SPOILER ALERT: The following article contains spoilers for the finale of “The Bachelorette” Season 21.
All season long, promos for “The Bachelorette” finale have featured host Jesse Palmer telling season lead Jenn Tran, “No Bachelorette has ever done this.” Finally, on Tuesday night, viewers got to see Jenn make her choice.
Last week’s “Fantasy Suites” episode saw Jenn narrow her field from three contestants down to two as she sent home Jonathon Johnson. Their breakup was an emotional one, with both acknowledging that they had a strong connection but that Jonathon simply hadn’t progressed as far as Devin Stader and Marcus Shoberg had.
Going into the finale, there was no clear frontrunner: Jenn’s decision to tell Marcus she was in love with him came easily to her, but he wasn’t ready to say it back — whereas Devin had confessed his love far earlier, after his hometown date, but didn’t hear those words in return until approaching Jenn in a state of anxiety days after their night in the fantasy suite.
But during Tuesday’s three-hour finale, Jenn’s decision became fairly clear after she took both men home to meet her family.
During his visit with Jenn’s family, Marcus admitted to her mother Trinh and aunt Lylan that he wasn’t in love with Jenn.
“I believe that I can get there. I know that I’m not right now,” Marcus said. “For the last few weeks, I’ve been beating myself up. It’s just like, why am I not feeling what I want to feel? I’ve been missing this feeling of certainty and that makes me unsure. And I want to get there for her.”
Before their final date in Hawaii, a confused and frustrated Jenn approached Marcus in his hotel room to get answers about where they stand in their relationship.
“I don’t know if you see me in your future,” she told him.
“I know that my feelings for you are real and that I can picture it with you,” he said. “I don’t understand why it’s so scary for me to move forward with someone I care so much about.”
Despite Marcus finally telling her he’s in love with her and wants to fight for their relationship, Jenn sends Marcus home without going on their final date.
The morning after breaking up with Marcus, Jenn said she was still unsure if she would accept Devin’s proposal.
“I really need to follow my heart today,” Jenn told host Jesse Palmer. “Going into today, I though I knew which way I wanted it to go, and I woke up this morning with a totally different point of view on it.”
Jenn then shared her plan, saying: “I have to choose myself. I’m not going to let Devin propose to me today — I’m going to propose to Devin.”
She added: “I want him to know that I’m going to fight for him every day, and I’m going to choose him every day.”
However, “The Bachelorette” didn’t show the proposal. Instead, the show cut back to Jesse on the live show.
“You won’t be seeing that proposal,” he revealed. After a long pause, he continued: “That’s right. Because of what transpired since that day in Hawaii, we decided it wouldn’t be appropriate for anyone to see it until we heard from Jenn.”
Jenn then joined Jesse on stage, where she revealed to the audience what unfolded after she and Devin left Hawaii engaged.
“It’s been a really hard couple of months,” she began as she fought back tears. “We had left Hawaii engaged and very happy. I thought that I had found the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with, and then, essentially, as soon as we left Hawaii, things were different. It kind of just felt like he was pulling away.”
“I felt like I was secondary to everything else in his life … and I didn’t understand why,” she added. “We had a happy couple [visit] planned sometime last month early and the night before, he called me and he basically broke off the engagement. He basically said that he didn’t love me anymore and didn’t feel the same way.”
Jenn said that Devin “regretted getting engaged” and she knew “all along it was just different.”
Next up for the “Bachelor” franchise, Joan Vassos will lead the inaugural season of “The Golden Bachelorette,” which premieres on Sept. 18. Next spring, ABC will debut Season 29 of “The Bachelor,” led by Jenn’s former suitor Grant Ellis. Also coming in 2025 is Season 10 of “Bachelor in Paradise”; Jonathon received the first invitation to the season during last week’s “Men Tell All” episode, followed by Hakeem Moulton, another of Jenn’s former suitors.
More to come…
