Possible spoilers ahead for the upcoming season of The Bachelorette!
The new season of The Bachelorette will be airing in the wake of The Bachelor’s race controversy and Chris Harrison’s exit as host. While the franchise didn't really need another snafu to complicate matters further, there is the distinct possibility that the Bachelorette star for this season, Katie Thurston, may have already spoiled the competition series for ABC’s fans ahead of the premiere.
In a previous post on her Instagram, Katie Thurston posed at a waterfront restaurant called Duke’s La Jolla and captioned it, “Something borrowed. Something blue.” The implication was clear to all: she was engaged to be married. It seemed like no harm, no foul, though – that’s the desired outcome of any show on Bachelor Nation. That was until a Reddit user did a deep dive on all the contestants vying for Thurston’s love on The Bachelorette. What they discovered was that one of the men, John Hersey, once posted on LinkedIn about being a bartender at Duke’s La Jolla. In other words, Thurston was potentially spoiling that Hersey was the winner of the final rose this season.
The connection is a tenuous one, to be sure. But Katie Thurston does claim to live in Seattle, so it would be an odd coincidence that she happens to be over a thousand miles away, in the same location of one of her Bachelorette beaus, after just wrapping the season. But hey, maybe she was just in the mood for drinks at Duke’s La Jolla?
The Season 17 star seemed to address the issue in a different post on Instagram. A fan wrote, “OMG is you moving to San Diego a teaser for your Bach pick?!” To which Thurston replied, “hahah naaah I’m not that messy.” It’s like a case of catch-22, though. She can’t confirm it was a spoiler, but denying it as a spoiler here kind of gives away a different hint that this John Hersey wasn’t picked in the end.
Regardless, the location clue isn’t much of one. John Hersey might have worked at the exact same bar as the one in Katie Thurston’s post, but a few other Bachelorette contestants also live around the same area. So if it is a true spoiler here, I guess we can narrow down the list of potential winners to California-based ones, at the very least.
Katie Thurston likely didn’t intend to give away any Bachelorette spoilers. But it’s no biggie, as many are poised to watch the new season on ABC regardless, just to see how replacement hosts Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe compare to Chris Harrison. Adams promised something “totally new,” but franchise alums have been showing a lot of public support for Harrison. Tanner Tolbert, from Bristowe’s Bachelorette season and Bachelor in Paradise, even said he thinks the ratings will go down because of the change.
We’ll have to see if Tanner Tolbert’s prediction is the case, as well as that Reddit investigation. Tune in to ABC tomorrow, June 7, at 8 p.m. ET for the premiere of Katie Thurston’s season of The Bachelorette.
