‘The Masked Singer’ returns to much fanfare

New episodes of the smash hit show premiere every Wednesday on Fox

Morgan Schmitt, staff writer

Everyone loves a good mystery, and how someone came up with the idea for “The Masked Singer” is the greatest mystery of all.
It’s a wild game show where the only participants are celebrities, and they dress in the most outrageous costumes.
The new season just premiered this week with even bigger stars than last season.
The point of the show is to listen to costumed stars — whose faces are covered by masks­­ — sing and try to guess who that celebutant is.
This sounds like a straightforward game, and in some cases, it can be, but not all the celebrities are known for singing.
Even stars who are singers can go unrecognized for an entire season.
The contestant who gets voted off last wins the golden mask award.
This description alone is mundane sounding.
There is nothing relatively odd about it, but the uniqueness of the show lies with its costumes.
Each contestant must be completely unrecognizable physically.
Therefore, character personas and costumes are created to fool the audience.
Ten-foot-tall fluffy monsters, golden lions with mile-long capes, and a boiled egg in a tuxedo have all appeared on stage.
All costumes are heavily bedazzled and out of this world.
There was even a costume that fooled the audience into believing a contestant was female when he was male.
This element of the show makes for some dramatic reveals and memorable moments.
For instance, seeing Sarah Palin dance around in a bear suit singing “I like big butts and I cannot lie,” is just one of the wacky things you will see.
Other famous names who have appeared are T-Pain, Bella Thorne and legends like Patti LaBelle.
No star is too big or too famous to enter this contest. Most of them do not enter for the trophy, they enter for the anonymity.
They want to escape their lives of stardom and show another side of their personalities that we may not know them for.
This show has sparked comebacks and new careers for different stars whom we may have forgotten along the years.
Stars who hid from the limelight after a bad event can come back out as who they truly wanted to be.
One of these famous cases is Bella Thorne, who wanted to become bolder and show the true side of her.
After this she did just that, going onto the media to take charge of a hacker.
It has inspired stars who are not known for singing to launch an album or two, and it has given legends like Gladys Knight a reason to keep performing for new generations.
This show is more than meets the eye, and that is the brilliance of it.
Hearing untold stories and listening to hit songs makes “The Masked Singer” such a popular show.
It grows in popularity after each season. It is available to watch on Hulu, and you do not want to miss it for the world.
Only the first episode has aired so far for season 4, with the next episode premiering Wednesday.
Let us see who has to “take it off,” as the show’s popular catch phrase says.