It’s our final Love Is Blind recap for the DC-based cast, and after 12 episodes of Rolexes and pasta drama, the Season 7 crew is coming back together to get the last word. If it’s anything like the rest of the episodes, a lot of the drama will happen off camera, and we’ll get looped in later.
Need a reminder of everything that went down this season? Read our recaps of episodes 1-6, 7-9, 10-11, and 12 ⬇️.
Recap: Reunion Episode
Nick and Vanessa Lachey, you have charmed with your corny puns.
Taylor and Garrett


We kick off the reunion with the first of our married couples, a suave man who bears a suspicious resemblance to Garrett and TaylorTron in a metal corset. The couple is still together, and more important, Taylor’s mother, Fong, is also in attendance. But happy couples don’t make for good reunions, so we quickly move on from these two.
Ashley and Tyler


First, Ashley has mastered the fall-to-winter transition look with those massive tinsel spiders on her dress straps. But… will we finally get some clarity on Tyler’s status as a sperm donor or father and his role in the kids’s lives? Kind of. Tyler says that he helped his friend and her wife have a child, and then stepped in to help when the wife left. “I played a part that became very shaky with a friend,” he says. “There’s no rulebook to this.” He pretty much leaves it at that.
The couple maintains Ashley has known the truth since filming. In fact, Ashley clarifies, she was the one who felt they needed to discuss it in some capacity on screen, despite Tyler preference that it remain off-camera. Ashley specifically calls out the moment where she asked if the kids knew what Tyler looked like, and that she could tell he was lying to the cameras when he said no. She is gripping the arm rest and Tyler like their couch is going to beam them up a UFO at any moment. Honestly, that may be preferable to being in the hot seat at a reality TV reunion.
Marissa and Ramses


If we’ve ever needed a Bachelor “After The Final Rose”-style square within a screen reaction shot, it’s for Vanessa, Marissa’s mom. Netflix probably had to shell out some extra security because she looked ready to choke Ramses from the start. Marissa gets emotional while discussing the break up, and Ramses provides some soothing words: At some point he realized if he continued with her, “every day I would be in a place where I would feel exhausted and overwhelmed.”
Oh.
Finally, they let Vanessa speak, and I wish she would never stop. Despite her palpable fury, Vanessa teaches a master class in how to shred apart a man with absolute ice. She talks about picking up the pieces of Marissa, and how Ramses was the one who got to walk away and “cry like you were the one who was hurt.” Vanessa spoke to him the night of the breakup and–LET’S BE CLEAR HERE—did not punch Ramses in the throat. Ultimately, she’s grateful he ended things because Marissa would have continued on, and she just wishes he had been man enough to own up to his feeling sooner. Moms rock, man.
Ramses apologizes, and Vanessa Lachey (Good Cop Vanessa) offers him a chance to say anything else he wants. For his final word, Ramses proclaims that he never gave Marissa an ultimatum about condoms. The camera pans to Marissa, and her eyes look as dead inside as this show makes me feel.
Hannah and Nick Dorka


Should we change that to say Hannah, Nick Dorka, and Marissa? But I’m getting ahead of myself…
Vanessa Lachey starts by asking Hannah if she feels she was too direct. Hannah responds that she is:
- Direct
- To the point
- Blunt
- Her delivery is sometimes off
On that last point, she does want to make it clear that, though the messaging could use some work, what she’s saying is true. In an unexpected assist to Nick Dorka, Garrett declares that Hannah’s ex-fiancé displayed more patience than he ever would have. Hannah agrees—after all, she’s direct, didn’t you hear? Eventually, she apologizes to Nick, directly. But it’s Vanessa Lachey who goes toe to toe with her in the direct department, asking Hannah if she is loving the version of Hannah that is sitting there today. Hannah starts tearing up, and Nick Dorka talks about Hannah being “fantastic” and getting too much hate online. Upon hearing that, Hannah immediately wipes away a tear, and with a steady voice she asks why he’s liking the hate comments about her people are writing on his page.
This segues into the discovery phase of the trial, Nick Dorka vs. Hannah the Direct. After the breakup, Hannah and her friends opened one of Nick Dorka’s notebooks and found a list of three goals from before he went on the show: sell two houses, get in better shape, and become the most famous person in Love Is Blind history. Nick Dorka says he does these 90-day challenges, and he wrote the item about fame prior to knowing he was going to be on the show.
Marissa comes rushing to Hannah’s defense, questioning why Nick Dorka was on the show. Hannah believes Nick has a different on- and off-camera persona. She doesn’t understand why he’s saying she’s wonderful when she’s mean to him. (Yes, she actually says she was mean to him.) For Hannah and Marissa, everything makes sense in the context of the goal list. Monica shares that on their flight back from Mexico, Nick Dorka kept telling other passengers they were filming a show.
Hannah, Nick, and Marissa snipe at one another for a bit, giving us some good reunion fodder. Hannah is wagging her fingers, telling Nick Dorka she gets DMs from the women he DMs. The argument has spiraled out so far beyond the initial question that sparked it all, the one about Hannah loving herself. Consensus among the women is that Nick Dorka called Hannah a “grenade” after the reveal, a traditional insult from the Jersey Shore popularized by Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino. Garrett is done with the conversation, but Marissa has more to say. She calls out Ramses for his silence, and Ramses utters a line of pure bravery: “Let’s keep it a hundred, man, things were said.”
Leo and Brittany


