I think many fans of the hit Netflix dating “experiment,” Love Is Blind, would agree that we’ve gotten to follow along with a lot of intriguing couples in both Season 1 and the recently aired Season 2. There’s been no shortage of mega-drama between cast members, wedding-ending fights, love triangles, easy to hate villains, and even some endearing love stories. But, it turns out that the series hasn’t followed all of the engaged couples from either season, and the creator has now opened up about why some of those romances got left behind.
Why Haven’t We Seen Every Engaged Couple On Love Is Blind?
In each season of the bingeable Netflix reality show that we’ve seen so far, we followed along as six couples get engaged (from among the 30 participants) and try to make their relationships work outside of the pods that kept them from seeing one another as they made their connections. But, each season also actually had eight engagements, meaning that in Love Is Blind Season 1 and Season 2, audiences missed out on the stories of two romantic pairings.
In a chat with Variety, creator Chris Coelen spoke about why some couples had to be abandoned when it came to who was featured on the series, and said:
It’s a lot of guesswork. We don’t know what’s going to happen. In Season 1, we were following Kenny Barnes and Kelly Chase, and we were like, it’s going to be so boring. They’re gonna say yes, and, of course, they’re getting married. And they didn’t. We had no idea, and continue to have no idea what’s going to happen in the stories that we choose. If we are so lucky as we have been in Season 1 and Season 2 to have more engagements than we’re able to follow, then we go with our gut. Like, these seem like a good, genuine, cross-section of authentic stories.
Alright, alright! I can already hear all of your complaints, believe me. I, too, assume that I would enjoy it if Love Is Blind could follow all of the people who become engaged after 10 days of talking to each other through a wall that doesn’t allow them to see whether or not they’re physically attracted. But, if we really think about what Coelen said, it’s pretty easy to see that he and his team have a bit of an uphill battle when it comes to deciding who to continue to film.
As he said, there’s no way to know which of the engaged couples will provide enough variety for the season by adding “a good, genuine, cross-section of authentic stories.” Coelen also said that many of the people who’ve been on the show do end up having “fascinating, multi-layer relationships,” but they do have to pick and choose because they don’t know whose relationships will continue to be intriguing down the line. It’s not uncommon for these things to peter out, regardless of how much effort the participants put in:
Many of the people who showed up really put themselves out there, tried and didn’t ultimately find a connection. I would love everybody to find the connection. I’d love there to be 12 engagements, and that’s unfortunately not the way that things happened.
In each season, we’ve been introduced in the premiere episode to several people who we may instinctively want to follow along with, only to quickly become disappointed when we get little more than their name, age, job title, and glimpses of them as they chat in the pods or lounge around the living quarters. In Season 2, especially, a lot of fans were hoping to see more from some of the participants who didn’t completely fit traditional beauty standards, because we get so few people on dating shows who don’t look like supermodels. Chris Coelen added that he’s heard the complaints about that, but assures fans that not following those cast members more isn’t on purpose:
I think it’s very funny for people to say, ‘Oh, you put somebody who was, you know, heavier in there, and then you just didn’t follow them. It’s not like anybody wants that to happen or doesn’t want that to happen. What I want to have happen is just to be true to the experiment. You put people in there. They can’t see each other. If they fall in love, then we follow it and if they don’t, we don’t.
Well, the good news is that we won’t have to wait so long to see who makes a connection in Love Is Blind Season 3. Those episodes finished filming in Dallas shortly after Season 2 was filmed, with the third set of episodes due to hit Netflix sometime within the next year. While we wait, be sure to check out other dramatic dating shows on Netflix, look into the 2022 TV premiere dates, and see what else is coming with the 2022 Netflix TV schedule!
