ABCBachelor Nation never sleeps—not even when there's a global pandemic.
We've been in the Bachelor off season ever since Peter Weber's season ended (if you can call what happened an ending) exactly a month ago today. The world has changed in nearly incomprehensible ways since then, but Peter Weber hasn't stopped making headlines.
On March 25, two weeks after his finale aired, Pilot Pete was spotted in Chicago, hanging out with Kelley Flanagan. Kelley was the girl he met before the season started filming, and she didn't really fit in with the rest of the contestants, and Pete sent her home in fifth place despite their connection. She was then not invited to Women Tell All, but did get to sit in the audience during the finale. Now, after Pete didn't get back together with Madison Prewett, he's free to canoodle with Kelley. Or as free as you can be in a global pandemic.
Elsewhere, in Jupiter, Florida, Peter's ex Hannah Brown has been hanging out with her other ex, Tyler Cameron, along with current would-be Bachelorette contestant Matt James. And everybody's all over TikTok, providing us with endless quarantine content.
"TikTok is maybe the worst invention to come out of the last two to three years," Chris Harrison declared.
We'd like to disagree with that for two to three hours every night of this quarantine, but that's beside the point.
Harrison, the host and sort of godfather of the Bachelor franchise, has been keeping up as much as he can with all of the Bachelor Nation content coming out during this off season, and he did not disagree with our suggestion to send some drones to Chicago to get some new footage.
"You know, I am not incredibly shocked," he told us of Peter and Kelley and Peter's Chicago shenanigans. "I was a little surprised at the timing. I saw the pictures like everybody else, and I'm like, wait, he's in Chicago? I thought he was dancing with Barb in his living room!"
But Harrison, like all of us, saw the connection Peter and Kelley had early on. He thinks maybe The Bachelor wasn't the place for their potential love to bloom.
"He and Kelley have always had that chemistry and always had that connection, and there's a little bit of karma for them that they met before the show and then ran into each other, I think, at the Super Bowl," he says. "They just have this connection and I think The Bachelor was just kind of a bad fit for her. It wasn't I don't think it was the best place for her to find love. And I think that probably was a big obstacle in their relationship. So maybe the quarantine is a little better environment that they can kind of be on their own and figure it out."
As for Tyler and Hannah, Harrison was "not really" surprised by the fact that they reunited, but again, what is with this timing?
"I mean, obviously, the timing of it...you know, who knows who you get down into Florida during the quarantine from Alabama, but it didn't surprise me as much," he says. "I know, Hannah's always had a thing for Tyler and she's always thought highly of him. And I love Hannah. I think she's great. And I think Tyler is a really good man. And, hey, if they could find happiness during these crazy times then good on them."
While the quarantine is new territory for all of us, Bachelor contestants included, this is all part of a trend that's been happening over the past few seasons where relationships not only continue or begin again, but they do it publicly.
"Back in the day, we would end the show and pack up our stuff and, and that was it, and whatever happens, happens," Harrison recalls. "It would usually spill out later in the tabloids or whatever. And we realized a while ago that this show doesn't stop because it's about people's lives, and obviously people's lives don't stop. They continue to try and find love or they continue to fight for the relationship or get married and have babies and all that. This is a 24/7 news cycle, 365 days a year, and obviously even a global pandemic isn't going to slow it down."
For the record, Peter claims he and Kelley aren't dating quite yet and Hannah Brown has since headed back to Alabama (still traveling during a pandemic...) to be with her family instead of her ex-boyfriend.
And for the rest of us, this drought of official non-TikTok Bachelor content is coming to an end on Monday as The Bachelor Presents: Listen To Your Heart premieres at 8 p.m. on ABC. We've got a full explainer of what the heck that show even is coming from Chris Harrison tomorrow, so stay tuned!