Everything that happened in the 'Bachelor' tell-all finale after Monday's devastating Arie-Becca breakup

The first time I ever watched The Bachelor in full was Monday night. It was sort of the season finale, though obviously not, because we’re here again now.

We left off with Arie choosing Becca over Lauren in a dramatic rose ceremony, which also included the two lovers getting engaged. But then Arie dumped Becca in one of the more upsetting scenes in recent TV history, and now he’s trying to win over Lauren.

The thirst I have for answers is only surpassed by Arie’s thirst for love on his terms, no matter what it does to the emotional well-being of the people around him.

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Part 1: “People are gonna be angry with what you did?”

We begin tonight in The Bachelor’s studio. Host Chris Harrison starts the show by pretending he didn’t see the events in Monday’s three-hour episode, even though he was there while everything unfolded near the end of 2017. None of this was at all new to him.

“Get any sleep last night? Yeah, me neither,” he says.

The show’s producers play a supercut of devastation from Monday night. In summation, Becca was madly in love with Arie, but Arie’s inability to make life decisions and stick by them resulted in him breaking off their engagement and leaving Becca’s heart in ruins. Arie was set on trying to rekindle something with Lauren, the second-place finisher.

What’s next? I can wait to find out, and I will.

Arie meets up with Jason, a guy who used to be on The Bachelor and I guess dumped someone and changed his mind at the end of it. He tells Arie that people are going to say mean things to him. (That poor thing.) Arie then pulls up in a white SUV to some house, where he’s going to surprise Lauren and try to get her to marry him. My guess is that Lauren won’t be tipped off that something up by the camera crew at her house, or by the fact that those camera operators are probably going to ask her to put on a microphone beforehand.

Part 2: “I forgive you”

We’re in Minnesota, where the snow on the ground adds to the sense of despair that we all see while Becca watches a video of her and Arie in a hammock. In a stroke of good fortune for the show’s producers, Becca was watching that video right as an ABC camera slipped behind her to get an over-the-shoulder shot of her wistfully staring at Arie on a laptop.

Now we’re at Lauren’s house, which is a really nice red-brick house. Lauren is 25, which means she’s either been stunningly successful as a young tech saleswoman or she’s living with her parents. That’s fine and good — I’ve been there — but I’m hoping we’re going to see Lauren’s parents staring at Arie like he’s a high school boy picking up their daughter before prom. Lauren greets him at the door, and they warmly hug.

(Arie did not just show up, Lauren tells us. He reached out beforehand.)

“It’s been the hardest month and a half without you,” Arie tells her. He asks for a “second chance,” putting the ball firmly in Lauren’s court.

“The fact that I lost you on the same day you got engaged, it was really tough for me to accept that and know that there was no chance of that ever changing,” she says. “And it was kind of crushing me. It was really hard for me to readjust and not focus on that, and focus on work, and doing other things. But I just really needed my family around.”

(So Lauren came home because she needed family support. Your Bachelor correspondent now feels terrible about making those jokes about her living at her parents’ house.)

Arie tells Lauren he was making a “safe decision” when he picked Becca over her. He saw her as a prospective “good wife,” and he rationalized instead of following his heart.

“Do you think that you’re a hundred percent over Becca?” Lauren asks.

“Yes, 1,000 percent,” Arie says.

(Note: Bookmarking this.)

It seems clear from their conversation that Arie was on the phone with Lauren before breaking things off with Becca. If taking calls with The Bachelor’s second-place finisherwhile you’re engaged to the winner isn’t cheating, it’s at least cheating’s live-in boyfriend. [Editor’s Note: I’m not entirely sure this metaphor makes any sense, but Kirsh is rolling and we’re gonna let him be him.]

Lauren tells Arie she forgives him. They kiss. She says “duh,” and then their kissing turns into a more prolonged pecking and then making-out. She tells him that she knows he thinks she’s “freaked out by engagement” — Lauren’s been in one short-lived engagement before — but she’s hoping it doesn’t take much longer for him to ask her to marry him.

Part 3: “I hope that he learned a lesson from this”

Some of the contestants from the earlier part of the show are in studio with Chris. There are six of them there, and they’re firmly on Team Becca.

“I think he’s an incredibly manipulative person. It’s ridiculous,” one former contestant, who’s named Bekah, which is not the same as Becca, says.

Bekah says Arie should’ve broken off the engagement privately, “instead of in front of millions of people on camera.” I, too, think it was bad when Arie turned the most devastating moment of a woman’s life into a popcorn spectacle on network television, even if it has made for some good recap writing material.

