As avid fans of the Bachelor franchise would know, one of the best parts of the beloved competition series is the highly-anticipated hometown dates, where the lead gets to meet the families of his final four women. In season 28, Joey Graziadei traveled to Niagara Falls, Ontario with Maria Georgas, Becker, Minnesota with Daisy Kent, New Orleans, Louisiana with Kelsey Anderson, and Rancho Cucamonga, California with Rachel Nance, however, the latter seems to have gotten the short end of the stick…
On each and every date, the contestant showed Joey a glimpse into their life beyond the beloved competition series — with Maria and Joey soaking up the scenery at Niagara Falls, Daisy and Joey frolicking around her Christmas tree farm, and Kelsey and Joey riding a tandem bike and exploring the Big Easy — prior to meeting the family. Coming as a surprise to viewers, Rachel did not appear to have a hometown date, jumping straight into meeting the family instead, leaving fans of the Bachelor franchise with just one burning question: Why?
Contrary to popular belief, after splicing together screenshots from various Bachelor previews this season, it looks like Rachel indeed had a hometown date, giving the Bachelor himself a glimpse into her life as a nurse. Given that this segment was cut from the hit competition show, viewers were not happy, arguing via social media that the Hawaii native has been being mistreated all season long.
“The editors have been doing Rachel dirty all season but this is really the icing on top of the cake… She DID have a date before he met her family but they cut THE ENTIRE thing. They really don’t want people to care about her and that’s extremely odd,” @seafIwrs shared via X — formerly known as Twitter — kickstarting an extremely interesting conversation.
Some users found Rachel’s lack of screen time to be racially motivated, given that she is the only woman of color remaining:
“Of course it’s the only non-white woman left that doesn’t get her full date shown!”
“Joey was almost engaged to a black woman last season, had one of the most diverse casts, and the only woman of color in his top 3 gets zero storyline???? And she has 22k followers and the next one (Kelsey A) has over 100k. wtf!!!!!”
Others argued that Rachel’s date was cut from television because she is “boring” in comparison to Maria, Daisy, and Kelsey:
“Orrrrrrrr maybe it was very very dry? I don’t see their chemistry maybe they were trying to maintain what was left of their TV chemistry so hometowns wouldn’t come across weird af on national tv.”
“Honestly, it’s probably because she comes off as boring, which isn’t really fair, but that’s what they made us think about her and people aren’t as invested in their storyline.”
For whatever reason her hometown date was scrapped, fans of the Bachelor franchise used this as evidence that she will not receive the final rose at the end of the beloved competition series, and we seriously could not agree more. As much as we would love for Rachel and Joey to find love with one another, she is simply not getting a winner’s edit…
Nonetheless, to find out for yourself who gets engaged to Joey, as well as what the “unprecedented ending” to The Bachelor season 28 will consist of, catch brand new episodes each and every Monday on ABC, or stream them the following day on Hulu.