SEN DARKWINGS: “To win the whole split, I think this time we have a solid 18% chance.”

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Isaac “DARKWINGS” Chou has climbed rapidly through the ranks of the North American League of Legends scene over the past year. He qualified for NACL in March 2025 with a match-point win in the lower bracket. After placing 3rd in his first and only NACL split, he was picked up by DSG in the LCS and successfully defended the organization’s LCS spot. Ahead of the 2026 season, he signed with Sentinels and placed 3rd in the LCS 2026 Lock-In tournament and the 2026 Americas Cup. We sat down with DARKWINGS to discuss his recent performances and his projections for Sentinels in the year to come.

You described the results of the Americas Cup as disappointing. What lessons did you learn from the tournament individually and as a team?

DARKWINGS: Individually, I think part of it was a champion pool problem. I personally felt like I didn't have the picks that we needed to to have comfortable draft plans every game. I think my confidence on some champions could have been better. There's always in-game stuff to work on: being more communicative in-game, being better at creating the same page for me and my teammates to be on. We need to have a better understanding of what we want to do together as a team. I think we struggled a lot when it came to planning and how we wanted to play the game according to our draft.

You mentioned the champ pool. In the games against C9 especially, there were a lot of mid bans against APA. In game two in particular, there were five mid bans and you blind picked Viktor. Who called for Viktor? Was it you or the coaching staff?

DARKWINGS: Throughout scrims, if they would ever ask me "If you want to blind a champion, who would you blind?" I would say "Just blind pick me Viktor." It's always fine, no matter what. I guess in the past I had trouble versus Akali, but we knew APA didn't play Akali. After that’s gone, Viktor can be blind picked in my opinion. For the bans, we knew we didn't want to play against Ziggs; Taliyah was also high on the priority list. We were trying to set up for either a good mid situation or to let me blind pick so that we can get a better answer elsewhere.

One of the big stories from the Americas Cup was FURIA’s performance. Do you think their success was unique to their team or tournament, or has the gap between Brazil and NA narrowed?

DARKWINGS: I think it's hard to make a general assumption over one or two teams out of Brazil because we only played versus FURIA and RED, but I do think FURIA as a team was really good, and they did showcase a lot of good things. I think as a team they performed really well. It's hard to generalize because we saw that RED didn't look very good, but they beat FURIA in Brazil. I’m not really sure what was going on there, but maybe they just had a bad end of the year.

How would you rate RED and FURIA based on your experience against them compared to your LCS competitors?

DARKWINGS: I think RED would be a lower or bottom tier team just based on what we played against. Obviously that was just one series, so they probably could have been higher. FURIA, I'd say at least top three. Probably top two.

Your experience in Brazil outside of the competition seems to have been somewhat food-focused. With that in mind, what was your favorite food experience? Was it the picanha or the acai?

DARKWINGS: Whenever I travel, I always love trying new foods. I was definitely a big fan of the picanha. I feel like every time I got it, no matter the restaurant, it was always good. So, I’m always going to go for that.

You implied the pasta wasn’t quite on that level. What is your favorite pasta and where do you get it?

DARKWINGS: Okay, side point: I just want to say that I never got the pasta. Rahel got it, but I tried it and I just could not. I make a lot of pasta. Penne alla vodka was my favorite pasta to make. I think I've only had pasta one time in LA. It was at the UOVO pasta bar. That place was pretty good, but I don't know if it's mind-blowing. I'd give it a 8.5 out of 10, but there are better ones for sure.

Taking a step back to almost a year ago, you finished third place in NACL Open Qualifiers after being one game from elimination. The next year, you placed third in LCS and now third place in the Americas Cup. Did you expect to move through the scene that quickly?

DARKWINGS: Honestly, I did not expect it to go this fast. Originally when I was playing OQs, I had a one-year plan that it was going to be my last year playing competitively. The first half of that year I was mostly focused on playing well, so that the next half of the split I could potentially promote. I ended up promoting after the first split to DSG, and then after DSG I went to SEN. I did not really expect this at all.

You were an older rookie in the LCS last year. When during your career did you first think you were ready for LCS?

DARKWINGS: I never had a specific point where I was like, "Yeah, I can play in the LCS." Last year, when I was getting coached by Draxyr, who has experience coaching in LCS, he was telling me about things and I started to realize I definitely can play in the LCS. I realized I just need to improve on these things, and I did. I'd say you kind of need some kind of level of consistency. Winning one game in the LCS doesn't really mean much. But, if you are good enough to play multiple games and still have the same skill level, I think that's what makes an LCS player LCS-worthy.

Last year you mentioned that DSG had a 5% chance to win Split 3. How do you feel about your chances with Sentinels in Split 2 here?

DARKWINGS: To win the whole split, I think this time we have a solid 18% chance.

That's a very specific number. How did you make that calculation?

DARKWINGS: I don't know, I thought it was higher than 15% chance but lower than 20%, so I just rounded to the middle. Just the vibes.

March 2025 to March 2026 was a very successful year for you. Where do you see yourself in March 2027?

DARKWINGS: It's a great question. It's hard to say. With my trajectory, I should be able to win Worlds next year. But, seriously, I really want to make Worlds at the end of this season. If I do that then hopefully I'll still be on Sentinels next year, showing similar or better performance than this year.

Given your current trajectory, shouldn’t you expect to place third at Worlds this year?

DARKWINGS: I guess we won't make MSI because it's only the top two, but we’ll get third place to qualify to Worlds and then third place at Worlds.

Important question: do you prefer your name in all caps or not?

DARKWINGS: I had my name in all caps originally because someone already had the name Darkwings, so I just made it all caps and fit in an L. So it was DARKWlNGS [lowercase “L” instead of a capital “i”], but it looked identical to DARKWINGS. Now, I just keep it as all caps. So yes, I do prefer it now.

Any shout-outs or thank-yous to close it out?

DARKWINGS: Shout out to my girlfriend, my brother, all my friends that have been watching me.

DARKWINGS and Sentinels will return to the stage in the Spring Split of the 2026 LCS. His season kicks off against his former team, DSG on Saturday, April 4 at 4:00 PM PDT. If you want to get LCS-ready yourself, you can check out pro coaching yourself on ProDiff.

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