The Messy ‘Bachelorette’ Finale Finally Delivered a Good Bachelor

Bachelor Nation, let’s take a moment. Are we all OK? Surrounded by a pile of tissues, perhaps? Charity Lawson’s Bachelorette finale has loomed for weeks as one of the most devastating in franchise history, and honestly? It delivered. There were tear-jerking proclamations of love. There were heart-bursting, romantic final gifts. There was (as usual) so much sweat!

The good news? All of that pain has ushered in a new era for The Bachelor. Thanks to Charity’s impossibly difficult choice between integrative medicine consultant Dotun Olubeko and tennis pro Joey Graziadei—which, as promised, hurt just to watch—we finally have a Bachelor in the pipeline that fans can really root for. How many years has it been since we could say that?!

(In case it wasn’t obvious, spoilers ahead.)

It’s been apparent for weeks that this one was gonna hurt. I mean, Dotun and Joey are cream-of-the-crop Bachelorette contestants—the kind of once-in-a-decade dudes that can truly restore one’s belief in love from afar. I’ll admit, I’ve been in the can for Dotun for weeks, but both he and Joey brought the kind of vulnerability and ease that makes a Bachelorette season worth watching. In the end, this was a race between two dreamboats.

However, you can only pick one—and on Monday night, when Joey got out of the limo first to propose, The Bachelorette’s live audience understandably moaned with sadness. It’s an unspoken rule that whoever leaves the van first is getting the axe, but no one wanted Joey to go home... and no one wanted Dotun to go home! It was a heart-breaking best-case scenario: two romantic connections so compelling that, either way, the choice was going to sting.

These are the narratives that deliver good Bachelors—and after years and years of duds, Joey’s season promises to turn that trend around. (Could we finally have a new Ben Higgins on our hands?!)

It took a fair bit of mess to get us here. This was, after all (sigh) a three-hour finale. First, there was Aaron Bryant to contend with; after a 12-hour flight to Fiji to try and win more time with his lady love, poor Aaron got sent packing mid-rose ceremony after seriously confusing poor Dotun and Joey. (They were expecting to see Xavier Bonner instead, because they hadn’t yet heard Charity sent him packing last week—whoops!)

Then, there were the meetings with Charity’s family—who seemed to fawn over Joey but were more reserved about Dotun. (Could this be a bad sign, we wondered?) Charity practically begged her mom for answers, but in a refreshing break from Bachelor Nation tradition, Vickie declined to put any ideas in her daughter’s head and insisted that she make the decision herself.

From then on, it was an agonizing nail-biter as Joey and Dotun bid farewell to Charity before the final rose ceremony with two incredible parting gifts. Joey gave her a framed copy of a love poem they wrote together on a dream date, and Dotun set up a (seated) “treasure hunt” before revealing that the treasure was... a locket with both of their baby photos in it?!

Seriously, where did they find these guys?!

As one might’ve predicted, Joey’s departure was devastating—and not just because he told Charity, “It’s OK,” the moment he realized that he wasn’t the one.

“I just want you to be happy—that’s all,” Joey said, in what will go down in history as perhaps the best Bachelor edit of all time. “And this is one step closer to you being happy.”

There were tears both at the proposal site and in the break-up limo, but Joey kept it together as well as anyone could, emphasizing every step of the way that he had no ill feelings toward Charity. Seated at the live finale taping, his composure remained impeccable: “We both said that at the end of that day, even if we wouldn't be in love with each other, we would still have love for one another,” he said. “And that’s still how I feel.”

As sad as many of us feel for Joey, his announcement as the next Bachelor could not have come at a better time. While The Bachelorette has maintained most of its messy luster even in spite of a couple rocky seasons, The Bachelor has been starved for a lovable hunk.

Zach Shallcross was, I’m sorry, irredeemably boring. Clayton Echard was a mess. Matt James came from outside the franchise with no established narrative to boost his season as the first Black Bachelor, and the show also bungled his season beyond repair. “Pilot Peter” Weber muffed up his own season, we don’t speak about Colton Underwood anymore, and don’t even get me started on the infamous Arie Luyendyk Jr. or Nick Viall.

All of this to say, we could use a sweet, genuine Bachelor like Joey, whose truncated love story with Charity will only make his own journey all the more compelling.

Also, can we talk about Dotun’s proposal for a minute? Because swoon!

“Charity, you’ve inspired me,” Dotun said just before getting down on one knee. “You’ve taught me. You’ve shown me that a good thing can really just be a good thing. The love that we have is perfect. And so, Ms. Charity Lawson, would you do me the honor of turning this fairy tale into a reality?”

With those words, this weary, exhausted viewer learned to believe in love again.

Things only got better when Charity and Dotun joined Jesse onstage for the live viewing party. “Love is just not enough of a word to describe how I feel about her,” Dotun said. “She’s everything to me. She’s only become more ‘everything’ since the filming ended. I’ve never been so certain about anything in my life.”

Only a love story this romantic could offset all of the chaotic surprises that flooded this episode. The producers were on a mission to keep viewers awake on Monday night, and to do so, they dropped a number of curveballs.

Some of them were fun—like the reveal that Charity will be a contestant for Dancing with the Stars. Some were bizarre—like the Bachelor in Paradise trailer that dedicated a surprising number of seconds to teasing a contestant’s constipation and “poo baby” delivery. (To whichever editor thought to illustrate that idea with a turtle sticking its head out of its shell: You are never seeing heaven, and I hope you got a huge raise.) And then, as always, there was a “surprise” Bachelor contestant reveal.

But by far the greatest (and most random) surprise was the presence of Pilot Pete’s memorable mother, Barb. What was she doing there, and why were her reactions featured so prominently? Nobody knows. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter—I was too busy staring into the distance like an old man watching the rain at the end of a drought, basking in this glorious outcome and murmuring to myself, “We really needed this.”

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