ABC Hometown Dates may look different next season.
Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia have already started filming the new season of “The Bachelorette,” which will be the franchise’s first ever full season with a double lead. While many “Bachelor” fans are excited to see how things will play out, it seems as though there is some confusion as to how everything is going to work.
What we do know is that ABC has cast the same amount of guys as they would for any previous season. Both Gabby and Rachel will meet the same group of guys on night one at the Bachelor Mansion — this has already been filmed. The girls are expected to form relationships from there, and will likely lean on one another as they figure out who they have connections with and who they don’t.
While it’s unclear how rose ceremonies will work — will Gabby and Rachel each get to hand out a certain number of roses or will they decided which guys they want to both keep? — it sounds like Hometown Dates are going to look different than they have in the past.
Popular “Bachelor” vlogger and TikTok star Zachary Reality gave the world some insight ahead of the show’s July premiere. And Reality Steve has weighed in, too.
Here’s what you need to know:
Gabby & Rachel Will Each Meet 2 Families According to Zachary
According to Zachary Reality, Gabby and Rachel will narrow their men down and will each choose two for Hometown Dates. Gabby will meet two families and Rachel will meet two families.
Previously, the lead would meet the families of their top four picks.
“The guys will be dating both of them throughout the season, until it comes down to the final four,” Zachary Reality said in a TikTok video. “At the final four, both girls will meet two guys’ families. So, throughout the season, some guys will only be into Gabby, some guys will only be into Rachel, and there will be a few that will probably be into both of them,” he added.
However, Reality Steve doesn’t think this is going to be the case as all. While he isn’t sure how many Hometown dates Gabby and Rachel will each go on, he thinks it will be more than two a piece.
“For Gabby and Rachel, however many hometowns each get, it will still be filmed the same way, but each of them will be filming hometowns on the same day, obviously in different cities with a split crew unless they have one guy they both want in their final 3/4. So lets say April 24th is a Hometown filming day (just doing the math, it should be somewhere around that time), Gabby will be filming hers somewhere and Rachel will be filming hers somewhere else on the same day. It will either be 3 or 4 hometowns for each. I’ll know more as we get closer. But this gossip they were only getting two each is definitely wrong,” he wrote on his March 31, 2022, blog.
If everything works out, there will be two separate proposals at the end of the season.
Gabby & Rachel Will Have to Keep Their Finale a Secret for Several Weeks
Despite “The Bachelorette” filming schedule already in full swing, the new season of the show has been pushed to July 2022. This means that Gabby and Rachel will have to keep the finale a secret for several extra weeks (the show usually airs in early June).
It’s unclear why ABC/”Bachelorette” producers decided to push the premiere of the show out, but it caused some concern amongst fans because the show will run around the time that “Bachelor in Paradise” usually airs.
There have already been a plethora of rumors that the popular spinoff isn’t coming back in 2022 — or maybe ever. According to TV Insider, “Paradise” has not yet been renewed by ABC.
And while fans really want to see the show return, the timing might make things a bit tricky; if the show airs after “The Bachelorette” finale, it could run well into November. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the show won’t happen, but the timing is certainly throwing people for a loop.
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