(Spoiler alert: Please do not read on if you haven’t watched Monday’s finale episode of “The Bachelor”)
Colton Underwood’s search for love came to an unceremonious end on Monday night’s finale of “The Bachelor.”
After being spurned by Cassie last week, Monday’s episode picked up immediately following Colton’s infamous fence-jumping moment, with the producers on the verge of calling the police to search for their runaway Bachelor.
Even though Cassie took it into her own hands to remove herself from the competition and break off their relationship, Colton returns in a mess of tears, somehow newly committed to his feelings for Cassie.
“I want to be with Cassie,” he later says. “I love her enough to risk everything. I want to not only tell her, but show her. I know what I need to do.”
So instead of moving on, he returns to have a tearful behind-closed-doors breakup with Tayshia, and a separate, equally weepy goodbye with Hannah G., in which he says that his love for Cassie precludes the possibility of a relationship with either of his other bachelorettes.
“To be honest with you, it hurt. I don’t think anybody really wants to hear that, especially when I feel like I’ve really laid it all out there,” Tayshia later tells host Chris Harrison, admitting that she was blindsided by the breakup.
Hannah G. seemed equally surprised by the news, telling Colton that she was “really thrown off” by his sudden appearance at her door. “I was so excited to see you. I really thought it was like, for sure going to be us,” she said. “I don’t know how to take this right now.”
But Colton’s feelings for Cassie could not be deterred. “I don’t know if I’m giving up a for-sure thing for something that is impossible,” he later tells a producer. “That’s literally how much I love Cassie. That I’m willing to walk away from something that great.”
In what Harrison repeatedly describes as an “unprecedented” move in “Bachelor” history, Colton closes out his time on the show by returning to once again profess his love for Cassie, the woman who previously said she wasn’t ready to commit to him.
“What I’m doing right now, and the sacrifices I just made, I didn’t do in my past relationship. I didn’t fight as hard as I could’ve to make it work. I’m doing that now,” Colton tells the camera through even more tears. “I don’t know if I’m fighting for something that’s not possible. But I’m willing to do everything and everything. Because that’s how much I love Cassie.”
But Cassie’s response to Colton’s knock on her door won’t be revealed until the second half of the “Bachelor” finale on Tuesday night at 8/7c on ABC, during which the next Bachelorette will also be revealed.