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There have been many haunting moments throughout six U.S. seasons of Love Is Blind—and many more, to be sure, on its spin-offs around the globe and its seventh U.S. season, premiering on Oct. 2. Of course, the entire premise of Love Is Blind is somewhat scary to begin with: a week, give or take, to decide on an engagement, and another few to decide on committing to marriage. As married co-hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey put it: “Will you get married—or will you choose to walk away forever?”
This artificial binary is, of course, not a sane or rational way to approach love and marriage. That approach would include a third option somewhere in the middle, like choosing to continue the relationship away from the lights and cameras to see if it has long-term potential, before making a lifelong commitment. But reality television was not made to be sane or rational, and many of the contestants on the show say they are indeed there because all their sane and rational ways have left them unhappily single.
There are plenty of other haunting aspects of the Netflix reality series, from its archaic monogamous heteronormativity to the multiple lawsuits alleging dangerous working conditions, a lack of consideration for participants’ mental health, and sexual assault (all claims which the production companies that make the show have denied). It is, to put it plainly, not an entirely guilt-free guilty pleasure.
And yet, the show has only grown more popular: In early March the last season topped Nielsen’s streaming viewership ratings for the first time, with 2.11 billion minutes viewed in the previous week. Which is to say, viewers will be seated for season 7, which features a cast from the Washington, D.C. area looking for their own fairy-tale endings. In time for the new episodes, we’ve looked back on four years of the show to hand-pick the most unforgettable moments, in which villains were born, dogs were plied with Merlot, and one brokenhearted man-child rode off into…
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