Love Is Blind
The Reunion
Season 9
Episode 13
Editor’s Rating
Photo: Adam Rose/Netflix
Look how the mighty have fallen. The show that brought us Lauren and Cameron is killing time by having an NBA point guard watch exes shoot hoops to decide who gets custody of the wedding ring neither paid for. What are we doing here? I don’t think even Netflix knows anymore. Everyone involved with Love Is Blind is just too aware of the fact that this show is a social-media phenomenon. To the detriment of more interesting lines of questioning, the Lacheys and producers are spending time trying to manufacture moments like #RingGate, while most of the Denver cast spent this hour thinking about how they’d come off online. A good reunion shouldn’t feel like a series of Notes app statements. My advice to this group? If you’re going to be performative on-camera, the key word is perform — some of y’all should’ve invested in acting lessons.
I guess Netflix wanted everyone to clear the air in the open air, because the reunion takes place on a windy outdoor set. (I’m glad Kalybriah’s mom has a blanket.) After Myles Smith sings the cast to their seats, we start with Sparkle Megan rehashing the reasons she broke up with Jordan. Megan cites lifestyle differences but notes that part of her does wish she’d given Jordan “a little more grace.” Still, she says she decided based on how she was feeling at the time because she’s dated based on potential before. Jordan clarifies that his comment about regretting introducing Luca to Megan had nothing to do with Megan and was more about his decision to be on Love Is Blind when his son needs stability.
Then Megan shares a surprise: She’s a mom now. She welcomed her son Brooks two and a half months before the reunion and kept her pregnancy a secret from everyone in the cast except Kacie. “That’s why you got so thick,” Kalybriah says. We get a mini-timeline of events: Filming wrapped in April, and at some point afterward, Megan went on a couple dates with Mike and grabbed margaritas with Blake, who apologized for ghosting. In July, a mutual friend introduced her to Paul, who got her pregnant after three months of dating. Jordan says he knew about Sparkle Jr. in advance, but it also sounds like there’s a chance Megan wouldn’t have said anything if he hadn’t reached out after a “disgusting” person tried to “stir the pot” on Instagram.
From a reality-TV perspective, it would’ve been better to get Jordan’s real-time reaction, especially since paparazzi already scooped Netflix on this news. Beyond that, there’s a missed opportunity to place this life update in the context of what we saw this season. The Lacheys mention that Megan wondered in the finale if she was meant to be a mom, but they don’t really interrogate her transition into feeling like it’s now her true calling. Like, is Paul rich enough to not need to work? (Apparently, he’s a CEO.) Do they pay for a nanny? How many daytime tennis games and international trips has she forfeited for parenthood? Given her reasons for breaking up with Jordan, these are interesting, fair questions. Instead, we get baby photos and some LinkedIn-friendly takeaways about selflessness and empathy.
Jordan gets an opportunity to correct Mike’s false onscreen suggestion that type-one diabetes has to do with eating habits. He says Mike personally apologized to him and made a large charitable donation, and he should be forgiven. He also confirms that while he’s been casually dating, he isn’t ready to introduce Luca to anyone yet. And that’s it — we’re about to spend way more time on a couple that didn’t even make it back to Denver: Kacie and Patrick.
I don’t know if it’s because they’re nervous, but neither of these two are very compelling storytellers; Jordan and Joe reacting in the background is more interesting. Patrick says it was “cool but not cool” to see the other side of their breakup in the edit. We learn that Kacie texted him when they got back to Denver but wasn’t ready to talk over the phone like he wanted. Eventually, he said he wanted to be friends and asked for the ring back. At a cast party, he called her “ex-wifey,” which she did not appreciate. Now, he wants her to just apologize so people stop attacking her online.
Kacie is trying to be apologetic but argues that she genuinely loved Patrick while he thought of her as a side chick. Ultimately, she says she’ll give Netflix’s ring back, which means we get a random Vanessa Lachey Gollum impression. But this performance of closure is immediately followed by a montage of the two playing basketball in the pods, teeing up Chris Paul of the L.A. Clippers emerging from the audience to make Kacie and Patrick shoot baskets for the ring. Kacie wins, and Patrick hugs her and gives her the ring back. So what was the point of their whole conversation?
Next up, Joe gets a grilling. He confirms the rumors that he and Kacie dated for a month and a half before things “just kind of fizzled out.” Madison claims Kacie was flirting with Joe at a party on the night of his tux fitting, but Joe denies that’s why he ended the engagement. He says he hadn’t broken up with Madison because it wasn’t the right time with their friends around, and he wanted to have a good night.
