In a teaser at the end of the premiere episode of “The Bachelorette” Season 22 — the sole screener ABC provided media outlets to watch before the series was yanked Thursday — Taylor Frankie Paul tells one of her 22 suitors about a domestic violence incident she was involved in years prior.

“I was very lost in every aspect, and I came home mad one night and we got in a fight. I’ve never drank since that night. I got my act together. I got in major therapy, and I’ve been in that ever since. I cleaned up my life,” she tearfully says.

Her past came back to haunt her days before the season was set to start.

Season 22 seemed to be an intentional refresh for “The Bachelorette”: The network had paused production after its 21st season aired in 2024. That season featured Jenn Tran as the franchise’s first Asian American lead. Tran proposed to Devin Strader, but the relationship had ended by the time the finale aired. The ratings for the season had started out promising but plummeted by its finale — it was competing with the Olympics — notching the lowest ratings in the 18-49 demographic in franchise history, according to Bachelor Data, an account devoted to statistics for “The Bachelor” and its spinoffs.

So when the franchise tapped Paul, it seemed like the network was making a last-ditch effort to pump some new life into the series. Paul is one of the founders of MomTok, a group of Mormon influencer moms in Utah who’d gone viral for their dancing TikToks — and for a swinging scandal. Their lives are chronicled in Hulu’s hit series “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”

Paul, a mother of three, had made headlines for engaging in “soft-swinging,” participating in sexual acts with other couples, while she was married to Tate Paul. They divorced in 2022. She also became known as someone who was not afraid to speak her mind with her friends and her family — and especially with her on-again, off-again partner Dakota Mortensen, even if it meant reneging on a repeated vow that it was over between them.

“I realized, ‘Oh my God, this girl is one of the most honest reality-TV stars that I’ve ever seen,’” Scott Teti, the showrunner for “The Bachelorette,” told Vulture’s Rebecca Jennings about watching Paul on “Mormon Wives.” “As we talked more, I realized she has no ability to really lie. Everything is really authentic; all the truth just comes out.”

But then, on Thursday, shit hit the fan.

ABC announced that the 22nd season of “The Bachelorette,” which was supposed to air its premiere on Sunday, had been canceled after TMZ released a horrifying 2023 video that showed Paul assaulting Mortensen in front of one of her children. The aftermath of the incident had been documented in “Mormon Wives” in the pilot of its first season.

Paul was charged with aggravated assault, two counts of domestic violence in the presence of a child, child abuse with injury and criminal mischief after the incident, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. She pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in August 2025. The other charges were dismissed. She was ordered to get a substance and domestic violence evaluation and to complete any recommended treatment.

Separately, reports swirled that Hulu had paused production for Season 5 of “Mormon Wives” because of more recent allegations regarding the former couple. Cast members said they did not feel comfortable filming with Paul, according to a Zoom call obtained by NBC News. A spokesperson for the Draper City Police Department confirmed to People that there’s an open “domestic assault investigation” involving Paul and Mortensen from February. The most recent season of “Mormon Wives” showcased a lot of the drama between the couple, which Paul and other cast members have referred to as a “toxic cycle.”

The “Bachelor” franchise is no stranger to drama. Matt James, the first Black Bachelor, told HuffPost in 2021 that the franchise “had fallen short” when it came to its handling of race. That season was blown up by the discovery of several social media images of contestant Rachael Kirkconnell at an antebellum plantation-themed ball while in college. James chose Kirkconnell at the end of the season, though he did not propose. They broke up amid the scandal but then got back together. They broke up again in January 2025.

Longtime host Chris Harrison was fired from the series for defending Kirkconnell and asking viewers for “a little grace, a little understanding, a little compassion” for her. Jesse Palmer has been the host ever since.

Production had also been under fire over the years for not thoroughly vetting its contestants: from Lee Garrett’s offensive tweets to a restraining order against Gil Ramirez to allegations of sexual assault against Uzoma “Eazy” Nwachukwu. In 2017, “Bachelor in Paradise” shut down production after accusations of sexual assault.

All of these incidents have rallied fans into debates over the years about whether the “Bachelor” franchise had run its course. But this latest scandal has the potential to further shift perspectives about the series. Once appointment television for audiences rooting for couples to fall in love and get engaged, “The Bachelor” and its spinoffs are now a franchise riddled with controversies, breakups and the messy kind of drama that’s not even fun. There’s a laundry list of reasons the franchise should just end right now.

Paul would have been the first Bachelorette who wasn’t already associated with Bachelor Nation, the moniker for the franchise’s fanbase and contestants. For some, there was excitement over Paul’s selection, as evidenced by the Instagram comments section of the announcement on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast.

