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Another season of Love Is Blind has come and gone, and in its wake we were left with two marriages, five breakups, a villain who bullies, a gold-digging hero, and at least one secret father who never mentioned his children to his partner.
Initially, season seven didn’t look like it was ever going to peak — a mini letdown since it was shot in DC and DC is notoriously one of the more annoying places to date. But it eventually ramped into one of the more memorable seasons of Love Is Blind. Mess, drama, dysfunction — this season had it all.
This season’s slow build, the shenanigans that later ensued, and the attention and discourse it eventually generated bring up a question inherent to the existence of the show: What does it mean when we say Love Is Blind had a “good” season?
Contrary to the show’s mission, a good season doesn’t mean that couples found love, it means people found strangers to break up with. The more outrageous and awful the breakups, the more viewers watch and keep the show in conversations. Higher ratings for Netflix are negatively correlated with marital bliss for anyone on the show. Love Is Blind has never really been about love being blind; it’s just a window for viewers to get a glimpse into some regrettable relationships. Now, in season seven, we’re getting pure chaos, the real, unfiltered stuff.
But while romantic success might not be on the table, it’s still possible to win the show, in a sense. And it’s certainly possible to lose. With that in mind, here’s who came out on top, who came out looking awful, who found love, and all those who didn’t on season seven of Love Is Blind.
Loser: For the seventh season running, the experiment to see if love is indeed blind
Since its inception, Love Is Blind has purported to be an “experiment” to see if true love is a real thing that can transcend the superficiality of physical attraction. Also since its inception, Love Is Blind has never really been about what it says it’s about. The show has always had an eye for mess, and with each season, it has allowed more and more messiness to bloom.
In this seventh installment, several of the participants appear to have been chosen because of their potential for drama rather than their earnest desire to be loved. From men who claim to be insecure about having so much money, to women who talk about their relationships in corporate HR speak, to trophy wives and men who live in their parents’ basement, it seems as though the casting department went out of their way to find a group of people who would yield the most incompatible couples and messiest breakups possible. That’s fine — and it makes wonderful television — but we’re still rooting a little for the scientists.
Winner: Netflix
At the end of the season, there were two weddings. Both couples — Garrett and Taylor, Tyler and Ashley — got married. Going by the show’s body count of people getting rejected at the ceremony, that’s a successful end-of-season! No one was dumped in front of their family, and everyone seemed so happy at the end.
What’s unclear, however, is whether Ashley and Tyler will stay together. In the show, post-pods, Tyler finally told Ashley he donated his sperm to a same-sex couple. While the show was airing, tabloids reported that the relationship between Tyler, his children, and their mother was more involved than Tyler let on. In the reunion, which aired Wednesday on Netflix, the two said they were still together and that despite how it seemed on camera, Ashley was not blindsided but was aware of the situation. Ashley said she and Tyler were still together and would continue their marriage. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love, and it’s worth risking anything,” she said. “It’s worth it all.”
But the engine of the show is mess. Sure, there were two happy endings, but there were seven couples to begin with. That means five relationships went up in flames. That’s very good for Netflix! Here’s how they all ended:
- Stephen texted a random internet woman behind Monica’s back and tried to excuse it as being drunk at a sleep study
- Ramses told Marissa he didn’t vibe with her energy after living with her for a couple of weeks
- Hannah finally cut it off with Nick after berating him for weeks about being a child
- Tim told Alex she was disrespectful to his parents because she was sleepy, even after he promised her dad, who has MS, that he would take care of his daughter
- Brittany and Leo never even made it to Mexico!
These love implosions are far more watchable than the happy endings, and they keep viewers interested in the show. Maybe they’re tuning in to see Hannah reckon with the person she was during the season or to figure out what really happened between Brittany and Leo, but everyone wants to know the gritty details of why things didn’t work out and what really happens to the show’s losers. And of course, that’s why Netflix has a reunion special (and has its participants signed to contracts).
Winners: Immature men
To be clear: Reality TV shows are heavily edited. There have been a few seasons of the show in which men (see: season five Cole) are portrayed as innocent but good-hearted idiots and women as harsh shrews. Further, one of the long-running criticisms of Love Is Blind and other dating shows is that producers and editors are harsher on women than they are on men. Season seven, in all its turbulent glory, followed that pattern.
Nick, Tim, and Stephen all were too immature to be in relationships. Whether it was the inability to talk about a problem, not telling your partner about the children you fathered, or sending lewd texts to a random woman from the internet, the men this season were not a prize bunch. The bar for Love Is Blind men is subterranean, yet they managed to scoot under it.
Still, there was also a lot of focus on how the women in their lives were extremely scoldy, if not bullies.
Hannah seemed to delight in being mean to Nick instead of dumping him. Alex, Tim’s partner, got into an off-camera fight with him in which she allegedly covered his mouth with her hand. Monica, Stephen’s partner, got mad at him for talking too much and brought up not buying her flowers (multiple times) that he had promised in the pod.
