Duo from B.C. and Ontario take home championship on reality TV show Lego Masters

Stacey Roy of Kelowna, B.C., and Nick Della Mora of Toronto, Ont., were crowned the winners of Fox TV's Lego Masters Season 3 in Los Angeles on Wednesday night.

The pair outlasted competitors through 13 episodes, defeating Calgary firefighter duo Stephen Joo and Stephen Cassley and Vancouver siblings David and Emily Guedes to take home a trophy made of yellow Lego bricks and $100,000 US, or about $134,000 Cdn.

Roy, producer of the TV show The Nerdy Bartender and host of the Twitch streaming show Cooking with Stacey, says she has been playing with Lego since she was a kid.

"I used to build these amazing Lego towers with my dad and then topple them over."

She says she started playing with Lego again several years ago when she started live-streaming her builds on Amazon and Twitch.

The shows caught the attention of Della Mora, who was streaming his own Lego building show Brickin Nick on Twitch.

A self-described "diehard Lego fan," he says he had been searching for a partner to compete in Lego Masters after watching the show's Seasons 1 and 2.

"I gotta find someone really fun to do it with," he said. "She loves Lego building, and she's Canadian as well … when I reached out, she was super excited about it, and we went for it."

'Playing with Lego for the rest of our lives'

Roy and Della Mora say it's a fantastic hobby.

"We should play with Lego for the rest of our lives," she said. "I always encourage adults in my life [to] scrap the adult colouring books [and] get yourself a Lego set — that is the ultimate thing for relaxation."

It's also relaxing and satisfying, says Della Mora.

"When I discovered [Lego], I just had this natural attraction to it. I just really enjoyed the way the pieces clicked together … this just really clicks with how my brain works."

Rough path to championship

Despite their enthusiasm, the pair's path to the championship wasn't a smooth one: they won the fourth episode with a well-received treehouse but were almost eliminated from the show for their low-rated creations in the seventh to 10th episodes.

But Roy says her team's victory in the 11th episode — where they were required to build a race car — encouraged them to keep fighting.

"[It] was a real turning point because we just got really excited again about building Lego and having fun and just adding all this play into our creations. We started to remind ourselves why we love building Lego and really put that into our builds."

The pair says they put all their passion and creativity into their final creation, a bookshelf made of Lego.

"When we built that bookshelf, we wanted it to feel like kids would want to go up closer to go explore all the different toys on [it]," Roy said.

Della Mora says it's all in the imagination.

"This is what I imagine my bookshelf doing while I was sleeping at night: my toys coming to life and playing around and doing all sorts of silly and crazy things."

The Lego-built bookshelf will be on display at the Legoland resort in New York.

This weekend, the triumphant pair will visit a hospital in Memphis, where they will live stream a 24-hour Lego build to raise funds for children's cancer research.

Della Mora says their victory shows playing with Lego is more than just a childish pastime.

"If more people embrace that side of each other and just let people do the things they love, I think people would get out there and just do so many more amazing things.

"We definitely need more play and fun in the world."