Is this how the show finally dies?

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Annie Spratt/Unsplash and virtustudio/iStock/Getty Images Plus. 

This season of The Bachelor, which is the show’s 29^th, is by all appearances proceeding in much the same way the previous 28 seasons did: We’ve gotten through hometowns, the “Women Tell All” special, and fantasy suites, and now lead Grant Ellis is expected to give his final rose to one of the two remaining contestants in Monday’s finale episode.

But behind the scenes, the past few weeks in the Bachelor-verse have been anything but typical.

Earlier this month, it broke that showrunners Claire Freeland and Bennett Graebner were leaving the franchise, which also includes The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise, and The Golden Bachelor. Their exit seemed to be prompted by a February report in Deadline in which crew members alleged that the show and its various spinoffs were toxic work environments.

Crew members had plenty to be upset about: Much of the production staff had just found out that they had lost their jobs in the wake of ABC and Warner Bros. TV’s February decision to “pause” The Bachelorette. When the Bachelorette news came out, it registered as a big deal on its own—it meant that for the first time in some 15 years, the lady-centered spinoff wouldn’t air—but in retrospect it seems like it may have just been a symptom of larger problems with the franchise, which, as of very recently, now has no one leading it.

Freeland and Graebner had only been at the helm since 2023, when Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss, who had been at the show since its inception, left following a misconduct investigation of his own. Deadline spoke to a dozen former and current crew members for its exposé, which quoted employees calling Freeland and Graebner “secretive and passive-aggressive” bosses who lead with “fear.”

It also contained an anecdote about them forcing the crew to wear name tags because they hadn’t learned staffers’ names. Two other high-ranking members of the Bachelor team, co-executive producers Michael Margolis and Keely Booth, also appeared to leave the franchise in the fallout from the article.

Freeland and Graebner denied the allegations through a lawyer, and Deadline received positive testimonials about their leadership as well. As Bachelor podcast Game of Roses pointed out, the comments section of the original Deadline article has become something of a war zone, full of anonymous accounts of people suggesting that they’re close to the franchise offering their own sometimes eye-popping perspectives.

As for where it all went wrong, both the Deadline piece and some fans pointed to one particular moment from last year’s outing of The Bachelorette, which featured Jenn Tran, the series’ first Asian American lead.

In the finale episode, it was revealed that Tran and her chosen suitor, Devin, had broken up in the months after the show was filmed—but that didn’t stop the show from airing the footage of Tran proposing anyway, along with her excruciating real-time reaction to it. It wasn’t the most evil thing the show’s ever done, but it was up there, and it earned quite a bit of audience backlash. According to anonymous sources in the Deadline article, it was Freeland’s idea for everyone to watch Tran suffer.

While I don’t imagine this moment helped the show’s trajectory, it alone wasn’t responsible for tanking it either.

Ratings have been on the decline for a while—prior to Tran, Joey Graziadei’s season was a rare highlight that brought on a ratings bump, and I wrote at the time that Bachelor producers should simply cast someone as good as him every season if they want the show to perform better.

But it’s also true that there’s more competition in the reality dating sphere than ever, from shows like Netflix’s Love Is Blind and Peacock’s Love Island, the latter of which had such a buzz-worthy run last year that Bachelor producers would have had no choice but to take notice. While The Golden Bachelor proved popular, the breakup of the couple at its center may have subsequently soured fans on the senior spinoffs, and The Golden Bachelorette saw viewership decline.

The real next test, after the finale of Grant’s season of The Bachelor, will be Bachelor in Paradise. That show, which brings together a bunch of contestants who didn’t win their seasons of The Bachelor and Bachelorette to a tropical locale for a kind of multiweek singles mixer, was put on a pause of its own last summer but is expected to return this year. It has a new showrunner, Scott Teti, who comes from outside Bachelor Nation. Will he implement the kind of changes that make The Bachelor seem actually fun again and give the franchise the positive momentum it needs? The Game of Roses podcast referred to the upcoming Paradise season as “make or break.” It may be a cruel summer indeed.