As Pilot Peter Weber’s nightmare Bachelor season comes to a necessary end, ABC has announced who will be the next Bachelorette. If I wasn’t so dedicated to the Bachelor spin-off shows, I would have no idea who this woman is.
According to People, it’s Clare Crawley, who made it to the end of Juan Pablo Galavis’s Season 18 of The Bachelor in 2014 before breaking things off in the final episode. As ABC reports, she’s best known for: 1) arriving at the Bachelor mansion wearing a fake baby bump; 2) participating in both Season 1 and 2 of Bachelor in Paradise; 3) Showing up for the short-lived and very excellent The Bachelor Winter Games in 2018. Though Crawley got engaged to the charming French-Canadian nerd from that season, Benoit Beauséjour-Savard, it didn’t work out. He liked her and she sort of liked him, but she wanted to flirt with a German hunk of meat instead. That didn’t work out, they got back together and then broke up.
Pulling a woman who first appeared on the franchise six years ago (notably pre-Trump) is an interesting if misguided move. Post-Rachel Lindsay, the first black Bachelorette, it seemed like the show wanted to move towards more progressive horizons. Instead, it back-peddled into a virginity obsession. But who knows. I do like that she’s 38 years old—most women on the show average 26, which is young to be so deadset on marriage—but knowing The Bachelorette producers, I’m sure they’ll spin that into some narrative about spinsters.