Is Chandler Kinney the new ‘Dancing with the Stars’ front-runner after this top-scoring tango?

Going into the season 33 premiere of “Dancing with the Stars,” actress Chandler Kinney ranked fourth in our predictions for the Len Goodman Mirror Ball Trophy. But she came out of the episode ranked first on the judges’ leaderboard with a tango that set the benchmark for the rest of the contestants this season. Does that make her the new front-runner to win the whole thing?

The 24-year-old Kinney is known for her performances in “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” and the Disney Channel film series “Zombies,” among other TV appearances. But make no mistake — girl’s a ringer. She started dancing at age three and studied a variety of styles at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy before a fateful GAP commercial shifted her trajectory towards acting, so with “DWTS” she wanted to find out what would have happened in her life and career if she had kept dancing.

“The world of ballroom is very intimidating to me,” she said during her clip package on night one. But you wouldn’t have known that from her confident, ambitious performance with pro partner Brandon Armstrong. Judge Bruno Tonioli compared her to famed dancers Ann Reinking and Cyd Charisse. Carrie Ann Inaba told Kinney, “You have set the standard for season 33 … She has set the bar so high.” Derek Hough was also effusive, though he nitpicked her a little: “We need to get a little lower in those legs.” He gave her a seven while Inaba and Tonioli gave her eights, allowing her to win the night with a score of 23 out of 30.

She can’t rest on her laurels, though. Next week’s first elimination of the season will be a double elimination, and we’ve seen competitors go from the top of the leaderboard to the chopping block before, especially when there’s backlash against an “amateur” competitor for having too much dance experience. Some ringers win the competition, like Charli D’Amelio. Others are booted surprisingly early, like Heather Morris. So she’ll need the fans on her side if she hopes to stick around. But if she continues setting the standard like she did this week, we may be looking at a “DWTS” finalist at the very least.