How did Season 5 of 'Love Is Blind' go off the rails? Our writers discuss

A woman in a red dress stands and looks at a man in a suit who is kneeling before her on a red carpet.

Oct. 13, 2023 4:17 PM PT

This story contains spoilers from the Season 5 finale of “Love Is Blind.”

Love may be blind but it’s also a hot mess.

Season 5 of Netflix’s hit dating show “Love Is Blind” started off with a bang last month. Set in Houston this time around, the series offered the usual mix of clout-chasing singles looking to amp up their social media following — and maybe find their life partner — by spending a few weeks in a windowless warehouse talking to strangers through a wall. While lounging on Ikea sofas, they opened up about their past relationships, their hopes for the future and their love of the American flag-themed apparel.

So far, so normal.

Then at the end of Episode 3 came a bombshell: Two contestants, Uche Okoroha and Lydia Velez Gonzalez — both of whom were close to getting engaged to other people — had dated just months before joining the show.

Like a butterfly flapping its wings and accidentally unleashing a typhoon, the revelation sent the entire season into chaos, and not the fun kind. As soon as they landed in Mexico for a getaway, one of the engaged couples — Jared “JP” Pierce and Taylor Rue — struggled to find anything to talk about, got into a fight about false eyelashes and broke up.

Heading into Friday’s finale and Sunday’s reunion — which, thankfully, will not be live — only two engaged couples remain. They are Gonzalez, a geologist who has been portrayed as this season’s villain because of her previous relationship with Okoroha, and Milton Johnson, a Pokemon player eight years her junior; and Stacy Snider, a Pilates instructor with a penchant for asymmetrical athleisure wear, and Izzy Zapata, an insurance agent with a cabinet full of Solo cups.

Unlike, say, Season 4’s Brett Brown and Tiffany Pennywell, neither couple is especially enjoyable to watch. So it was all the more baffling to learn that there were multiple engaged couples who were cut from the season, according to a Variety interview with showrunner Chris Coelen, who did not elaborate about the reasons for leaving out the other couples.

Things got even messier from there: As reported by People magazine, Tran Dang, a contestant who filmed Season 5 but did not appear in the episodes, sued production company Kinetic Content, saying she was sexually assaulted by her former fiancé on set. She accused producers of negligence and false imprisonment.

Another contestant, Renee Poche — who stood out in early pod episodes thanks to her sharp sense of humor — has claimed she was engaged to Carter Wall but that producers cut their story from the final edit because, as she told Popsugar. “Carter was awful and we don’t want you to have to relive that.” Yet another contestant, Paige Tillman, recently said on Instagram that she got engaged to Josh Simmons in the pods — and that they remained a couple for some time after filming the show, suggesting they weren’t just in it for fame.

In Friday’s finale, only one couple says “I do,” and it’s probably not the one that most viewers would have predicted — or at least those who hadn’t already looked up the marriage records that Texas makes readily available online. Stacy decides she needs more time before she can marry Izzy, but Milton and Lydia — whose romance was largely overshadowed by the drama with Uche and his efforts to paint Lydia as a bunny-boiling scorned woman — wind up husband and wife.

It‘s an anticlimactic end to a season that came in hot and seemed to promise lots of drama, only to collapse like a hastily prepared soufflé.

Seen from the waist up, a blond woman in a strapless white wedding dress smiles at herself in the mirror.

So why did this season go off the rails so spectacularly — and why wasn’t the trainwreck much fun to watch? Times writers and reality TV connoisseurs Meredith Blake and Yvonne Villarreal try to figure out what went wrong — and if the show can right the course.

Blake: For all its contrived drama, behind-the-scenes horror stories and unhinged entertainment value, “Love Is Blind” has produced a surprising number of successful unions. Seven out of nine couples who got married in the show’s first four seasons remain together; just two have divorced. (Obviously, those numbers could change. But I remain optimistic — at least about Brett and Tiffany, who must never, ever break up.)

