SPOILERS are ahead for Love Is Blind Season 4, if you haven't seen the finale yet, you can watch the reality show with a Netflix subscription.
The latest Love Is Blind season is a wrap, but as fans of the series who were anticipating the live reunion on Sunday know, the fact that the Netflix dating show didn’t air on time caused a big stir. That, plus one of the key contestants, Jackelina Bonds, was not present at the reunion itself to give Marshall closure after breaking up with him, and starting a relationship with another man she met in the pods. Apparently, Jackelina and Josh skipping the reunion for an awkward Zoom interview instead was Netflix’s decision, not Jackelina’s, and she's opening up about it.
The Love Is Blind star has revealed that Netflix actually asked her to skip the reunion and even cancelled her booked flight pretty last minute. As Jackelina shared:
They had me talk to a psychologist, and the psychologist was the one that told us that we weren’t gonna go. That was how it went down. They called on a three-way [conference call], and they were kind of, ‘Oh, due to your mental health, we think it’s best for you to… not come to the reunion.’
In an interview with The Wrap, Jackelina spoke to why she was not at the Season 4 reunion. Apparently the producers had concerns over her mental health after a psych evaluation, and it was decided she would not be physically joining the live taping.
Jackelina wanted to be there and had plans to do so, but she believes that Netflix didn’t want her to voice her criticism of the way her storyline on the show was edited. She previously took to Instagram to dispute how Love Is Blind presented her breakup with Marshall. She explained that when the series presented her getting coffee with Josh before she broke up with Marshall, that was not how things happened, thereby making her look like a villain in the reality show. In regards to the timeline of learning she would not be attending the reunion, here’s what else she said:
It was like a two-day turnaround. They told us the day before [the reunion].
Despite Jackelina not being physically present for the reunion, she and Josh did appear during the show during an edited Zoom call with host Vanessa Lachey, who tens of thousands of fans have sent petitions to get her off the show. During the interview filmed prior to the reunion, Jackelina clarified the circumstances around the breakup, and she shared that she kept Marshall’s ring because she thought he was going to propose to another woman he met on the show.
Sounds like some drama is brewing behind the scenes of Love Is Blind, regarding Jackelina and the Netflix producers. What happens on the reunion stage can be very emotionally taxing, as Irina opened up about after showing up and owning up to treating her ex Zack poorly, and admitting she was selfish during the airing of the show.
The cast of Love Is Blind are filmed while looking for lifetime partners in a matter of weeks. The Netflix show certainly sees its stars at their worst as they deal with the emotional pressure of going through the rushed experiment and deciding whether not to say “I do” in a real-life binding marriage.
During this season, three couples out of the five who got engaged without seeing each other’s faces actually got married. One couple, Micah and Paul, broke up at the altar when Paul said no, while Jackelina broke up with Marshall before their wedding day came. She did however connect back with Josh from the pods and has since been in a relationship with him.
