User blog comment:TheDipDap1234/Lightning - a Good or a Bad Character?/@comment-24152851-20141110080007/@comment-27329394-20141110165402

As is the case with most claims of derailment I don't think he was derailed at all. We already knew that Lightning clearly thinks that winning is everything, as evidenced in the second episode when he angrily chased Sam when he said that it wasn't. So when someone literally steals his win, it makes sense he would be really upset about it. For instance, Lightning began to hate Jo the instant he got betrayed, wanting to get her eliminated in that episode and "punch his lying face." You may say that never happened before Grand Chef Auto but at that point Lightning didn't even have any enemies. It was something that happened just as quickly as with Cameron, where it was the instant where things didn't go how he thought he got mad at it. The main difference here is that instead of being betrayed he lost the win in an unfair manner, even if he did ditch Cameron.

It's definitely an in character moment for Lightning since the change is explained well. Derailment is defined as "when an established character becomes largely different, exhibiting behavior contrary to what has been previously shown." Lightning was always arrogant, competitive, and absent-minded before this happened and the only difference afterwards is mean to Cameron, but Lightning was never a nice guy to begin with. If he showed evidence of being able to take a loss (he didn't) or was shown to be a considerate person (he wasn't), that would be derailment. I believe there are way fewer derailments than people claim there are, but that's not relevant for now.

I said earlier that I'd be fine with Jo being in the finale, but now that I think about it, not really unless the challenge was different. It wouldn't seem right for Cameron to beat the mess out of a girl because the show would never do that - the males are always the targets of physical abuse from another male. Because Cameron needed to be there and the challenge was a duel, you have two options for people getting tossed around: Scott and Lightning. Scott was the antagonist and had some karma awaiting him earlier, so Lightning needed to do it. With no exceptions, someone is playing the role of an antagonist for an episode, and with the focus needed on Zoey and Cameron Chris and Chef couldn't really play that role so Lightning did it. If Lightning wasn't so mad he also probably would not have been as fierce during the finale, which wouldn't have made it as exciting. As I also mentioned, the intention was to cheer for Cameron so the random conflict was there for Cameron to have another hurdle the viewers would hope he could make it over.