The year 2024 was a rough one for Love Is Blind. It returned in February for Season 6 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Fans wondered if this was the worst cast of men after the show had its first cheating scandal. Netflix released the second season of the year with Season 7's Washington, D.C., cast. The hope for a fresh start was quickly diminished when one of the men was accused of lying about being a father of three. There was an outcry for a better vetting process, which was shut down by the show's creator Chris Coelen. Here is why he should reconsider his stance.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Coelen said that Love Is Blind has a very rigid vetting process. The current vetting process allowed Tyler Francis on the show. Francis claimed he helped his good friend and her wife conceive a child through donation. Bri Thomas, one of the mothers of the child, and her mom revealed on social media that Francis was lying about his involvement with the first child and the twins he later naturally conceived with her. She posted pictures of Francis with the children on holidays, dressed in matching pajamas. Francis got engaged to Ashley Adionser in the pods without revealing this. The show claimed their first conversation on camera after he revealed his kids privately to her was 13 days before their wedding.
Many fans felt like the show needed to protect the women in the cast better by holding men who are lying accountable, but the showrunner disagrees. "Everyone in the world has a story and we aren't the police," Coelen said. "We don't regulate or monitor their conversations whether they're being filmed or not, by the way. We're not dictating to them what they should talk about, what they shouldn't talk about." He later said, "It's not our obligation to report to everyone everything that you might find interesting. That's not really our place, because our job is to document that." However, alums of the show tell a different story.
Season 1 participant Amber Barnett talked about Coelen on Hanging With The Hamiltons, a video series hosted by her Season 1 co-stars Lauren Speed Hamilton and Cameron Hamilton. "Chris Coelen is petty," said Barnett. "Those producers are petty." Cameron and Lauren nodded in agreement. Amber claimed she told producers she was unhappy with how they told their story the first time. She claimed the After the Altar special insinuated that her husband Matt Barnett sold his house to pay off Amber's student loans, which was false; Barnett said in reality he sold it to pay off his loans. Both couples accused producers of asking them the same questions multiple times to wear them down and say what they wanted them to say. Barnett said they were asked to talk about money multiple times when they had no interest in that.Â
Amber said producers had them film a dinner to talk about wedding planning and paying for the wedding. She claimed that she responded with, "But we're not paying for anything." The veteran said the producer told them to "pretend." The Hamiltons looked shocked by this before they talked about their experience. "And for us every conversation was like, 'But you're Black and he's white,'" Lauren revealed. "I'm like, 'We're eating salad.'"
If the alums of the show claim that producers do force conversations between couples to suit a specific story line, then it's possible they are choosing when to be enforcers and when to let the cast determine the time or place for discussions. If the cast members are wrong about production, then there is still a question of ethics and safety. If we believe Coelen when he claims that the vetting process is great and would find something like children from their past relationship, then what next? If that context could change how someone will view their future with that person, is it ethical not to push them to reveal that?

Adionser clearly found the timing of Francis's reveal of his kids suspicious. She asked him why he waited for her to fall in love with him to reveal that he's allegedly a sperm donor. Thomas claimed he was unquestionably the father to her twins, which they conceived naturally after she was separated from her wife. Adionser claimed she knew more than she acted in the scenes at the reunion to protect these children.
Prior to the Washington, D.C., season's drama, Season 6 ended with another man outed for lying about his personal life. Trevor Sova's ex-girlfriend revealed his text messages on social media, where he told her that he loved her before his flight to the Love Is Blind pods. Sova texted her after he was done filming and told her that he would marry her. That reunion had Nick and Vanessa Lachey reading the messages as Sova sat on stage. They scolded him and told future applicants not to come on the show for fame.
However, we know every person who applies or is recruited for Love Is Blind is open to some form of fame. This is why the vetting process needs to rule out people who are in relationships, or who try to conceal something from potential partners in the pods. There should be an obligation to report such details because marriage is legally binding. Divorce is an expensive and emotional process. It's beneficial to the participants and the show that they have fewer divorces than marriages to prove that the "experiment" or television show is successful.Â
Love Is Blind is supposed to have the most romantic premise: loving someone no matter their appearance. It's not good business to undercut that with a process that not only accepts people who possess traits that are questionable for a long-lasting marriage, but won't push them to have the conversations necessary to move forward from such situations. If these strangers are trusting production enough to get engaged without seeing the other person, then production shouldn't betray that trust.