Chris asks a couple of other eliminated players how they felt about the network’s decision to air this gruesomely intimate moment. They’re glad they saw it. OK.

Part 4: “Another part of my story.”

Becca is here in studio. Chris asks her how she feels about ABC showing her devastation on national TV. Watching it helped Becca get closure, she says, and it promotes accountability. Becca has nothing to be accountable for, really, but we do know Arie’s a jerk because of it.

She calls it “another part of my story.”

Becca and Arie had “made plans” and were looking at houses together. He did inform her he’d called Lauren, but Becca thought that was just another mode of gaining closure, because Arie had always been up front about falling in love with both during the show.

“The hardest part was just hearing that he did still have feelings after that,” she says.

Becca is “doing well” now, much as it pains her to watch the breakup again. Seeing “all sides of the story” seems to have engendered some understanding of Arie on Becca’s part. Becca says her heart is filled up by the outpouring of support she’s gotten in the last day.

Chris shows her some supportive billboards, and I can’t tell if they’re fake. He tells her fans of the show have started a fund for her, which was over $6,000 as of 8:47 p.m. ET. (Not to be a curmudgeon, but 6 grand is nothing given how many people watch the show.)

Anyway, Becca wants to donate it to Stand Up To Cancer, a worthy initiative. [Editor’s Note: She better donate that money.] And ABC’s going to match that donation, so let’s hope cash keeps pouring in.

Part 5: “I feel like there was a lack of respect”

Here’s the moment: Arie walks into the studio for his first meeting with Becca since he shattered her heart. The two of them share a warm embrace.

Arie says it’s good to see Becca again. She tells him that she has “so many questions,” and she leads off with this one: “When did you know that you wanted to end things with me and go back to her?” The idea gained steam after Arie had the aforementioned call with Lauren, but he didn’t break things off right away, because he wanted to be sure, he says.

“I didn’t wanna be rash,” he says. “I knew that there was all these feelings. I wanted to be certain in my decision before I come to you to tell you that I wanted to pursue that.”

Light boos start to rain down.

“All I asked for was just honesty from you, and I feel like I didn’t fully get that,” she says. After collecting herself, Becca asks why Arie wasn’t fully honest with her.

From the time they returned from Peru, where they’d gotten engaged, Arie felt an “emptiness.” He notes there’s nothing normal about an “intense breakup” and a proposal being paired so closely. Arie paints himself as a soldier on love’s great battlefield.

Becca says she got a “lack of respect” from her fiancé. But now she’s focused on finding a better suitor for her, which she hopes Lauren turns out to be for Arie.

“I do regret proposing” at the end of their time in Peru, Arie says.

“Then why did you?” she counters.

Arie says it was the pressure of being The Bachelor, that he felt like he had to do it. Becca notes that he didn’t have to do anything, and Arie admits that it’s on him. Becca regrets that her first memory of a marriage proposal is now tainted.

“You robbed me of that,” she says. “I’ll never have that first engagement, that first proposal again.”

Arie apologies for everything. Becca accepts and forgives him.

“It’s hard, but you learn from everything, and it just adds to my story,” Becca says. She wants him to be happy, and she hopes that Lauren is Arie’s “one.”

“I just want you to be honest with her, and just hold her heart high.”

Becca has more class in her left elbow than Arie has in his whole body.

ABC

Part 6: “I’ve been there, and it’s really hard”

That guy Jason from earlier is in studio now. He’s sitting next to Molly, who is not the woman he picked at the end of his Bachelor season and then unceremoniously dumped. Molly is Jason’s wife. He’d picked someone named Melissa at the end of his season, and they were engaged, and then he ended their relationship. He was Arie before Arie.

Jason made the same mistake of carrying out a public execution (of his relationship) after the show, and he suggests that Arie probably should’ve gone ahead and done this privately. Jason got hated upon relentlessly after he blew Melissa’s heart to smithereens, so he knows.

I’m a college football writer. Arie breaking up with his fiancee on live TV after someone already did it and got dragged for it years earlier is the Bachelor equivalent of if Alabama, in the year 2018, tried to beat Auburn with a 57-yard field goal as time expired. Why do something that someone before you has already proven is a terrible idea?

Jason and Molly have been married for eight years, though. So that’s good.

