‘Love Is Blind’ Season 2 finale shows marriage is a trap

Love Is Blind Season 1 did not convince me that love is, indeed, blind. It did however inspire some sappy, feel-good optimism for its thesis of emotional connection as the basis for better, healthier, romantic relationships.

But then Season 2 of the Netflix hit came in like a wrecking ball, revealing how — far from being blind — love honestly needs to see a therapist before considering tying any knots. And for that public service alone, we consider this hot mess nothing short of required viewing.

Watching the car crash that was all five of Season 2’s relationships often felt more like anti-heterosexual marriage propaganda than a reality TV dating show.

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In theory, the show’s “social experiment” claims to test whether bonds made “sight unseen” are enough of a foundation for long-lasting matrimonial unions. In reality, this particularly chaotic Season 2 only shattered every last vestige of faith I had in the institution of marriage altogether. I’m not mad about it, either. Actually, despite being counter to the show’s conceit and (in all likelihood) antithetical to the creators’ intent, Love is Blind Season 2 is a sobering reminder of why we need to fundamentally rethink marriage as the ultimate goalpost for validating love.

A sobering reminder of why we need to fundamentally rethink marriage as the ultimate goalpost for validating love.

I mean, just imagine any of these couples becoming actual parents (which many contestants do envision for themselves). Personally, I felt a full shiver go down my spine when Rock Band enthusiast Danielle quickly veered from defending her right to drunkenly break tables while dressed as a hot dog to fantasizing about all the children she wants to have with fiancé Nick. I’m not usually one to make such pearl-clutching pleas, but god almighty WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?

It’s not just Danielle, either — though she does seem to answer the thought experiment of “what if red flags were a whole person?” The majority of this season’s cast make strong cases for why we may want to start issuing marriage licenses with at least as much scrutiny as a driver’s license. I, for one, would sleep more soundly at night if couples were required to pass some kinda emotional wellbeing check-in before jumping into legal unions with such high likelihoods of becoming toxic public safety hazards to all who get caught in their wake.

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Jokes aside, we’re all works-in-progress deserving of a loving partner who can help us on the never-ending journey to becoming better people. But no one’s personal growth should become someone else’s daily trauma.

Even Iyanna and Jarrette — this season’s golden couple viewers are clearly set up to root for — seem destined for disastrously unequal partnership. From the pods to the isle, Jarrette fuckboys himself out of deserving even an ounce of Iyanna every chance he gets. Mallory very publicly gives him one such chance, only to then gaslight Sal into apologizing to her for getting upset about it.

Perhaps most infuriating of all, Shake spends 10 episodes finding every excuse (while conveniently leaving out possible internalized racism) for why he just isn’t attracted to Deepti, a literal Disney princess come to life. There isn’t enough time in the universe to unpack the vortex of damage between professional manchild Shayne and his mommy-wife-to-be, Natalie. Yet somehow, even their powder keg of a pairing is still somehow the more stable timeline than the alternative, where Shayne and Shaina are a match made in the hell she believes former-fiancé Kyle is destined for as an atheist.

It’s just a whole lotta woof to go around! By the end, it feels like the only social experiment that could possibly end in success is Iyanna and Deepti exploring if bisexuality is their thing, so everyone else can go home to work on themselves.

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To be fair, ill-advised marriages aren’t new to either Love is Blind or reality dating shows in general. It’s also entirely possible that Season 2 hits different because we’re different. Maybe the public’s willingness to buy into reality TV fairytale love stories can’t survive the vibe shift of the two-year global pandemic we’ve lived through since Season 1.

Regardless, there are invaluable lessons to be learned from the disastrous unions of Season 2. Love certainly isn’t blind, and it also clearly isn’t all that’s needed for a healthy marriage either. In fact, we should probably stop measuring the success of loving partnerships through anything as outdated as marriage.

Producers can’t just keep ignoring the reality that young people’s values and priorities around romantic partnerships are drastically changing.

What feels most ‘off’ about Season 2 of Love is Blind is exactly the same thing that’s making shows like The Bachelor feel increasingly irrelevant. Producers can’t just keep ignoring the reality that young people’s values and priorities around romantic partnerships are drastically changing. Millennials made divorce rates plummet, yet commentators and researchers still insist on interpreting this as a negative outcome from their hesitancy to get married in the first place. Alternatively, maybe it’s actually just that young people don’t feel as beholden to the traditions of a heteronormative patriarchal institution they watched fail about 50 percent of the time in their own childhood homes.

If any reality TV dating show is equipped to transition out of the forced matrimonial formula, it’s Love is Blind, where marriage is indeed a choice rather than a compulsory fight to the death. Our only hope is that Season 3 opens its eyes to other ways (*cough*cough*MAKE IT GAY*cough*cough*) that it can break free from the status quo.