The 'Love Is Blind' Season 8 reunion delivered drama, pettiness and smuggled screenshots

Love might be blind, but as Pat Benatar once taught us, it’s also a battlefield — and on Sunday night, the messy Minnesotan singles from Love Is Blind showed up ready to rumble.

After a season of misaligned political priorities, circular arguments about past hook-ups and awkward conversations at cocktail mixers, only one couple showed up to the Season 8 reunion ready to reminisce about the good times. Everyone else came prepared to rehash old conflicts and put up their best possible front. For the most part, the men played the heels — some more apologetically than others.

Despite all the warm lighting and roses, reality dating shows are a lot like wrestling, especially when couples part ways. There are two sides to every argument, and given the voyeuristic, hyper-mediated environment in which these relationships unfold, a little kayfabe is bound to seep into the proceedings. Take, for instance, Devin Buckley and Virginia Miller, our first couple to duke it out in the hopes of winning their break-up in the public eye.

After a quick catch-up with Taylor Haag and Daniel Hastings, the only couple who got married this season (and who are apparently so in love that he got a tattoo of her “squinty” eyes on his chest…), we moved over to Buckley and Miller, who broke up at the altar. Miller maintained that she said “I don’t” because of their differing political beliefs and also because she witnessed shady behavior from her ex-fiancé on multiple occasions.

Everyone tried to take the high road on Sunday night — or at least to project that impression. Miller declined to speak to Buckley’s beliefs but made it a point to say that she believes in LGBTQ rights, a woman’s right to choose and embracing all religions. Buckley, meanwhile, emphasized that his Christian faith compels him to believe in loving everyone, but left it at that. The real damage came when Miller claimed that Buckley told people she ghosted him, when in reality the opposite was true. Buckley tried to deny it, but multiple women vouched for Miller. And so, our first heel of the night was born.

Buckley wasn’t the only guy treading water on stage. Our hosts, Nick and Vanessa Lachey, soon moved on to Ben Mezzenga — who also got dumped at the altar over political differences. According to his ex-fiancée, Sara Carton, “there was a lack of curiosity” on his part when it came to political issues, and she didn’t appreciate that he claimed not to know about his church’s “traditional” perspective on the LGBTQ community.

Mezzenga said he “knew” coming into this experience that he’s “definitely had privilege” in his life. He didn’t “remember” his church’s stance on homosexuality, he said, because “there wasn’t anyone in my life it pertained to.” This is confusing, given that he introduced Carton to a friend of his who confirmed they were in a same-sex relationship — but sure!

Carton had a much bigger grievance to discuss anyway: As she revealed on stage, that she and Mezzenga had planned to live together in Nashville, Tenn., until she finished her travel nurse contract there, but that he never joined her as promised. Instead, he removed her from his “Find My Friends” and sent her a “scripted” apology when she asked about it.

Like Buckley, Mezzenga tried and failed to dig himself out of this dispute, arguing that he and Carton had broken up. But multiple women confirmed that Carton had told them about the couple’s plans to cohabitate. Whoops! And in the most unintentionally hilarious reveal of the night, Mezzenga was forced to confirm that he reached out to Carton only after Jimmy Presnell from LIB Season 6 recommended he get on good terms with her ahead of the reunion. Let’s say a prayer for them both.

Even Joey Leveille, the happy-go-lucky longboard enthusiast, came out of this episode looking a little crummy. His ex, Monica Danús, called him out for never moving out of the “friend zone” with her and for DMing one of his pod exes, Madison Errichiello, after the first group cocktail mixer. His excuse for hitting her up and saying he liked her pink hair? “I like to check in on people.” Fair enough, but it’s easy to understand why Danús — the fiancée he rarely touched — had an issue with it.

Leveille tried to wriggle out of this, but once again, the women on stage confirmed each other’s accounts. Both Danús and Errichiello agree that Leveille told Danús that Errichiello had been pursuing him, and that after Danús told Errichiello this, they confronted him together — at which point he tried to claim he’d never said anything to Danús. Naturally, the word “gaslit” was invoked, at which point, Leveille seemed to realize it was time to apologize and wrap things up before they got worse.

Then, the Lacheys moved on to Dave Bettenburg — who spent the season complaining that his family didn’t want to meet his fiancée, Lauren O’Brien, while also making no visible effort to change their minds.

At the reunion, Bettenburg agreed with O’Brien’s comment that she’s “light-years” ahead of him in terms of emotional maturity. That statement aside, O’Brien went easy on Bettenburg, making it a point to rebut social media commentators calling him a manipulative narcissist. She also gave him credit for texting her to say he’d realized he was wrong about the whole friends-with-benefits kerfuffle, and that dumping her was a mistake.

But here’s my cynical question: Do we really believe he just figured that out weeks before the reunion? Or did he just want to avoid getting called out onstage, where his sister and people whose opinions he actually cares about could see it? Is he really feeling as broken up, as he claimed onstage? As O’Brien made it a point to note, he has her phone number and never called or texted to say as much. Bettenburg might want to play the sad sack, but I’m not feeling it.

That covers all the couples who left the pods engaged, but reunions are about mess, not commitment, and so of course, we had to hear from our season’s love square: Errichiello, her pod exes, Mason Horacek and Alex Brown, and Meg Fink — who briefly dated Horacek after he dumped her for Errichiello in the pods.

Errichiello blessed Horacek and Fink’s already-defunct relationship, but things quickly deteriorated. Brown said Errichiello was like “two different people” in her dates with him and Horacek, which obviously makes her look two-faced.

Frankly, this whole conversation got very boring very fast. But then, Brown accused Errichiello of being “manipulative” in the pods — at which point she dug a few pieces of printer paper out of her dress and began to read off screenshots from texts that kind of, sort of, half-proved he’d spoken dismissively about Horacek.

“I do have more,” Errichiello said, “but that’s all I can fit in my armpit.” In that moment, she won the match. Who cares who’s right and who’s wrong, which we’ll never know for sure anyway? She brought the props, the attitude, the clever dialogue. At least in the room, she’d clearly won over the crowd, who laughed and cheered.

This is as good as a TV reunion gets. We got substance, pettiness and dramatic “reveals” that left us with more questions than answers. Because this is the franchise’s five-year anniversary, we also got a playful countdown of the top five moments in LIB history. The production roped in a couple of football players — Josh Metellus of the Minnesota Vikings and Denver Broncos linebacker Alex Singleton — to tell us that LIB is moving on to the Mile High City. We got the singer-songwriter and TikTok sensation Alex Warren singing his song “Ordinary” in a very showy music video that unfolds in the pods.

And because Netflix will never skip an opportunity for cross-promotion, we also found out that Perfect Match Season 3 is coming this summer, that both Season 6’s Amber Desiree “A.D.” Smith and Love Is Blind: UK’s Ollie Sutherland are in the mix, and that — surprise — the two are now … engaged?!

As everyone swayed along to Warren’s song and drank from their metal goblets, the message was clear: this wild, wacky franchise isn’t going anywhere. It’s mastered its own formula, and now, the world is at its mercy.