The 10th season of “Summer House” was nearly halfway through airing when scandal struck. The reality show, which chronicles a group of friends as they summer in the Hamptons, swerved in March when two cast members, Amanda Batula and West Wilson, announced they were dating, a potential violation of friend code, since Wilson had previously dated Batula’s buddy Ciara Miller and Batula had only recently announced that her marriage to another cast mate, Kyle Cooke, was ending.
Public outrage followed the announcement, but without confirmation of the facts in the love triangle, it could not be properly calibrated. Was Batula’s relationship over before she hooked up with Wilson? Did the pair lie about when their attraction started? The “Summer House” reunion, set to air in three parts for the first time in show history, answered a few lingering questions and gave viewers the Ciara-Amanda-West confrontation needed to process it all. After filming, the host Andy Cohen told his Instagram followers that of the roughly 200 reunions he had hosted, it was “one of the most intense we’ve ever shot” and that “every question was asked.”
Here are the four biggest takeaways from Part 1, which aired Tuesday.
Some timeline questions were answered.
Amid many of the questions viewers had about Wilson and Batula’s relationship, lots revolved around the chronology.
Miller said that she had begun to get suspicious that something was happening between the pair on Jan. 17 when she called Batula to get drinks and, after the call went unanswered, she checked Batula’s location on a phone app to find that her still-married friend was at Wilson’s apartment. Though Miller and Wilson had stopped dating by that point, they had remained friendly since reconciling in the summer and, as they clarified at the reunion, had sleepovers in the fall.
At the reunion, Wilson and Batula told the group that they had kissed for the first time on March 1, after Wilson had had brunch with Cooke and other cast members. On a late April episode of Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live,” Bailey Taylor, another housemate, said that Batula and Cooke had kissed at that very brunch.
Batula confirmed that she and Wilson had sex for the first time sometime after they posted their joint statement on March 31.
Another complicating factor: Wilson was rumored to be dating another woman while this was all happening. On the “Watch What Happens Live” episode, he wore a horsehair tie that the woman, Meija Moreno, had made and lied about his relationship status with Batula, saying about his castmate, “That’s a friend.”
Wilson denied that he and Moreno were exclusive (Lindsay Hubbard, another housemate, said Moreno had told her they were) but admitted that he had spent the night with her the day before his “Watch What Happens Live” appearance. Batula said she had known about Moreno and that she and Wilson had discussed their relationship.
Amanda Batula and West Wilson admitted lying to their friends.
The gossip website Deuxmoi first reported on March 5 that Batula and Wilson were romantically involved. In text messages shared at the reunion, Batula told Miller that same day that “West and I are very much so just friends.” Batula admitted that she and Wilson had been talking about dating when she sent the message.
“I lied — I 100 percent lied,” Batula said to Cohen during the reunion.
Miller read another text from Batula, received on March 7, in which Batula asked her if she wanted to clear the air about the Wilson rumors so that they wouldn’t hinder the women’s friendship.
Jesse Solomon, another housemate, said that Batula had told him in the winter that the rumors weren’t true, and Wilson also denied them.
“The lying part — I won’t sit here and act like I didn’t do it,” Wilson said. “I 100 percent lied to people here, and I take full accountability for that.”
The housemates didn’t buy Batula’s defense.
Batula tried to defend her decision to hook up with Wilson, saying, “So, no one in the world has ever been in a situation like this before?”
Hubbard responded: “In high school, maybe. We are in our 30s.”
When Miller questioned why Batula had been spending so much time with Wilson and his friends, Batula denied that she had been, and the confrontation ended as Batula yelled an expletive at Miller.
Later in the episode, Mia Calabrese addressed Batula again, saying: “Amanda, why are you doing this? You went from being married to one of West’s side [expletive]? That’s crazy. This is unnecessary.”
Carl Radke, another housemate, also criticized Batula and West for not including Miller and Cooke by name in their Instagram statement, calling the statement “a terrible move” and saying, “If you’re going to do it, apologize to Ciara and Kyle — in the statement, publicly.”
Wilson’s explicit photos leaked while cameras were rolling.
While settling in on the reunion set, Wilson told Batula, “I just got a text that someone hacked my phone and there’s nudes of me being sent around Missouri.”
Radke said the group had already heard about it that morning, to which Batula responded, “Wow, that’s weird — I’ve never gotten any.”