I think one thing that pulls me into “Love Is Blind” every season, against my better judgment and stubborn insistence I won’t get sucked into the vortex, is that there’s always been at least one couple to root for — one pairing that made me think, “Hey, maybe there is something to this crazy ‘experiment’ after all.” (While we’re on the subject: Why does everyone involved in this show insist on referring to it as an “experiment,” like that makes it sound more high-minded? It makes me think of mad scientists and lab rats.)

Not so much this time around. Once the cast got to Mexico and we were down to just two couples — neither of them particularly likable — this season felt like a slog. I confess I watched the finale on 1.5x speed. While making dinner. And possibly skipping over some scenes to get straight to the altar. It felt like ticking off a to-do list rather than indulging in my favorite guilty pleasure. Watching this show should not be a chore, and yet it felt like it.

Yvonne, what’s your take on this season? Have there been any moments where your heart swelled with genuine excitement? Or has it been pure cringe?

Villarreal: Meredith, as I sit here in non-American-flag apparel, let me just say I am right there with you. When the screeners for the new season became available to press, I had a pep talk with myself: Do not get sucked in, do not get sucked in. Because, since Season 1, my temptation to dive in always comes late at night and I am compelled to watch every single episode available as if Nick and Vanessa Lachey’s paychecks depend on my completed hours. But all your Slack messages telling me to hurry up so we could discuss it finally pushed me. And I don’t even know what to make of it all.

I, too, find myself coming back to the chaos, hoping that there will be a couple that will fill the rom-com void in my heart. But I won’t deny the reason I inhale each episode is purely due to the rubbernecking of the trainwreck moments that I can experience from the comfort of my couch. And I think that’s why the season felt off to me. There was a lack of swoon-worthy romance and the drama felt inane — I say this fully admitting I could watch TikToks about the makeup conversation between JP and Taylor all day long.

But even the season’s big twist, that Uche and Lydia had previously dated, was less intriguing than it could have been because it was so convoluted. I read that Uche and Lydia were asked to leave once it came to light, but they were allowed to stay under two conditions: “They were not interested in each other” and “They did not immediately tell people about their history.” The way it was handled instead sucked so much air out of the early episodes in trying to figure out who was the villain and victim that it took a minute to realize how few couples ended up making it out of the pods, and then out of Mexico. (But also, maybe “Love Is Blind” should enlist Lydia to do casting if producers aren’t checking Instagram as thoroughly as they should to avoid such scenarios.)

OK, Meredith, I have some questions for you: What did you think of the Uche-Lydia twist? How do you feel knowing there are couples who got engaged that we didn’t spend time with? As someone who has watched the non-U.S. iterations of the show, how could “Love Is Blind” get back on track next season? And, most importantly, how traumatized were you by JP’s pecking kissing style?

Blake: Yvonne, have you no decency? That mention of JP should have come with a trigger warning.

I am not sure I’ve ever had a worse case of second-hand embarrassment than I did watching that engagement disintegrate in Mexico. The whole makeup imbroglio was symptomatic of a larger problem this season, which is — how shall I put this delicately — the men this season are absolutely awful (with the possible exception of Milton, who mostly seems lovely but is definitely too young to be getting married).

Between Uche lecturing Aaliyah about her infidelity, then obsessively trying to paint Lydia as a stalker; JP’s attempt to blame Taylor’s fake eyelashes for his complete inability to hold a conversation; and Izzy’s aggressive berating of Johnie Maraist at the cast get-together, this season was just a wild ride of toxic masculinity. I know it’s Texas, but I also know Texas is a big place with at least a few men who aren’t raging narcissists or emotionally stunted weirdos.

As for the Uche-Lydia twist, the whole thing felt incredibly manipulative. Coelen has insisted that the show’s producers were unaware of the relationship and that it wasn’t a stunt they cooked up to create more drama, as many viewers suspected. So we have to believe it was merely a coincidence or casting failure. But Coelen has also admitted that producers told Uche and Lydia they couldn’t tell anyone else about their history in order to preserve the supposed integrity of the “experiment.” But this, to me, makes a bad situation even worse. It forced Lydia and Uche to be dishonest and complicit in the mind games. No wonder Aaliyah bolted.

A man in a blue shirt sits in a chair and looks at a woman who is frowning at him.

