For those of you who didn’t have time to watch the lengthy 3-hour Bachelor finale along with the 2-hour After the Final Rose special earlier this week, I’ve got you covered. To wrap up Arie Luyendyk’s somewhat tedious season of The Bachelor, ABC hit viewers with one of the most dramatic twists in Bachelor history. The finale featured Arie introducing his two finalists, Lauren Burnham and Becca Kufrin, to his family and him taking them each on two last romantic dates in Peru.
Prior to the finale, Arie has told both women that he loves them, a Bachelor mistake. Arie struggles over deciding between the two women and ultimately settles on a proposal to Becca, which she accepts. Arie doesn’t make up his mind until the morning of the proposal—not a great sign.
However, what happens after the show seemingly concludes is when the real scandal comes into play. The last hour of the finale features unedited footage of Arie, two months into his engagement with Becca, deciding to end their engagement with hopes of getting back together with Lauren. Arie not only partakes in an interview with Bachelor host Chris Harrison before the act about how he is going to break up with Becca – he decides to completely blindside her and bring along with him all of ABC’s cameras to film him ending things during what she thought would be a romantic weekend together. In the long display of completely unedited footage, viewer see as Becca gets her heart broken and Arie just sits there, despite Becca asking him to leave multiple times while crying. However, despite her engagement being broken by her fiancé on national television, she shows very little anger at Arie and simply asks him to leave (which he ignores about ten times).
On the After The Final Rose special, Chris Harrison interviews Becca who says that “It was hard to relive those moments and to feel that heartbreak… but watching it back, it honestly helps me get some closure—just to see how hurt I was and how blindsided I was and to know that at the end of the day [Arie] had to do what he had to do and follow his heart.” Becca and Arie then had a painfully uncomfortable reunion where she generously wished him happiness and told him to hold Lauren’s heart high (he would later propose to Lauren on the live stage to mixed reactions from the audience). She was very calm for a situation that has provoked a $6,000 wine fund for Becca through Venmo, a legislator crafting a bill to ban Arie from Becca’s home state Minnesota, and multiple billboards condemning Arie bought across the country.
A silver-lining from this situation is that at the conclusion of After The Final Rose, Becca was announced to be the next Bachelorette. This was met with wide support from Bachelor alumni and fans alike; Becca’s heartbreak and classy bounce-back has won the love of much of America. Here’s to hoping that Becca can successfully end up with someone better than Arie at the end of her own season (which premieres on May 28)!