dark Templar build handed Zest a quick victory. With the win, Zest was able to cut short any momentum TY was building, and retake the initiative.

In Game 3, TY tried to return the favour, with a quirky two-base build that began with a Thor and ended with a +1 attack, Stimpack and Combat Shield SCV-pull timing. In theory, it was a strong attack, but it didn’t work against Zest. The Protoss player was on three bases, and a series of small mistakes from TY lost him the critical engagement.

First, he engaged before his +1 finished, making Zest’s +1 armor upgrade incredibly valuable. Second, his SCVs were stuck behind the bio force for most of the fight, instead of tanking damage. Finally, TY fought without two Hellions, three Medivacs and a handful of bio units, which might have salvaged the fight.

What was most odd about TY’s play was that after a macro win in Game 1, he would attempt as many two-base all-ins as he did in the series. TY is an aggressive player, but his multitasking strength can serve him best in the late game. Yet, after Game 4 — which featured a wonky base-trade scenario on Sky Shield that TY eventually won — the Terran player attempted two more two-base pushes in Games 5 and 6.

In Game 5, Zest crushed an interesting SCV pull, this time with Siege Tanks, that failed simply because it hit too late. By the time of the fight, Zest had leveraged a three-base economy to gain a 50-supply lead and overwhelmed TY’s forces.

In Game 6, TY didn’t seem like the player who had pulled Zest around in Game 1. He was able to adequately defend against Zest’s Oracle harassment (the first time Zest had gone for a Stargate opener in the series), but he made a critical mistake, building a second Factory instead of a Starport. This single error put an end to the two-base push that TY was attempting, and allowed Zest to once again secure and exploit his three-base economy.

In a reversal of Game 1, TY almost pulled it off. His trademark drop control and a tenacious defense anchored by Widow Mines almost evened up the game, but Zest’s economic advantage was too strong to overcome. Though TY fought to the last gasp, he eventually surrendered the game. Zest won his second GSL league title — his fifth premier tournament title — and lived up to the hype.

Going Forward: Long may he reign

Zest, ever the defensive Protoss, weathered the storm of all-ins and came out on top. He only once wavered from the formula, in Game 2, almost always choosing to get to a strong three-base economy while relying on his defensive posture. It was TY who struggled to wear down Zest's defense through aggressive strategies, and who repeatedly failed in the last half of the series.

Zest is a player who always knows what he needs to do and where he wants to gets to in a game, and he executes perfectly. His style is not flashy, but what he does works. His approach to the game is essentially pragmatic, and that pragmatism has given him his fifth premier title.

The KT Protoss has succeeded in extending one of the most remarkable periods of dominance in StarCraft 2's history. Yet the question that motivated this series — could Zest continue to dominate — hasn't gone away. In fact, by winning, Zest has only added to the pressure to keep going. From the top, there is nowhere to go but down.

Just as it was inevitable that Zest would win Sunday, it's inevitable that at some point, he will fail. Just like Mvp in Wings of Liberty, Life last year and Zest himself in 2014, no one can stay at the pinnacle forever. Until then, however, Zest is forging for himself a legacy, built on a string of stunning victories, that will establish him firmly among the game's all-time greatest competitors.

Christian Paas-Lang is an esports journalist from Toronto, eagerly awaiting the discovery of Zest's kryptonite. You can follow him on Twitter.