But in the wake of the video and the domestic violence allegations, there are many looming questions about the status of the franchise. Why did ABC pick Paul, whose domestic violence incident had been partially documented on Hulu, which, like ABC, is owned by Disney? How can Disney and Warner Bros. Unscripted TV — which produces the franchise — possibly recoup the millions of dollars lost from pulling the season? And perhaps most importantly, what on earth does this mean for the “Bachelor” franchise, which already seemed to be limping along after nearly 25 years since it first debuted?

Paul always seemed like a stunt casting move — she’d racked up millions of followers on social media, including TikTok and Instagram. She was a well-known influencer due to her dance videos, her participation in MomTok and her straightforward and sometimes brash persona that she’d showcased on “Mormon Wives.” She was entertaining and maddening while she constantly dumped, reunited with and dumped Mortensen, who is also the father of one of her children.

Previously, it was frowned upon for contestants to come on the show hoping to become an influencer. People who seemed like they were just looking to get famous were personae non gratae among the show’s biggest fans. “Bachelor” star Grant Ellis was criticized for seemingly wanting to further his music career; Ellis told HuffPost he was just “doing things that make me happy.”

But frankly, Paul never quite seemed ready to date on national television anyway. Her “Mormon Lives” castmates tried desperately to prepare her for dating multiple men at a time in Season 4, taking her to a speed-dating event, which she jetted out of because she was feeling uncomfortable. Paul proved she was way more primed to rinse and repeat a toxic love cycle with Mortensen. She had sex with him the night before heading out to shoot “The Bachelorette.”

Again, ABC needed a shift in “The Bachelorette,” and likely saw green flags for ratings. She had a built-in audience through “Mormon Wives,” and ABC needed that: like all networks, it’s vying for the attention of that coveted 18- to 49-year-old demographic.

Over the past few seasons, the “Bachelor” franchise has seen several ratings slumps. Season 29 of “The Bachelor,” featuring Ellis, was down nearly a million viewers from its previous season with Joey Graziadei. “The Golden Bachelorette,” a spinoff that features older women looking for love, had one of the worst-rated premieres in franchise history in September 2024. Tran’s season seemingly spurred a reevaluation of “The Bachelorette” and its time slot; it usually airs during the summer, but skipped its 2025 airtime and was pushed to spring 2026.

The schedules have been more fluid in recent years. With the addition of “The Golden Bachelor” and “The Golden Bachelorette,” ABC doesn’t have enough slots to air all spinoffs throughout the year’s TV schedule.

Timing can make or break a season, too. Tran’s season coincided with the 2024 Summer Olympics and with another dating reality show that has risen in popularity over the last few years: Peacock’s “Love Island USA,” which dominated social media conversations in the summers of 2024 and 2025. Season 6 and Season 7 were massive successes for that streamer, especially given its ability to bombard viewers with multiple episodes a week over the course of the summer.

The “Bachelor” franchise has stayed loyal to its show format — perhaps to its detriment as new shows on popular streamers dominate the conversation. Audiences love watching the drama of reality dating shows like “Love Island,” “Love Is Blind” and “Married At First Sight” because, in some moments, they feel less produced and formulaic than something like “The Bachelorette.”

In the last few years, there’s also been the desire for a “reckoning” within the storied franchise. The show has never quite grasped the nuances and multitudes of what it means to showcase people of color falling in love. Let alone people who aren’t thin, able-bodied and heterosexual. In 2020, former HuffPost reporters Claire Fallon and Emma Gray, who host the “Love To See It” podcast about reality TV shows and rom-coms, talked to a dozen former contestants about the work the franchise needs to do regarding casting and producing a better show featuring people of color.

But in the grand scheme of showcasing love in an unscripted reality TV format, the “Bachelor” franchise simply comes with too many dealbreakers — especially when there’s an influencer as the lead, someone who is used to keeping every inch of their lives public.

For “Bachelorette” fans, that might have looked like having this season spoiled already — not because it’s not airing, but because Paul had been out in public in Los Angeles with the “winner” of the show last week. (Apparently, they got engaged, but it didn’t work out, according to Reality Steve, who regularly spoils the outcome of the “Bachelor” franchise). With the season not airing, it seems unlikely that they’d cast the next Bachelor from that crop of contestants, as is usually par for the course when picking a new lead.

As for that premiere episode with Paul, it was abundantly clear that she quickly fell for the winning contestant from the very first night. Virtually everything else was typical “Bachelorette” fare: limo arrivals, awkward introductions and the promise that Paul was there to find her husband.

Perhaps the rest of the season could have convinced us that “The Bachelorette” still had something to offer its audiences. On the other hand, its cancellation would be the perfect conclusion to this tired story.

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