Spoilers ahead for the Season 1 finale of The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart on ABC.
The first (and possibly only) season of The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart has come to an end on ABC, and the finale delivered plenty of drama before Chris Harrison broke the big news of which musical couple would get the final roses. Three duos were left when Listen to Your Heart took the action to Nashville: Rudi Gutierrez and Matt Ranaudo, Jamie Weintraub and Trevor Holmes, and Bri Stauss and Chris Watson. As it turns out, the show's most consistent couple came out on top. Congrats, Bri and Chris! That said, it seemed pretty clear who was going to win before Harrison made the official announcement.
Despite three couples remaining for the two hours leading up to the announcement, two got considerably more attention than the third. The first half hour or so belonged to Rudi and Matt, since Matt's cold feet in their relationship compared to Bri and Chris and Jamie and Trevor finally got the better of him. He felt like they weren't at the place they needed to be to take the Listen to Your Heart finale stage, and he and Rudi tearfully bowed out before they had to decide whether or not to spend the night in a fantasy suite.
Obviously, Rudi and Matt getting a lot of screen time early on wasn't a sign that they were going to win. The other couple that I felt got a disproportionate amount of screen time in the finale was Bri and Chris. As the first couple to drop the "I love you" declarations, Bri and Chris had already been favorites to win, but the finale showed the first time they really faced any difficulties with each other.
Although they agreed that they didn't want to rush into spending the night together in a fantasy suite, they weren't connecting when it came to rehearsing their final two songs for their final performances of Listen to Your Heart, and the nerves seemed to be getting the better of them. The show gave a window into their date and into the rehearsal ahead of the performances. The same isn't true for Jamie and Trevor.
Jamie and Trevor decided to take full advantage of the fantasy suite and spent the night together, and both were pretty happy about it afterward, although Jamie's later realization that her dad was watching was pretty funny. Still, their screen time was all about their date and the morning after. The most serious drama they faced was dealing with Rudi and Matt leaving. While drama isn't a requirement for a couple to win any series in Bachelor Nation, but it just felt like Listen to Your Heart wasn't bothering to chronicle their journey.
For me, I felt like the show wasn't trying to get me invested in Jamie and Trevor as anything other than a cute couple, and the finale repeated more than once that Trevor was planning to move to Nashville to be with Jamie no matter what the results were. With Bri and Chris' journey of highs and lows getting full coverage in the finale and Rudi and Matt out of the game, I wasn't even a little bit surprised when Bri and Chris turned out to be the Listen to Your Heart winners. Did The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart spoil the winners way too early by giving so much attention to Bri and Chris compared to Jamie and Trevor?
Personally, even being 95% sure that Bri and Chris were getting the final roses didn't ruin the finale for me. After all, the Bachelor franchise is regularly spoiled, with Bachelor and Bachelorette finalists frequently revealed on the web weeks or months before the episodes would air. Of course, I had also been Team Rudi/Matt due to how fiery their chemistry always was on stage, so the other 5% was me hopelessly hoping that they would somehow return. Still, I enjoyed the finale, and it didn't really matter that I found it pretty clear who would win.
The final moments of the Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart finale confirmed that Bri and Chris are still happy and in love, and they weren't there for the wrong reasons and seemingly hoping to advance their careers, a la Jed Wyatt from Hannah Brown's season of The Bachelorette. Unfortunately, Bri and Chris will likely be the last Bachelor Nation couple to win a season for the foreseeable future. Production on Clare Crawley's season of The Bachelorette had to halt, and all signs point toward Bachelor in Paradise missing the summer TV season on ABC this year. As for the next season of The Bachelor, only time will tell.
For now, you can find the shows that are coming to the small screen sooner rather than later on our summer 2020 premiere schedule!
