SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the finale of The Bachelorette.
The time has finally come for Jenn Tran to conclude her journey on The Bachelorette, and right off the bat ABC wants audiences to know this will be one for the history books.
“Something that has simply never happened on this show happens tonight?” host Jesse Palmer teased in the opening of the episode, which aired live Tuesday night in front of a studio audience. “Here’s a spoiler for you. It will.”
Well, buckle up, because it’s a three-hour finale, and there’s a lot of ground to cover.
Jenn is still in Hawai’i, getting ready for an engagement, but first she’ll be seeing her family for the first time in a few months so they can give their perspective on her relationships with Devin and Marcus. She tells her family she’s in love with both of them, but she confides that only Devin has said it back. Marcus is still holding out. Naturally, they’re skeptical about both relationships, but they say they’re eager to meet the men and ensure that either would be a healthy endeavor for Jenn.
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First, they’ll be meeting Devin. He tells her family how he grew up with a single mom, and he has a very strong bond with his family. Jenn says they’ve bonded over their untraditional families and the person they’ve become as a result. Jenn’s mom says in a confessional that she thinks they need more time to understand each other.
During a one-on-one conversation with Jenn’s mom and aunt, Devin says Jenn makes him feel seen and loved in a way he never has before. He says there’s “no question” that Jenn is his person, and struggles to discuss how he would feel if Jenn doesn’t choose him. He says he wouldn’t propose to her without her mom’s blessing, and it would be very hard for him if he’s not engaged to her at the end of this.
In Jenn’s conversation with her mom, she says that she feels very comfortable with Devin, and she appreciates that he’s willing to make things work with her even when it’s difficult. Jenn’s mom is worried about whether Devin would accept Vietnamese culture, but Jenn assures that he very much would embrace it. Her mom tells her that she thinks Jenn and Devin need more time to understand each other, but Jenn clearly disagrees.
Jenn’s brother isn’t sure about Devin either, which Jenn anticipated, since he’s always been very protective of her. However, he does think that their similar family dynamics and the way that Jenn and Devin relate is a good sign. He reminds her that there is another man, Marcus, who is vying for her heart. He tells her that he’ll ultimately support whatever she decides, but he still plans to do some vetting of his own.
Speaking with Devin, Jenn’s brother asks how he feels about potentially being engaged in the next week. Devin says it worries him that Marcus is still around, and he does admit he’s struggled with Jenn not being as vulnerable as he would have liked previously. But, she ultimately did tell him that she loved him. Devin asks Jenn’s brother for his blessing, and he says no — but only because he hasn’t spoken with Marcus yet. So, TBD on that.
This makes Devin a bit insecure, but he takes it in stride. After the meeting, Devin tells Jenn that he understands where they’re coming from, and while it’s scary, he is trying not to get in his head about it just because it didn’t go more positively.
Next up, the family is meeting Marcus. They’re a bit worried, because Marcus hasn’t said he loves Jenn yet. Her brother says she has a history of dating emotionally unavailable men, and he doesn’t want her to fall into that pattern again with Marcus. Jenn is equally worried that her family won’t buy into the relationship, but she’s hoping that Marcus has had time to think and maybe re-evaluate his feelings.
Marcus is also nervous, because he’s already aware her family might not buy into his reservations or be comfortable with Jenn moving forward if he’s holding anything back.
Quickly into the meeting, Marcus opens up about his family life and his journey in the foster care system, being adopted with only one of his three sisters. He also tells them about his near-death experience in the military. He said all of that made him realize how hard he’s willing to fight for love, and he wants to go all the way with Jenn. Her brother appreciates where Marcus is coming from, but he doesn’t think he’s learned enough from Marcus’ perspective on the actual relationship.
He pulls Marcus aside to get more clarity. Marcus says he feels like his experiences gave him “a heart of stone,” which holds him back from infusing a lot of emotion into his relationship. Her brother hits him with a question about whether his experience will actually prevent him from ever getting there with Jenn, or getting there fast enough for this journey. Marcus says he’s spent a lot of time growing and learning about himself, and he thinks Jenn has made him realize he’s capable of true love.
That’s not really enough for Jenn’s brother, who is concerned with the way he danced around more direct questions. Ultimately, it’s up to Jenn, and her brother says he just hopes she is willing to wait for Marcus to get there.