Especially given the twist, I am baffled by the decision to cut the other couples from the season (at least those who weren’t suing the producers). With a popular, long-running reality show like “Love Is Blind,” I think it becomes harder and harder to cast people who are in it for the proverbial “right reasons” — in this case, finding love — and aren’t just hoping to score a side hustle on Cameo. Perhaps the other couples came off as obviously inauthentic?

But part of the joy of watching this show is trying to figure out who is really in love and who’s playing it up for the cameras. I also can’t believe the other couples were any less appealing than Izzy and Stacy — a guy with as much personality as the HomeGoods decor in his apartment and a stereotypical mean girl with an addiction to bronzer.

Their relationship was ultimately stalled by their lifestyle differences: She comes from money, likes to travel and, as her father, Dale, so eloquently put it, “Sometimes love wants to fly first class.” (Side note: Can we get Dale on the next season of “The Golden Bachelor”?) Izzy has never even been to New York.

It’s interesting to me how money — more than politics, religion, race or age — seems to be a major sticking point for so many couples. What do you make of this? And do you think there is any chance Lydia and Milton are still together?

Villarreal: I’m no reality producer, but Netflix should consider a “choose your own adventure” option for the next season so we can decide which engaged couples we follow to the altar, or maybe just follow all of them and don’t withhold footage so we don’t feel swindled.

But let’s get into the money talk. When the show first launched, I was struck by the airtime given to show how Amber Pike and Matt Barnett had opposite financial situations — once engaged and out of the pods, Pike revealed to Barnett that she had quite a bit of debt from credit cards and student loans — because it felt like such an important topic that had never been addressed on a dating show before. I am sympathetic to the idea that people may feel cagey about being transparent about their financial standing, especially on television. But in the year 2023, with inflation and gas prices near $7 a gallon, I’m gonna need to know we’re both in a position where we’ll be OK financially. So I get why it’s a factor we see raised with frequency, even if I could not stomach Izzy “love has no credit score” Zapata pronouncing the “b” in “debt.”

But as you suggest, Meredith, I’ve never understood why religion or politics have never been explored more fully. It’s simply not realistic in 2023 to ignore those topics. And frankly, it would provide more compelling conversations inside and outside the pod.

As for Lydia and Milton, I’ll only say that sleuthing by viewers on TikTok has me skeptical about their current status. I mean, he got married at 24. And, yes, I know plenty of people get married at a young age, and he is a highly intelligent and mature guy, but he was opening a wine bottle with his teeth. I don’t think he was ready! But maybe I’m more skeptical because I wasn’t hoping either couple would get married. Meredith, what did you make of Milton and Lydia being the only couple who made it to the altar? Was it any surprise that Stacy didn’t say “I do”? What would it take for the show to get back to solid ground, in your view?

In a gym, a man in a white T-shirt and shorts holds the hands of a blond woman in a green sports bra and tights.

Blake: I suppose what’s really surprising in all of this is not that only one couple got married — it’s that we’ve come to expect multiple marriages from every season. I do not have this much faith in the “Love Is Blind” casting team.

As for making the next season better, I am on the record as a big fan of “Love Is Blind: Japan,” which included a much more interesting mix of contestants. There were divorcees and singles who ranged in age from their early 20s to their mid-50s. The couples had sometimes shockingly blunt conversations about how physically attractive they found each other, and what they expected from a spouse. It was utterly riveting to watch! The single season resulted in several marriages and — in news that would utterly thrill Vanessa Lachey — two babies (so far). So clearly something worked.

To improve the American version of “Love Is Blind,” I think producers need to cast a greater mix of contestants and look for people with an array of life experiences (How have we not had a single parent yet?) and physical abilities. And I think producers should lean into difficult conversations around more controversial subjects instead of acting like no one cares who you voted for in the last election or where you might have been on Jan. 6, 2021. I still think about the abortion conversation in Season 3 — probably one of the most eye-opening moments in the history of the show. More of that, please. And with all due respect to the people of the Lone Star State, I think it’s time for a season somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon line.

But let’s be real: Wherever Season 6 is set, I’ll probably be watching it. This show is a bad relationship that I can’t seem to break off.