The dating pool in Denver is apparently so shallow that much of the cast later attended the same pool party with Joe and his now-girlfriend. (It just seems like a small town in general; Kait is friends with both Madison and this new girlfriend, though she claims that everyone is a “girls’ girl” and this situation has been fine.) According to Madison, Kacie pretended like they shared a sisterhood — we’ll skate by the offensive term Kacie used — and she says Kacie cried to her about Joe at this party. (Patrick refuses to back Kacie up about her version of events; it sounds like he was just there to get drunk.) Ultimately, Joe denies that any of his relationships overlapped, but he does admit to being a little messy. He met up with Madison after the show for what he remembers as an argument, then made out with her and cried after walking her to her car. Madison seems to have given up on getting closure, but she does make a point to call him out for opening her up to scrutiny about her appearance. Joe counters that the physical attraction was there, pointing out that all they did was “fight and fuck” and denying that he ever intended to body-shame her. Still, he says he is “very sorry” if it came off that way.
Next up on the apology train is Nick, who delivers a long speech to Kait about dumping her in the pods. He says he “completely and utterly failed” to take accountability, didn’t deserve her, and found it “disgusting” to see how he acted. He’s criticizing himself so much, it’s almost like doesn’t want her to have the opportunity to share her complaints. That doesn’t stop Kait from saying his flirting sounded like ChatGPT and his apologies felt “calculated” because he didn’t reach out until he knew he was going to be on-camera. Weirdly, Nick isn’t really asked much about his actual ex-fiancée, Annie, but she comes to his defense anyway and suggests that he was genuine, perhaps because she can empathize with having quickly changing feelings in the pods. (She insists she doesn’t wish she picked Brenden instead.) Annie says she can now see that she was forcing her relationship with Nick and they’re “friendly” today. In one of the funnier moments of the night, Nick recalls texting Joe, “You’ve got enough stuff to worry about,” to squash any beef after watching Joe struggle on-camera to say anything nice about him. Joe puts both hands up and apologizes, while Nick acknowledges that he did “alienate” himself from the cast.
Somehow, we end up back on Kacie, who is once again being accused of making a move on someone else’s man. Kait says she went on a date with Brenden and was excited until she saw him “all over” Kacie at a hangout at Kacie’s apartment. Kacie tries to deny this and get Patrick to back her up, but that fails again, and she plays producer by declaring, “We’re cutting that.” I’m honestly surprised by how consistently this cast was hanging out after filming.
The Lacheys eventually remember that two other couples actually made it to the altar. Anton and Ali focus on his friend’s (now-ex) girlfriend’s comments about how often he parties or goes to strip clubs. It’s weird to spend time grilling Ali about why she never brought this concern up to Anton directly when Netflix itself released a deleted scene of her discussing it with him. Why didn’t they play that clip instead of making Ali say that she can’t remember?
We don’t get much new insight from these two. Ali reiterates her concerns that Anton was different in the pods and denies that his job or ambition were factors in her decision. A new complaint is that he wore flip-flops in Baja. “The pigs were out,” she says, laughing. But Anton has found someone who appreciates him, pigs and all — he’s been with new girlfriend, Miranda, for about a year. Meanwhile, Ali says she does “appreciate” the interest but wants to keep her personal life private.
Our last couple is Kalybriah and Edmond. Kalybriah pulls notes out of her dress, but it’s not because she’s dramatically bringing receipts. She just has a bad memory. She comes off as the most levelheaded of the cast. She defends her connection with Edmond as genuine but also points out why she felt like his crying became “manipulation.” According to Kalybriah, Edmond hit a point where he decided to stop crying and turned into a “butthole” off-camera. At one point, she says she came to him crying because she didn’t feel like herself, and he waved his hand and walked off because he said he didn’t understand.
Edmond bristles at the idea that he was being manipulative. He doesn’t seem to understand that two things can be true at once: that he was just being himself and that he was being manipulative. Kalybriah points to a pattern of him insisting that he loves her — and once literally falling to his knees — as his attempt to fix situations. When he talks about loving her even when she was PMSing, you can almost hear the women roll their eyes.
When the Lacheys give them both a chance to say their final words to each other, Kalybriah says she was meant to go through this experience with Edmond, that he taught her patience, and that he should never accept a love where he’s cussed at or called names. Edmond says Kalybriah is amazing and that he never would have gotten a woman like her outside of an experience like this. It feels a bit lackluster in comparison to the grace she gave him with her closing message, but they still hug it out.
To cap off this fever dream of a reunion, we learn that it’s Jordan’s birthday. For one terrifying moment, it seems like we might be celebrating with chicken smoothies. Instead, Blake comes out with a dessert that is way too small for the entire cast to share. Good thing there’s “protein ice cream” and some Ninja product placement? “Thank you guys for celebrating love,” we’re told before a closing compilation of Anton’s toes. We heard so many sorrys in a single episode, but where is our apology for that ending?
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