In between Love Is Blind seasons back in spring, the metallic wine glass dating show universe brought another series to those with a Netflix subscription with The Ultimatum: Marry Or Move On. The reality series followed five already-established couples at a crossroads about whether to tie the knot. Following the first season’s success, another season of The Ultimatum has been filmed, but it’s technically going to be Season 1 of a The Ultimatum spinoff. We’ll get into why.
The return of The Ultimatum will be called The Ultimatum: Queer Love and Nick and Vanessa Lachey will not be hosting the series. Instead, Sweet Magnolias’ star JoAnna Garcia Swisher will. The show’s creator Chris Coelen shared why with these words:
We, along with Netflix, sort of made a decision to create a new franchise where there’s Ultimatum: Marry or Move On and there’s Ultimatum: Queer Love, and felt like it made sense to differentiate the two. There are slight nuances to each of the shows. The shows are very similar in their DNA, but you know, having a different host or for the different versions made sense to us as we talked about going into it.
Rather than the next season of The Ultimatum following another batch of heterosexual couples, they will follow women and non-binary people, each at their own crossroads in their relationships. Per Coelen’s interview with Variety, Ultimatum: Queer Love will follow much of the same beats as Marry Or Move On, but because there’s some differences between the two seasons, it was decided to make it into a spinoff.
As a viewer of both Love Is Blind and The Ultimatum, I found the latter series to be much more exciting because it allowed real couples that had been together for years to evaluate their compatibility in an interesting (and entertaining) way. Love Is Blind can often leave us with more questions due to its contestants meeting each other and saying “I do” within a month from meeting each other.
Mainstream dating shows in general have been painstakingly heterosexual over the years too. With Ultimatum: Queer Love, it looks like the series will showcase the ways in which queer relationships can be different than those between men and women. For that reason, it was decided to split the two The Ultimatum series. Given the show’s success, I’d imagine we’ll still get another season of Marry Or Move On at another point.
By the end of the first season of The Ultimatum, there were varied results for the couples that participated. One couple (Madlyn and Colby) successfully got back together after each dating other people and have since gotten married and welcomed their first child in May. Shanique And Randall broke up and got back together following the season, but they're not yet engaged. The rest of the core couples who were in the experiment did not stay with their original significant others.
We don’t know when The Ultimatum: Queer Love will premiere yet, but it’s reportedly in post production right now. While we wait, you can catch up on Love Is Blind and the first season of The Ultimatum with a Netflix subscription.