The conversation doesn’t end there, as Marcus gets a similarly relentless line of questioning from Jenn’s mom and aunt, who want to know exactly why he hasn’t fallen in love with her yet. Marcus says it’s a pressure he puts on himself to be a provider, but he assures them that the feelings he has are real, and he does believe he will fall in love with her eventually. He also admits that he doesn’t think he’s ready for engagement, which worries her mom.
While that talk happens, Jenn asks her brother for advice, and her brother hits her with a question of his own, asking if Marcus is giving her enough right now. She says he could be giving more, but she understands his traumas have made that difficult. It freaks her out a bit when her brother says it seems like Marcus might fit the mold of her previous, emotionally unavailable relationships. She says she’s worried, but she thinks he’s more genuine than that, and she trusts him.
He asks how long Jenn is willing to wait, for which she doesn’t quite have an answer.
By the end of their time with her family, Jenn has decided that she, too, needs more definitive answers from Marcus. She asks him how he sees things ending for them, and he tells her today helped him make progress. Not good enough. After all, they are set to potentially get engaged next week. He says he’s not certain about the proposal, but it’s not about her. It’s about the pressure to be what he needs to be for her. But, he wants to continue trying.
Jenn leaves the conversation confused and disappointed. Much to think about.
Before Jenn accepts an engagement, it’s time for her final dates with Devin and Marcus. First up is, once again, Devin!
Both of them are feeling the pressure of this final date, but they seem to want to make the most of it. Jenn is worried that this pressure might prompt Devin to start overthinking and self-sabotage what they’ve got going on. Devin’s goal is just to feel more secure.
For the first part of their date, they participate in a Hawaiian spiritual ceremony that occurs before big life events, which involves using rocks to symbolize the expelling of their fears. Devin’s fear is his own self-sabotage, and Jenn’s is a fear of abandonment. They decide that they’re going to lean on each other through those fears rather than weathering them alone.
The dinner portion of the date goes relatively well. Devin agrees to continue to trust Jenn, and she appreciates the level of faith he is finally putting in her. Point for Devin!
The next morning, Jenn wakes up saying she’s “frustrated and confused” about where she stands with Marcus. Her date with Devin went well, and she knows exactly where they stand. She can’t say the same about Marcus, having given him “every opportunity” to tell her that he loves her.
Before their final date, Marcus catches up with Jesse and lets him know that he’s still been feeling conflicted and doubtful since meeting Jenn’s family. He says every time he gets to be with Jenn, they make progress with their connection, so he’s crossing his fingers for a good date. Jesse asks if he’s actually in love with her and afraid to tell her, or if he’s not sure whether he loves her at all. He gives a bit of a non-answer, but he keeps saying he’s very “torn” about the whole situation. Jesse says it’s important that, if deep down, he does love her, then he needs to tell her otherwise he might lose her.
Well, he’s running out of time to figure things out, because Jenn doesn’t want to beat around the bush. She goes into their final date ready to ask the difficult questions that she needs answered.
Jenn goes to Marcus’ hotel room, and she tells him that she wants to know that if they go on their date today, he’ll be able to get to a point where he could be ready for an engagement at the end of it. He says he regrets not “diving deeper” into what their future might look like, but Jenn pushes back and says that it felt more like he didn’t want to do that and he wasn’t excited for the future. He says it’s not that he isn’t excited, but it’s all a bit scary for him, and he is struggling.
Jenn asks Marcus whether he can see a future with her, and he says that he does, but despite how much he cares about her, he feels scared to move forward. Jenn is frustrated because of how much effort she’s put into her relationship with Marcus, and both of them become emotional as they go back and forth. Jenn says she doesn’t know how to proceed knowing Marcus may never get there with her.
After a few moments of silence, Marcus tells Jenn that he loves her, and he wants to fight for their relationship. He doesn’t want to give up on them, and he wants to see things through. Jenn steps away after his admission, reeling from the way things went down. She says she feels conflicted because, even though Marcus finally said he loves her, she has a pit in her stomach about everything.
After collecting herself, Jenn tells Marcus that she feels like she’s invested too much into this relationship with someone who has not been willing to invest just as much back. She says that, while she had so much hope for them, she’s done. She sends him home without going on their final date.
Back in the studio, Marcus is watching the breakup unfold all over again. He tells Jesse it was tough to watch, because there was a lot of feelings involved. He says the final days in Hawai’i gave him plenty of time for introspection so he could be honest about his feelings for Jenn and whether he could meet her needs, only to be confronted with some “painful truths” about the fate of their relationship.
