Yahoo News ‘The Ultimatum’ Reunion: Which Contestant Stopped Wearing Their Ring?
The Ultimatum came full of shocks and surprises this season—including the reveal of an air mattress!—but Netflix apparently saved the biggest twist for last. For the first time in Ultimatum history, every couple (at least, the ones who stuck around for the entire show) wound up getting engaged in the finale.
Netflix’s most chaotic dating show challenges five couples to swap partners for three-week “trial marriages” before returning to their original relationships for another three. After that, each couple must decide whether to get engaged or move on separately—perhaps with their trial spouses. This season, Lisa and Brian left the show early due to an unexpected pregnancy. (As we’ve since learned, they’re still together and now co-parenting a baby boy.) The rest of this season’s couples wound up engaged, but did they all stay together?
Somehow, the answer to that question is “yes”—but at what cost?
Why Is Everyone on ‘The Ultimatum’ So Mean to Riah?
Not everyone looked entirely blissful during Wednesday’s Season 3 reunion episode. Although Antonio and Roxanne are still together and engaged, the ring has apparently gone back in its box.
“I don’t get why I have to wear one and he doesn’t,” Roxanne said. “It feels very possessive.”
After some discussion, the couple’s fellow contestants suggested that Roxanne buy Antonio a ring he could wear to level the playing field—a solid bit of advice that seems unlikely to solve the problem.
As Antonio quietly pointed out, Roxanne’s initial “excuse” not to wear the ring was that it didn’t fit—an explanation that expired after he got it resized. Roxanne, meanwhile, revealed that she took the ring off the day after she and Antonio got engaged. Just like his ring, hers now lives in a box, along with the two additional rings he bought for her after getting it resized. When asked if she would marry Antonio on the spot, Roxanne demurred, “It’s just not top-of-mind right now for me.” (Okay…)
The Ultimatum reunions often provide a fascinating look into couples’ relationships with both one another and their fellow participants, and this time around, Roxanne seemed to spend a fair amount of time in the hot seat. Hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey called on her to explain why she didn’t initially believe that Lisa was pregnant, while Kat—who is now engaged to Roxanne’s trial husband, Alex—questioned the “intentions” behind some of her comments about their relationship.
“I heard a couple times, Roxanne saying to Alex, ‘I’m sure you walk all over Kat; I’m sure you make her feel weak,’” Kat recalled. “And I was like, first of all, Alex has never made me feel weak, and he has neve walked all over me, and he never will. He doesn’t now. I’m sorry that maybe you felt like that in your trial marriage.”
While Kat conceded that her relationship with Alex wasn’t perfect coming into the show (and that she needs to work on her tendency to be agreeable in conversations, even when she actually disagrees with the things people tell her) she added that Roxanne also frequently said things about her and Alex that felt like “lies” designed to make them look bad.
Roxanne wasn’t the only one to chafe under the spotlight. Lisa also dug in her heels when asked about calling her fellow participant Riah “that Hooters bitch” during a fight. Riah pointed out that Lisa had previously told her she, too, used to work at Hooters and said that she didn’t appreciate the “tasteless” digs at her job.
“It just seemed like you were trying to put down another woman because you were upset,” Riah said—to which Lisa simply replied, “I don’t care.”
For reasons I still don’t entirely understand, Riah became something of a punching bag for her fellow contestants; her trial husband James was also pretty rude to her during their three-week “marriage,” and even her partner Trey made some pretty dismissive remarks about her behind her back. Try as Riah might’ve to evade drama, her fellow participants seemed very comfortable drawing fast conclusions about her relationship.
‘The Ultimatum’: Roxanne and Antonio Break Down That Explosive Fight
As Lisa put it in the reunion, “I don’t regret what I said, because I didn’t base my assumption off of her job; I based it off of how she was acting during this process. Because for me, I felt like if you are in love with someone that you came here with, you’re not eyeing someone and thinking, ‘Oh my god, he’s hot. He makes me hot.’”
While Lisa seemed content to go out on a sour note with Riah, her fellow cast members worked overtime to try and smooth things over.
First, there was Antonio, who gently told Lisa, “I think you’re saying some things that you don’t mean.” Then, there was Lisa’s partner Brian, who clarified that while Lisa believed those awful things about Riah then, they certainly don’t reflect how she feels now. (“Are you sure about that?” I wondered aloud to no one from my couch.) Roxanne later chimed in to suggest that perhaps Lisa’s nasty remarks came from pregnancy hormones—an explanation Lisa seemed to embrace.
“Not that it excuses my behavior at all,” Lisa said in a suddenly contrite about-face, “but it definitely made me realize that this is why I’m acting psycho. So I was very remorseful for doing that. It wasn’t okay. Even the hormones, regardless of being pregnant.”
Did we miss some part of this conversation? Wherefore the newfound remorse? Alas, we might never know—but at least Nick and Vanessa sent Brian and Lisa off with a silver Ultimatum sippy cup (a nod to the show’s metallic wine goblets) as well as a pacifier. Their best parting gift, however, was a fun fact: Apparently, the Lacheys’ first date took place at a Hooters, which … really?
While The Ultimatum’s loudest stars often found themselves under the microscope at the reunion, the quietest personality in the bunch wound up having the best night: Kat, who barely got any speaking time on screen during the season’s first nine episodes, handled each and every reunion landmine like a pro.
‘The Ultimatum’ Started With a Game-Changing Shocker—But It Has a Happy Ending
It wasn’t just Kat’s direct confrontation with Roxanne, which defied her early characterization as something of a pushover. During an intentionally thorny couples’ game, she also put her diplomatic skills to good use, answering pointed questions in expertly evasive ways.
When asked who she was most nervous to see that night, Kat countered by choosing Nick Lachey—because he “asks all the hard questions.” When asked whose engagement surprised her the most, she chose “everyone”—meaning, she was shocked that everyone got engaged. (It was in this moment that I suddenly began envisioning her in black sunglasses, dodging the Lacheys’ conversational bullets like she’s Neo in The Matrix.) The mic drop moment came near the very end, when Kat proved to be the only person from this season who knows what a “sounding rod” is. (Google at your own risk.) Is she really as timid and meek as she initially came off? Perhaps not!
But how long until all of these couples actually get married? Most have already set dates: High school sweethearts James and Ryann, whose sexual adventures actually inspired the “sounding rod” conversation, will marry this September, with Alex and Kat set to follow in May of 2024. Riah and Trey are planning a destination wedding for the spring of 2025, while Antonio and Roxanne have yet to set a date. (That said, Antonio did just start his own business, much to Roxanne’s delight; he apparently bought a car wash in Georgia, which he plans to expand into a car customization business.) Brian and Lisa are not yet engaged, but Lisa remains hopeful and Brian insists it’s all just about timing and he’s “100-percent locked in.”
Only time will tell how all of these couples fare. In the meantime, this season’s real winners might just be Ryan Reynolds and Cillian Murphy—each of whom got name-checked twice during the reunion’s “celebrity hall pass” game, in which everyone named the A-lister they could theoretically cheat with guilt-free. Murphy’s victory, however, came with an ego check; Kat wrote him down as “Tommy Shelby” because she didn’t know his real name, while Roxanne went with “main dude from Peaky Blinders.” If nothing else, at least the girlies can agree on that.
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