Twins from KC area went looking for love on reality TV. Here’s what surprised them

Dating reality shows run the gamut these days — senior couples (ABC’s “The Golden Bachelor”), blind dates/engagements (Netflix’s “Love Is Blind”), time-limited dating (TLC’s “90 Day Fiance”) – and now Amazon’s Prime Video’s latest, “Twin Love,” premiering Friday, Nov. 17, on the streaming service and featuring two natives of Grain Valley, just east of Kansas City.

Hosted by twins Brie and Nikki Garcia (aka “The Bella Twins”), the show features 10 sets of identical twins, including Seth and Luke Banks, 26 (Luke is older by 18 minutes), 2015 graduates of Grain Valley High School.

The brothers both studied marketing/management at Missouri State University in Springfield and now both work in technology sales/consulting in St. Louis. They were recruited to “Twin Love,” which filmed its first season last year in Los Angeles.

“I think my first reaction was, ‘I’m pretty sure this is fake,’” Seth said of the screenshot his brother sent him that solicited the pair, who have never applied to be on a reality show.

“There’s a lot of success stories from dating shows and there’s obviously a whole lot of (not successful stories) too, but I think the selling point was I’m not going on this thing to do it alone,” Luke said. “I’m going to have my brother with me, that’ll be an experience we can make together and a memory that we will share. And who doesn’t want to find love? You never know where you’re gonna find it.”

Seth said it had been a while since he’d be in a relationship after graduating from college in 2019 and moving to St. Louis, so he thought of “Twin Love” as an opportunity to jump back into the dating scene and get out of his comfort zone.

“We’re like, ‘Dude, it’s a twin thing,’” Seth said. “It checked a lot of the boxes and seemed like a really neat, once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Seth said going into the show, his biggest worry was, “Crap, how am I gonna, like, kiss somebody on camera?”

Then they arrived on set and ran smack into a twist the pair never considered: All of the twins got separated, with one twin in one house and the other in another house. On “Twin Love” they search for love among the contestants in their own house, not knowing how their twin fares and without their sibling to lean on. Seth isn’t the only contestant to get a little teary on the show once separated from his twin.

“It was the overwhelm,” he said of his response. “We had this predetermined notion of how this whole thing was gonna go in our heads — living together — and then when that’s the first thing that you realize is not going to happen, it definitely just shakes a bunch of things up.”

The “Twin Love” hosts cite studies that show twins start relationships later and are more likely to prioritize their twin over themselves. There’s even a Twins Days festival in Ohio every summer.

“We’ve always shared similar interests,” Luke said. “We played football in the same sports league — I was quarterback, he was running back — so we’ve known for a long time how similar we actually are, but I think the fun thing about the show was being around other identical twins who have shared the same experiences. … (Other twins on the show) are saying how similar they’ve been living their lives and how they missed their twin. I was like, ‘Wow, that could come off pretty weird hearing it from another set of identical twins like that.’ It was almost a different realization of how unique twins are hearing it from other twins.”

Seth said while their whole family is tight-knit “at the same time, it’s very true that our identical twin bond is different.”

Seth said conversation about the twin bond was free flowing among the twins on “Twin Love” and the twins could all relate: “Obviously, they understand that the twin is going to be a big part of their relationship.”

“If it’s Luke and I,” Seth continued, “we like to spend our Sundays watching Chiefs football and playing golf. I would want my future partner to know that that’s something him and I have always done that’s never gonna change. For some people in a relationship, you can almost see it as a competition. It was a neat thing to be like, ‘Oh, you actually understand that you have your quality time with your twin too.’”

In addition to the surprise separation on “Twin Love,” the show also features the classic reality show trope of evictions. But in this show, when one twin is evicted, their twin is sent packing, too.

Whether either or both make love connections, like most reality show casts, the Banks brothers say they’ve stayed in touch with their fellow cast members.

“There’s no reservation about it,” Luke said of the decision to appear on “Twin Love.” “I’m excited when I think about it. … I did learn a lot out there and I think I got out of it what I had hoped. I’m excited for everybody to see how it went about. I’m proud of us both for going out and doing it and taking the risk and making that happen.”

Freelance writer Rob Owen: RobOwenTV@gmail.com or on Facebook and Twitter as RobOwenTV.