While only the two people in these relationships know the entire truth about the ups and downs of their courtship, it seemed as though the show spent more time portraying the women being harsher and more severe than the immature men they were with. A lot of that has to do with how easy it is to capture the women’s active confrontations and complaints on camera versus the passive, less-visible behavior from men — like being inattentive or lacking initiative. The takeaway is that it felt as though being an unserious goof was better than being an overly serious scold, with some of the men coming away from the show looking less culpable. Not Stephen or Tyler, though; those guys were still at fault.
Loser: Hannah
Every season of Love Is Blind has a villain, and this series that title belongs to Hannah. The 26-year-old quit her “dream” job as a medical device sales associate to be on the show, and it was worth it because she gave us a show. After rolling through the pods — where she strategically gave hints about how good-looking she was (e.g., telling men she was a cheerleader who dates athletes, that she didn’t want to be seen just as someone who was “hot,” etc.) — she paired up with Nick, a real estate agent and ex-football player. To be fair, he also embellished about his appearance (Nick claimed to look like a “less buff” Henry Cavill).
Calling this coupling a disaster is an understatement and unfair to disasters. So why is Hannah the bad guy?
Yes, Nick is an adult baby and shouldn’t be in a relationship. And at the reunion, a few cast members intimated that he told them off-camera he wasn’t attracted to Hannah — a crucial tidbit that may have changed the way he was portrayed.
Still, watching Hannah scold him about everything, from 401(k)s to boiling water to phone bills, from ordering him to walk a dog that doesn’t belong to him to telling him that riding hotel pool furniture would give her the ick, was painful. After being icked one evening, Hannah leaves a cryptic, bulleted note of eight or so mantras for Nick to find, with each bullet representing one thing she hates about him. At one point, she tells him that she won’t address him as an equal because she doesn’t see him as an equal.
What Hannah was doing wasn’t like the one or two aforementioned instances in which some of the show’s women called out their partners for dropping the ball. It seemed like every segment that focused on the two featured Hannah haranguing Nick. Again, this could all be part of an edit, but Hannah sure gave them a lot of material.
The longer this season went on, the more I wondered why Hannah — who kept talking about how unhappy she was and reminding her partner that he was inadequate — didn’t call the whole thing off sooner.
The thing is, Nick has the opportunity to learn how to boil water and contribute 15 percent to his retirement. And it seems like he’d be able to learn that faster than Hannah could unlearn some of the unpleasant behavior she showed on TV.
Winner: Brittany, the trophy wife
On a show full of deceit (see: Tyler), it’s nice to know there are participants like Brittany who state, plainly and honestly, that they’re there for all the wrong reasons. When we first meet Brittany, we find out that she wants to be a trophy wife and that she has only dated high-profile, very successful wealthy men. Brittany does not care about finding love or meeting her soulmate. Brittany wants a man who will take care of her and let her live a life of leisure, shopping, and unlimited group fitness classes.
Luckily for Brittany, she made a connection with Leo. Leo’s main storyline was that he felt insecure about inheriting tons and tons of money from his family’s art dealing business. In Brittany, he found someone who would listen to these concerns. He was so happy that someone would finally be supportive of the hardships in his life!
Granted, Brittany was probably trying to figure out just how rich Leo was, but she was very invested in each conversation. Even though the two eventually picked each other for marriage, producers said cameras would no longer be following the couple — a true loss for the show and viewers at home.
Winners: That one argument Ramses and Marissa had over politics
If there was one moment of the show that felt genuine and important, it was the fight Marissa and Ramses had over her military service. The gist: Ramses vocally condemned the actions of the American military, specifically in destabilizing less-powerful countries and inflicting violence on people living in said countries. Marissa served in the Navy and is proud of her service, even though she said there were moments that she regretted “pushing a button” (e.g., performing military acts that caused harm to civilians). He said he wouldn’t want his child to enlist, and she disagreed. She said she felt like he was judgmental of her military tenure, he said he empathized with her because she voiced her concerns about her participation.
While Marissa and Ramses eventually moved forward with their relationship, the conflict seemed to simmer beneath the surface of all of their problems. Ramses, who said he didn’t vibe with Marissa’s energy after living with her for a couple of weeks, called off the relationship before the wedding.
Though they didn’t end up together, Marissa and Ramses thoughtfully articulated the politics of a serious and complicated topic. Their disagreement is the type of stuff Love Is Blind says it wants to be about — being able to fall in love or not with a person based on who they are, what they believe in, and shared values. And sometimes, just like in real life, there are some deal-breakers that you just can’t get past, no matter how much you love a person.
Update, October 31, 10 am: This article, originally published on October 30, has been updated with revelations from the Love Is Blind reunion.
