I got dance lessons from the viral League of Legends Malphite streamer, and honestly, it's harder than it looks

To non-League of Legends players, Malphite is just a big rock man. He’s spiky, stony, titanic: a top lane monster, or a surprise support that can absolutely ruin your day. But, as of late, I’ve begun to ask myself, in the spirit of ‘What is Love,’ what is Malphite? It’s a thought prompted by seeing LoL creator Jay ‘PlainSundaee’ Mita all over my Instagram. The New Zealander has seemingly popped up out of nowhere, going viral in the MOBA’s social space for “striking without warning” – a phrase that’s now become his mantra. But, while his Pantheon antics are iconic, he’s perhaps best known for his impressive recreation of Malphite’s side-to-side dance emote. What is Malphite, I ask again: for League of Legends players, he’s a silly ‘lil guy, but for PlainSundaee, he’s a lifestyle.

I shot the Malphite enthusiast a request for an interview a few weeks ago, spurred on by the fact that, every time I look at Instagram, he’s there. His videos are racking up millions – and I mean millions – of views, with his Malphite dancing, running, and general vibing leading the pack. He’s replicated Corporate Mundo’s Patrick Bateman dance, inspired by American Psycho; he’s rocked out (pun intended) as Yunara, Jayce, and Azir to the dulcet tones of bbno$. But, for whatever reason, the big rock man’s dance has become his staple; largely, I assume, because of how good he is at it – having now tried it myself, it’s genuinely quite hard. Practice, in this case, makes a career.

@plainsundaee_ Where is bro going 🗿 #plainsundaee #leagueoflegends ♬ original sound – Plainsundaee

My first question is relatively simple: how did all of this come to be? Was it some rock solid master plan? PlainSundaee had been streaming for a while, with his “strike without warning” Pantheon clips being some of the first that picked up traction. It’s gone so far that someone’s even modded it (somewhat illegally) into League of Legends to replace the sound on Smite, meaning you now ‘smite without warning.’ “I don’t know if you know this, but Nike [Australia]’s saying it now – not because of me, but they stole it!” For legal reasons, both for PlainSundaee’s protection and my own, that’s a joke. There’s a lot of them here.

His explosion, however, “just kind of happened,” he says with a laugh. “I went for a walk in the park and went ‘oh, babe, film this, this’ll be epic.’ I started doing a Malphite run, and I just had this weird feeling in my head like ‘oh, this one’s gonna do so well. Of all the videos I posted, this one’s gonna hit.’ Then I posted it, and in like, ten minutes, it had maybe 100,000 views, then in an hour it was at a million. I was like, what the hell. This is so stupid, this is so niche – how do so many people understand this reference?”

“I started reading the comments and they were like ‘oh, we wanted you to dance, we wanted you to ult’ so I started doing that, and then it caught on, and now I’m the Malphite guy. I don’t really think I chose it, it just kind of happened. Rock solid.” A quick Google of ‘PlainSundaee’ does, indeed, throw up ‘PlainSundaee Malphite’ so he is, indeed, the certified Malphite guy. It’s on Google, so that makes it official, right?

More important than Google, however, LCS pro team Flyquest also recognized PlainSundaee’s talents, asking him to rate their own Malphite dance, sending him coveted Von Dutch merch in response. “I just said, ‘ten out of ten, can I have a shirt?’ and then they gave me a shirt,” he laughs. “Now people are like ‘are you a fan of Flyquest?’ and I’m like ‘yeah, because they sent me merch!'”

I ask how it feels to be the arbiter of all things Malphite and he grows pensive – with great power comes great responsibility. “It’s pretty funny, to be honest. It’s cool that I have this authority, because even I’m not doing it properly. If I was to do it like, fully properly, it’d look really weird. Before this – and even now – I’m a theater dancer. I’m a Krump dancer, I did animation, so my thing is that, if I see a dance, I can copy it fairly well. But then doing [the Malphite] dance itself, I had to gel it together. [I was thinking]: I’m going to do it well, but I have to make it funny enough for content so it can be consumable.”

“I like that it’s me because I have a bit of experience; it’s just been fun. It’s an honor to be The Rock Guy.”

Perhaps my favorite of PlainSundaee’s videos are his “dance moves to survive the club (League of Legends edition)” shorts. Featuring everything from Gragas to Vel’Koz and even Project Vayne (kind of), I ask if he has, in fact, used said League of Legends dances to survive in the club. He breaks into a huge smile.

“It’s actually how I met my partner,” he says, beaming. “She doesn’t even play League, either! I was doing dances and occasionally would chuck in a Malphite just to troll a little bit. But in the club, it’s not actually about dancing good, you just have to own it. She said ‘you look like you’re having fun.’ I was. We went from there. Big romantic guy, that’s me.”

We have seen ‘Shadow Girl’ in several of PlainSundaee’s videos, where she’s either guest-starred as an extra couple of Cho’Gath arms, or played Zed’s Living Shadow (hence the ‘Shadow Girl’). “What I like about her is that she was supportive when she didn’t get it, and then she was supportive when she did get it. I was like, ‘damn, that’s exactly what I need.’ It’s not your traditional path. It’s cool to involve her – I’d say about 50% of the time she actually understands what’s going on. That’s why I love her, though.”

@plainsundaee_ Lol GG EZ 🤫🧏‍♂️🗿 #leagueoflegends #plainsundaee ♬ original sound – Plainsundaee

That story left me with a grin – a sense of positivity that I’ve been thinking about for the past few days. In a world that’s so perplexing and rife with tension, PlainSundaee’s content is a fun breath of fresh air. It’s silly. It’s playful. It doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s a welcome respite from the darkness outside, and the eternal ‘League of Legends bad game’ bickering. It’s a reminder of why I fell in love with League in the first place: it’s just about having fun.

When it comes to what “strike without warning,” and all of PlainSundaee’s content means, he tells me that “it stands for people doing what they want and having fun. You’ll notice that, no matter what character I’m playing in League, I’m roleplaying them, and it’s mainly just to have fun and make the world less miserable. That’s my goal.”

You can check out PlainSundaee (and our dance lesson) on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitch, where you too can learn to strike without warning.