Marcus also admits that, when he got back home, it took a long time for him to realize that he’d made the right choice.
When Jenn and Marcus come face-to-face on stage, things seem fairly amicable. They both agree that their relationship meant something, and they are happy to see that each other are doing okay. Of their relationship, Jenn says she knew something was off with them for a while, but the moment she really knew was when Devin told her that he was thinking about leaving, she realized how afraid she was of losing Devin. She admits by the time they had that final conversation, she already knew where things were headed.
Marcus says he believes everything happened the way it was supposed to. He wasn’t expecting to have that final conversation before their date though, because he’d been really fighting to get to a comfortable place with her, and in that moment he figured he loved her enough to “get out of her way.”
Back in Hawai’i, it’s time for an engagement. Maybe. Jenn wakes up in her hotel room the morning after sending Marcus home, which she says really hurt her, even though it was the right decision. But, just because she sent Marcus home, doesn’t mean Devin is a shoe-in. She says she still isn’t quite sure if she’ll accept his proposal.
While Devin is picking out a ring, Jenn tells Jesse that she actually doesn’t want to let Devin propose to her at all. Instead, she wants to propose to Devin.
But before Jenn and Devin can get their happily ever after moment, Jesse cuts in from the studio to say very cryptically that there’s something the audience needs to hear from Jenn before they can show the proposal.
Jenn joins Jesse back on stage in an incredibly emotional state. She says she and Devin left Hawai’i happily engaged, and then things were “different” as soon as they left the state. She says Devin felt like he was pulling away, his efforts became inconsistent, and she felt confused about where they stood. She says she felt secondary to “everything in his life” at that point, and she didn’t understand why.
She reveals the two of them had a “happy couple” interview planned for last month, ahead of the finale, and he called her the night before to break off the engagement. She says he told her that he didn’t love her anymore, he regretted getting engaged, and something felt off. She says that she’s been “trying to empathize” with him over the past month, but she couldn’t understand how he went from making such bold proclamations of love to saying he’d never loved her at all. She offered to call off the engagement but continue to date, but he didn’t want to accept that.
She says that watching the show back has made her realize that no one made him say the things that he did, especially when she was off screen, and she finds it hard to empathize with him anymore. The two of them hadn’t seen each other since before the breakup — until now.
When Devin joins Jenn on stage, Jesse opens the floor for them to have a conversation. Jenn says that this type of conversation wouldn’t be meaningful for her, because they had agreed they deserved to have a conversation off camera, but that never materialized. She says the hardest thing to understand is his actions after the engagement — ending it on a phone call only to begin following other women, including The Bachelor Season 28 contestant Maria Georgas on Instagram the day after the breakup.
Devin says he “can’t excuse” the Instagram follow, and he knows how much it hurt her. He insists that everything he felt was real, but she doesn’t buy it. She confronts him for saying he needed time to process his emotions, but then visiting his friends and other Bachelorette contestants at nightclubs in New York City.
In defense of himself, Devin says he felt doubts after leaving Hawai’i, but Jenn says that he should’ve been honest about that earlier on. Instead, he hid his feelings for two months after filming and her feelings continued to grow for him while he was essentially on his way out the door. She says watching the episodes over the past month has been hard for her, but meanwhile it seemed like he didn’t care.
Jesse opens the floor for Devin to say anything else he needs to get off his chest. He says it was hard for him to accept that he might not be able to show up for her in everyday life, and he wants to “focus on the breakup” and not everything that happened after. He adds that the only other thing he really wants her to know is that she doesn’t deserve to compromise her standards to be happy, and he knew she was doing that by being with him for the longterm.
Finally, with the proper context in mind, it’s time for audiences to see Jenn and Devin’s engagement. As one might imagine, it’s sad to watch, knowing that they are no longer as happy as they were when Jenn surprised Devin by asking for his hand in marriage. A small inset on screen shows Jenn sitting in the studio, bawling her eyes out, as she watches this moment back.
Jenn says she thought that would be the happiest day of her life, and she’s proud of herself for proposing to a man who she thought was going to show up for her every day. She says that man doesn’t exist anymore, but she’s still the same woman, who is “ready to fight for love.”
Jenn ends her conversation with Devin by saying she hopes he realizes that, when you love something, you should cherish it and fight for it.
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