On Monday night, Season 15’s Bachelorette Hannah Brown bid farewell to the very hot pilot Peter, with whom she had sex with four times in a windmill. (I’ve already put money on him as the next Bachelor.) In last night’s Part Two finale, she said goodbye to Tyler C., the man her family loved and the obvious superior choice, between him and Jed Wyatt, a struggling country musician from Nashville whose greatest claim to fame is a mediocre dog food jingle. Perhaps I’ve been asleep all season, but did they really have the most chemistry? Doesn’t matter, because he betrayed her anyway.
Before choosing which guy to get fake-engaged to, Hannah takes a brief walk in Crete to clear her head, and falls down—a clip that was teased for weeks (it’s no fence jumping)—then proceeds to break Tyler’s heart. Jed meanwhile plays another bad song on his guitar, and Hannah picks him. (Hannah, you bone musicians; you don’t marry them.) Two months into their engagement (back in the real-world), Brown finds a People article about Jed in which the tabloid argues that he didn’t break up with his girlfriend back home before coming on the show, which is for some reason concerning to Hannah! “It’s not what I thought I said yes to…” she says. Jed confesses to Hannah that his girlfriend back home was “not serious,” although she did meet his parents and throw him a surprise party. Oh and they went on multiple vacations together, and—another small thing—she encouraged him to pursue the show to advance his singer-songwriter career. Other than that, nothing serious.
During the live show last night, Chris Harrison asks Hannah if her engagement is over. She says, “Yes.” But then Jed turns up, sits far away from her on a loveseat built for two and reveals to her, “I’m sorry… I do want you to know that I do love you. I’m sorry that your feelings have changed due to my actions”—his “actions” equals already having a girlfriend. The twist is that Tyler C. appears, Hannah says she’s still into him, asks him out, and he says yes. Did he get hotter in the months since shooting? Or post-Jed, am I especially appreciative of his cartoonish, Captain America-good looks and sweetie pie dimples? Yes, yes I am.
So what’s the lesson here? Besides the fact that the Bachelor and Bachelorette franchise is run by manipulative genius producers who’ve managed to keep this thing fresh for decades? My answer: mostly nothing, but between this conclusion and Colton Underwood’s Bachelor finale from earlier this year, it might become a trend that the show doesn’t actually end in the same kind of formulaic romance as it has in the past. There might not be a wedding after all. Call it progress.