If you’re part of the Love Is Blind fandom, then you probably already know that season eight of Netflix’s hit dating show left out not one but two engagements. There was Kylie Schuelke and Brian Sumption, who are believed to be engaged and still together, and Brittany Dodson and Mo Ndiaye, who broke up sometime after leaving the pods. But there was another hot and heavy romance that was excluded from the final cut: Vanessa Boreland and Adam Bevis, who you might remember thinking looked interesting only to barely see them date in the pods.
Vanessa and Adam are reportedly still under strict NDAs and have not spoken out about their time in the pods together. However, Vanessa’s mother, Sue Boreland, is under no such contract. And she’s got a lot to say about her daughter’s cut storyline. “She was, like, dating somebody throughout the pods, all the way up until the end, before they go on vacation," Sue said in an interview with MPR News, later clarifying that Vanessa had a relationship with Adam. “They had this dramatic breakup where they were crying and it was really a big deal. She was kind of surprised. She was like, ‘Wow, with all that going on, I’m wondering why they didn’t show that.’” Same, Vanessa. Same.
In past seasons when multiple couples built serious relationships in the pods, but weren't shown in the final edit or their journeys showed beyond the pods, the show's creator Chris Coelen has suggested this is due to budget restrictions.
In 2024 Coelen told Variety, "We have the budget to follow five couples and sometimes we stretch to six couples, and we figure out how to stack our crews."
He also added: "When we make that decision as to who to follow, if we have more couples that got engaged, we make a decision as to which couples we think are authentic."
Though Vanessa and Adam didn’t get engaged, they did continue to date outside of the pods, Sue said, before eventually calling it quits. Still, it is strange that, like Kylie and Brian or Mo and Brittany, Vanessa and Adam were left on the cutting room floor. Especially because couples Madison Errichiello and Alex Brown, and Mason Horacek and Meg Fink, were heavily featured, despite not getting engaged.
Sue, who is white and described her daughter as “mixed race,” wasn’t just disappointed that her daughter didn’t get a lot of airtime, she expressed frustration at the show’s lack of diversity. “Even being a white person,” Sue said, “I’m used to seeing diversity in our communities. And I watch the show, and I’m like, ‘My gosh. Why did they do this? Why did they represent us like this?’”
She also wasn’t particularly impressed by the caliber of potential suitors presented to her daughter in the pods. “I know that there was one male cast member that said he doesn’t know how he feels about Black Lives Matter one way or the other,” she said, seemingly referring to Ben Mezzenga, “And that just doesn’t fly for me.”
Sue isn’t the only one who has been severely disappointed by the “white” and “conservative” tone of season eight of Love is Blind. Fans have been criticising it for its lack of diversity ever since it began.
Despite its large cast—32 singles were invited to participate—and its diverse participants, the first half of the season (aka the pod episodes) were focused on majority white cast members—including Mason, Meg, Madison, and Alex, who left the pods alone. It also doesn’t help that many of the white men featured heavily this season look almost identical. (Okay, maybe not identical, but...close enough!)
Now that we know there was a whole other storyline featuring Vanessa and Adam, the pod episodes’ lack of diversity is even more frustrating. It seems clear that the show had the opportunity to dig deeper into the lives of its non-white cast and just chose not to. And that’s definitely worth critiquing.
Love Is Blind is available to watch on Netflix now