I’m so happy to see these two knuckleheads back on my screen for a little levity. Leo comes in with his signature “mwah mwah mwah” kisses, and it’s clear right away he’s going with the “laugh with them” option. He admits he overdid the money talk, and Tim comes to his defense with a hat trick of compliments: Leo is misunderstood, he’s a high-level thinker, and he can out-rap people. (And yes, he’s single.)
Our resident art dealer compares picking between Hannah and Brittany to picking between pasta and steak at a restaurant. The difference, he says, is the food has feelings here. That’s high-level thinking, Leo. Stephen straightens his jacket and cracks a joke about being compared to meat, and it’s as if he woke up in the middle of Hannah and Nick Dorka’s segment. It might be time to put his phone in a lockbox and take another sleep test.
As the director of the Washingtonian Body Language Bureau of Investigations, I was convinced Brittany was uncomfortable during her reveal with Leo. However, though she confirms she was feeling really, really awkward, the cameras were more the issue, not Leo. They were prepared to not go to Mexico because they knew they were the weakest couple and broke up soon after their Miami trip. Among the reasons for their demise? Leo would take a sip of her glass every time they had drinks together, even if they had the same drink. Nonetheless, the couple remains friends.
Stephen and Monica


Well, well, well. If it isn’t the queen of Venmo and the prince of fetish. Or “Sir Sleep-A-Lot,” as Nick Lachey refers to Stephen. We get some important facts about the fateful sleep test: 1. Stephen was actually at a sleep test, and there’s photographic evidence. 2. He has sleep apnea, but he doesn’t need a CPAP.
Stephen starts his interrogation with the jovial spirit of your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving after too many Keystone Lights. When it comes to the texts, he has no memory of what was said, and he’s deleted them. “Out of respect for the individual,” he’s not going to really get into it. Monica immediately cuts him off to point out he did it on TV, and it was actually pretty disrespectful to her.
From there, it all starts to descend. When Stephen mentions a letter he wrote to Monica’s parents after their breakup, she exclaims that she knew he would bring it up at the reunion the moment she received it. Suddenly, Stephen’s jolly joker mask rips off. He feels that if no one wants to believe him, and no one wants to hear his side of the story, why tell it? He had a moment of weakness! He’s in therapy!
And hey, it’s a classic love story between Stephen and the mysterious texting woman, who he claims he hasn’t spoken to since that night. They met on Instagram (never in person) and texted for years, until the evening of the sleep test when she messaged him about a heart condition followed by some new fetishes she was entertaining. Stephen was Eve roaming the Garden of Eden (if Eve was covered in sleep test stickers), and the saucy texts were an apple gifted to him by a random Instagram hottie. Of course he was going to respond.
Alex and Tim


Tim and Alex were the number one culprits of drama that happened off camera this season. Finally, we got more insight into the first blowout fight that occurred in Cabo. Alex says her father had been admitted to a rehab facility a week before she left for the pods, and it was hard not talking to her family. When she wasn’t being given the space she needed to just shower and go to bed, it turned into a dispute. In response, Tim says he could tell she was upset and was trying to be there for her. They go back and forth, and we learn that the name Alex called Tim was in the context of saying he was “acting like a little-ass bitch.”
They dig into the final fight, too, when Alex took a nap while Tim’s parents were visiting. This turns into a disagreement about where she was at different points in time, and whether Tim had doubts about their relationship when he met her father. Watching these two fight is never enjoyable, and so Vanessa Lachey finally cuts it off—but not before Tim gets to utter the iconic reality TV line, “I feel very attacked.”
Top 3 DC moments
- A group of the women took a girls trip to Deep Creek Lake in Maryland, a three-hour drive from DC, where Alex drove a boat.
- Taylor and Garrett did leave DC, but they already decided to make their way back to Washington. In the immortal words of Hannah Montana, “you’ll always find your way back home.”
- While negotiating the facts of where Alex was the night before meeting Tim’s parents, Alex says they went to dinner at colorful Mexican restaurant Mi Vida. She also mentions that Napgate happened between meeting Tim’s family and her shift at a bar. Does anyone know which bar?
One final question
How are those Season 8 twerps from Minnesota going to follow us up?