Love Is Blind has gone further than ever

It seemed after three back-to-back seasons of Love Is Blind that America’s mid-size tech industry cities had run out of singles looking to find love, sight unseen. Then, Netflix said oh yeah? Here’s season four.

The reality show, which fittingly premiered during a worldwide pandemic, follows 30 single men and women as they go on blind dates in windowless rooms affectionately known as “pods”. Over the course of 10 days, the contestants form lasting emotional connections from behind a wall, with the ultimate goal of getting engaged without ever seeing each other. From there, they finally meet face-to-face and travel to a post-pod retreat to build on their relationships; and of course finally meet the other people they have been dating. When they return home, the engaged couples must learn how to navigate life as a pair before deciding whether to say “I do”, all in a matter of weeks.

The premise of Love Is Blind season four may be the same as seasons past, but it’s this installment’s cast of characters who offer something new. Instead of a format fast becoming tired, these new contestants are turning Love Is Blind into modern day theater.

The first five episodes of the new season, which dropped on Friday 24 March, introduced us to the many contestants we will get to know even the most intimate details about over the next four weeks. For starters, there’s Paul – a 28-year-old environmental scientist who described his past girlfriends as “witchy,” which is exactly how I’d like to be described by an ex-boyfriend. Paul strikes up a strong connection with 33-year-old flight attendant Amber. I’ll bet it was when Paul said “I like rocks” that really stuck with her.

Then we meet 31-year-old criminal defense attorney Zack, who fans couldn’t help but notice looked somewhat like one of the Property Brothers. We see Kwame Appiah, a 33-year-old sales development manager, propose to Chelsea, a 31-year-old speech pathologist, in the pods. Though, she wasn’t his first choice (more on that later). Marshall Glaze, a 27-year-old marketing manager, and Jackelina Bonds, a 27-year-old dental assistant, form a genuine connection in the pods before he pops the question.

The undisputed fan-favorite couple is Tiffany, a 37-year-old client lead recruiter, and Brett, a 36-year-old designer at Nike. They had viewers believing that love really is blind, even though Brett stormed out of the pods when Tiffany fell asleep during his confession of love (I, too, would be lulled to sleep by the sweet sounds of Brett’s baritone voice). That still didn’t deter him from proposing to her the very next night.

Then that leaves Micah and Irina: Love is Blind’s resident pot-stirrers of season four. In the past three years, we’ve never seen a duo quite like this before on Love Is Blind, but this pairing proves that we were way past due some real drama. That’s not to say that a reality dating series fuelled by dorm-style living, alcohol, and the impending doom of a wedding hasn’t had unsavory moments in the past. They were just all at the hands of men.

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Shake Chatterjee was the antagonist of season two, most notably for his shallow remarks about women’s weight. Although Cole Barnett wasn’t necessarily a villain in season three, it was his constant weaponised incompetence that made him the subject of such ire. But there’s nothing that brings people together more than pegging someone on their screen as a mean girl, even if the men of Love Is Blind have been equally bad if not worse over the past three seasons.

This season, we have Micah Lussier, a marketing manager in her mid-twenties, and Irina Solomonova, a 26-year-old business owner. The two women quickly gravitate towards each other in the women’s living quarters, because it’s actually a rule that in friendships between two girls one must be blonde and the other must be brunette.

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In the pods, Micah forms a connection with both Kwame and Paul. Micah was the first to receive a proposal from Kwame, but after a day of mulling things over, she awkwardly turned him down. That’s OK, because if she didn’t reject him then we wouldn’t have Kwame serenading Chelsea in the pods with an original acoustic song. Brace yourselves, it’s not the only musical number to take place in the pods this season.

Instead, Micah goes for Paul and tells him to cut things off with the flight attendant, Amber. But when Amber returned to the women’s dorms after being dumped by Paul, Micah and Irina eavesdropped as she tearfully recalled their conversation to Chelsea. Although Micah later realised that Amber was actually quite hurt after being dumped by Paul, the eavesdropping moment still came as a shock to viewers who have become accustomed to the girl gangs of seasons past.

As for Irina, she and fellow cast member Bliss competed for the affection of Zack in the pods. Bliss baked cupcakes for Zack on his birthday, and the two were utterly amazed to learn that they share the same favourite song. Irina, on the other hand, made it known to Zack that there was “tension” between herself and Bliss. He ultimately proposed to Irina, but it became clear during the couples’ post-pods retreat in Mexico that love was indeed not blind for them. The fifth episode ended on a cliffhanger, with Zack returning home to Seattle and begging Bliss to take him back.

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Even before the fourth season premiered, Micah and Irina already had an idea about how they’d be seen by viewers of the show. In a joint interview with Entertainment Weekly, the two women explained that their supposed “mean girl” energy was actually a “coping mechanism” to get through filming. Like any 20-something-year-old who’s suddenly thrust onto television, Micah said that she and Irina are “just people” in their mid-twenties “just doing the best we can do”.

“Everything was difficult. Everyone was experiencing the whole show in a different way,” Irina said. “Me and Micah’s coping mechanism was laughing about it. And I honestly will say on the record, 100 per cent, I did not intentionally ever want to hurt anyone. [Hearing] that I hurt people’s feelings genuinely breaks my heart.”

With Love Is Blind, a show that’s entire premise is built on multiple people going after the same person, it’s surprising there hasn’t been a duo like Micah and Irina before. Sure, we saw Jessica Batten go after Amber Pike’s (engaged) man Matt Barnett in season one, and Natalie Lee and Shaina Hurley go head-to-head over Shayne Jansen in season two. However, the majority of emotional chaos on Love Is Blind has been contained within the couples themselves; the condescending comments, the big blowouts one day before their wedding, and the eventual divorces (of which there are two).

Let’s not forget that the first five episodes have also been filled with truly genuine moments unlike any other season, such as Marshall comforting Jackie during her emotional breakdown and Brett opening up to Tiffany about his childhood. In a season like this – where the good couples are so good that there’s no question they’ll walk down the aisle, and the incompatible couples are so wrong for each other it’s no surprise they will part ways – the drama is instead orchestrated among the women.

The apparent “mean girl” energy of Micah and Irina is not something viewers should themselves be cruel about, rather it is a gift for those left snoozing by the last two seasons of Love Is Blind, much like Tiffany was in the pods. The beloved Netflix reality series needed a pick-me-up, and this season’s giggling Jekyll and Hyde have delivered. But perhaps the biggest lesson to be learned about supposed villains on Love Is Blind comes from our very own Kwame, who says in episode two of season four: “If someone else is the villain, you realise that you don’t have control of everything.”

The fourth season of Love Is Blind is already its most dramatic yet, but if there’s anything to be learned about reality television, it’s that no one has control…even in their own love story.