SPOILER ALERT: The following article contains spoilers for the finale of “The Bachelorette” Season 21.
All season long, promos for the finale of “The Bachelorette” featured host Jesse Palmer telling season lead Jenn Tran, “No Bachelorette has ever done this.” Viewers finally got to see Jenn make her choice on Tuesday night.
Last week’s episode “Fantasy Suites” saw Jenn narrow her field from three contestants to two when she sent Jonathon Johnson home. Their breakup was emotional, with both acknowledging that they had a strong bond, but that Jonathon simply hadn’t progressed as far as Devin Stader and Marcus Shoberg.
Going into the finale, there wasn’t a clear frontrunner: Jenn’s decision to tell Marcus she was in love with him came easily to her, but he wasn’t ready to say it back yet — while Devin had already declared his love much earlier had professed, after his birthplace. date, but didn’t hear those words until she approached Jenn in a state of fear days after their night in the fantasy suite.
But during Tuesday’s three-hour finale, Jenn’s decision became quite clear after she brought both men home to meet her family in Hawaii.
During his visit to Jenn’s family, Marcus admitted to her mother Trinh and aunt Lylan that he was still not in love with Jenn.
“I believe I can get there. I know I’m not here right now,” Marcus said. “I’ve been beating myself up for the past few weeks. It’s like, why don’t I feel what I want to feel? I miss this feeling of security and that makes me insecure. And I want to get there for her.
Before their last date in Hawaii, a confused and frustrated Jenn approached Marcus in his hotel room to get answers about where they stand in their relationship.
“I don’t know if you’ll see me in the future,” she told him.
“I know that my feelings for you are real and that I can imagine myself with you,” Marcus said. “I don’t understand why it’s so scary for me to move on from someone I care about so much.”
Despite Marcus finally telling her that he is in love with her and wants to fight for their relationship, Jenn sent Marcus home without going on their last date.
The morning after breaking up with Marcus, Jenn said she still wasn’t sure if she would accept Devin’s proposal.
“I really have to follow my heart today,” Jenn told Jesse during a one-on-one conversation. “When I started today I thought I knew which way I wanted to go, and I woke up this morning with a completely different view on it.”
Jenn then shared her plan, saying, “I have to choose myself. I’m not going to let Devin propose to me today – I’m going to propose to Devin.”
She added: “I want him to know that I’m going to fight for him every day, and I’m going to choose him every day.”
However, “The Bachelorette” did not show the proposal. Instead, the show went back to Jesse in the live studio.
“You won’t see that proposal,” he revealed. ‘That’s right. Because of what has happened in Hawaii since that day, we decided it wouldn’t be appropriate for anyone to see it until we heard from Jenn.
Jenn then joined Jesse on stage, where she revealed to the audience what happened after she and Devin left Hawaii engaged.
“It’s been a really hard few months,” Jenn began, fighting back tears. “We got engaged in Hawaii and left very happy. I thought I had found the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and when we essentially left Hawaii, things were just different. It just felt like he was withdrawing.”
“I felt like I was secondary to everything else in his life… and I didn’t understand why,” she added. “We had a happy couple [visit] scheduled sometime early last month and the night before, he called me and basically broke off the engagement. He had actually said that he didn’t love me anymore and that he didn’t feel the same about it anymore.’
She continued: “He felt like something was wrong since the second time he proposed – he regretted getting engaged. And I didn’t know. I knew all along that it was just different.”
Jesse eventually welcomed Devin to the stage; The crowd booed Devin as he walked over and sat next to Jenn.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Jenn told Devin, whom she last saw in July. “I just think that this conversation between the two of us right now is not what I would have wanted and is not something that will have meaning for me. Because we had talked about this and we had said that our relationship is our relationship, and wherever you felt and however I felt, we had both wanted to have an off-camera conversation.
Jenn then told her ex-fiance that she can “try to understand someone changing their mind about the way they feel about someone.” What she couldn’t understand, however, was what Devin did after they ended their engagement, which included following former “Bachelor” contestant Maria Georgas on Instagram the next day.
“Not only is that so disrespectful to everything we had shared together, I just don’t understand why you would do something like that,” Jenn said. “It completely invalidated the whole relationship.”
“I let you down,” Devin replied. “And I can’t say anything else than that. But everything I felt for you was real.”
After Jenn and Devin’s tense conversation, Jesse finally made the proposal.
“It is a wonderful proposal. Something like we’ve never seen before,” the host told the leading lady. He then asked if they should “all look at it together.”
“Do I have a choice?” Jenn replied.
The footage showed Jenn surprising Devin by proposing to him with a wedding ring encased in a seashell.
“I love you so much, Devin, but I can’t let you ask me to marry you. I decided to choose myself on this journey, and the best version of myself is when I’m with you,” she told him before popping the question.
Devin replied, “Absolutely. A hundred times.” He then got down on one knee and proposed.
“I don’t regret proposing to that man right there,” Jenn said of the footage during the live show. ‘But what happened was that man no longer exists. And the truth is, I’m still the same woman I am.”
Joan Vassos, the successor to the ‘Bachelor’ franchise, will helm the first season of ‘The Golden Bachelorette’, which premieres on September 18. Next spring, ABC will debut season 29 of “The Bachelor,” led by Jenn’s former lover Grant. Ellis. Season 10 of “Bachelor in Paradise” will also be released in 2025; Jonathon received the first invitation for the season during last week’s episode “Men Tell All,” followed by Hakeem Moulton, another of Jenn’s former suitors.