Part 7: “I made a mistake”

Arie’s alone with Chris in studio now. He didn’t watch the show on Monday, he says, because he was with Lauren. So things are working out there, it appears. Arie’s shanked drive off the tee (breaking off his engagement with Becca) may have it a tree and bounced right into the middle of the fairway (by way of Lauren taking him back). [Editor’s Note: We’re sportswriters, y’all. We only have so many frames of reference.]

Part 8: “We’re just excited to be a normal couple”

Lauren’s here! She walks onstage and passionately kisses Arie, then sits cozily next to him. At this point, we can dispense with any doubt that they’re together.

“We’re just excited to be a normal couple and go and do normal couple things,” she says. We learn that an engaged Arie’s initial outreach to Lauren after the show was via Instagram, on New Year’s Eve, when he wanted to see if she’d be open to a conversation. (The show’s producers obviously weren’t going to give him her number, she says. I guess exchange cell numbers in the course of almost getting engaged in Peru? Whatever.)

Lauren never been more in love with Arie than she is now. They think their relationship has somehow gotten betterthrough this game of romantic hopscotch.

Chris asks Lauren if she trusts Arie with her heart.

“Absolutely,” Lauren says.

(Note: Bookmarking this.)

Chris asks Arie what he wants to say to his haters. (Literally, he asks that.)

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. All that matters is his love with Lauren.

An ad airs at the end of this segment, soliciting potential Bachelor or Bachelorette contests to apply online. My mind races: Would they consider a 5’9 and a half sportswriter from Pittsburgh with all-around average — if not worse than average — looks and charm?

Part 9: “Lauren Elizabeth Burnham, will you marry me?”

Arie and Lauren are taking an international vacation, and then Lauren’s moving from Virginia to Arizona to live with Arie, who again is a race car driver. They’re going to skip social media for a while. That’s the most mature decision Arie has made in probably his whole life.

Chris says Arie “first came to us five years ago.” What? (A text message to a friend confirms that Arie was previously on The Bachelorette.)

“I’ve made some bad decisions, but the best decision was running back to you,” Arie tells Lauren. He believes she’s his soulmate. She thinks she’s going to pass out.

Arie asks Lauren’s hand in marriage. She says yes. This will probably end well.

ABC

Part 10: “I have some big shoes to fill”

There are like nine Bachelor and Bachelorette seasons per year now. It’s time to meet the woman who will star on the next season, and you’ll never guess who it is.

Becca hasn’t had her emotional depths explored thoroughly enough by the American public in the course of going through an entire Bachelor season and then getting broken up with in the most devastating fashion possible, so she’s agreed to be our Bachelorette for the next season, which Chris calls “one of the easier decisions we’ve ever made.”

“I wanna be the best damn Bachelorette I can be,” she tells Chris. “I wanna find love. I wanna meet so many amazing guys. I’m just ready to do this.”

Part 11: “Let’s just do the damn thing”

So much is happening. The next season is kind of starting right now. Becca’s meeting some of the men who are going to vie for her heart. They’re just parading in:

• Lincoln, “like the president.” He wears a bowtie and says Becca is glowing, and he’s not just talking about the dress that has refracting glitter on it. He’s a nice guy. I wonder if Becca’s going to want a nice guy or an edgy guy after all she’s been through. It’s his birthday at the end of the night, and Becca mentions the idea of champagne. They hug. He praises her for her stick-to-it-iveness after getting dumped in primetime, and she seems to appreciate the sentiment about her resilience. “Arie is a wanker,” he tells her. HEAT INDEX: 7.
• Chase, who looks like another Trump son. HEAT INDEX: 2.
• Brian, who shows up playing a banjo. He might’ve written this song himself, but I’m not going to spend time Googling the lyrics to figure it out. HEAT INDEX: 6
• Darius, whose name is probably spelled like that. (The show doesn’t use chyrons in studio, I’m noticing, which is a silly thing not to do.) He apologizes “on behalf of my gender” for Arie’s shenanigans on the Monday night show. He tells Becca he’s here for her, that she’s beautiful, and that he’s excited for this journey. He’s confident. HEAT INDEX: 5.
• Blake, who brings out a horse for Becca. The horse’s name is Bradley, and that makes three people whose names start with the letter B, which is potentially adorable. Blake looks like one of the mailroom boys from Wolf of Wall Street. Hehelps Becca get back on the horse by literally putting her on a horse, despite her wearing a dress not meant for that. HEAT INDEX: OFF THE CHARTS.

“The Bachelorette has begun,” Chris says. It starts May 28, which means filming starts basically now. The pilgrimage to Becca is off and running.

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