Love Is Blind wasn’t so blind this season, with two of the singles — Uche and Lydia — actually realizing they had already met and dated before when they first talked in the pods. So did producers know about their past beforehand?
“The fact that Lydia and Uche not only knew each other, but had a prior romantic relationship, was a complete surprise to me,” series creator Chris Coelen tells our sister site Variety, noting that their dating history somehow escaped the Netflix dating show’s vetting process. “I was totally blindsided. It was a complete shock. To be honest, it was like, ‘What are we gonna do?’ Nobody had any idea.
Once the producers learnedaout their past, Coelen pulled Uche and Lydia aside and told them “we felt the right choice was for them to leave the experiment.” But Uche and Lydia were both “absolutely crushed” by this, he says, and “expressed a tremendous desire to stay and continue.” They also both “confirmed they had absolutely no interest in the other,” he recalls.
So the producers agreed to let them stay “if they did not immediately tell people about their history.” Since it was only the first day in the pods, “we all felt that the information wasn’t relevant, and we all agreed revealing it would have been destructive to everyone’s overall experience,” Coelen remembers. But once Uche and Lydia started making real connections with other people in the pods — Uche with Aaliyah, and Lydia with Milton — they were “free to discuss their past history with anyone they chose to,” Coelen reveals.
That led to major drama, with Uche telling Aaliyah that he and Lydia had dated — after Aaliyah had already developed a close friendship with Lydia. Then once the truth was out, Lydia told Aaliyah way too much about her history with Uche, leading an overwhelmed Aaliyah to ditch the show and walk out on Uche just as he was about to propose. It worked out better for Lydia, though: She and Milton got engaged and left the pods together.
