This might just be the most dramatic finale in 'Bachelor' franchise history.
This might just be the most dramatic finale in Bachelor franchise history.
Host Chris Harrison promised Hannah Brown's finale would be "historic," and unfortunately, that mean the worst -- she gave Jed Wyatt her final rose, and accepted his proposal... only to be blindsided by girlfriend allegations weeks later.
Last month, Haley Stevens publicly came forward alleging that she and Wyatt were in a relationship when he headed off to film The Bachelorette. She showed ET text messages of what she said was Wyatt telling her he loved her as he hopped on his plane to Los Angeles, and claimed that Wyatt intended to continue dating her once he finished filming.
While men with significant others back home have appeared on The Bachelorette before, Brown's finale marked the first time a man with an alleged girlfriend made it to the end, and became engaged to the Bachelorette. This, of course, didn't fly with Brown.
"The second night after we got engaged, Jed tells me that he had been hanging out with this girl before he left to come on the show," Hannah told cameras, explaining that the story Jed told her didn't match up with his ex-girlfriend's claims. "Jed has muddied the waters of our future together, and it's not what I thought I said yes to."
Shocking footage then played of the 24-year-old beauty queen confronting Wyatt over the scandal weeks after he proposed in Greece.
"It never felt like a relationship to me... We hung out a few times," Jed explained, as Hannah asked him to detail the relationship. Though he said it was casual, Hannah was surprised to hear that the woman had met his parents and the two had gone on a trip together, "just y'all two."
"You don't call that dating?" she asked incredulously, as he also related that the two had gone on a second vacation together, which is when Jed broke the news that he was planning to go on The Bachelorette.
"I told her, this is gonna be a really good thing for music," he said of his decision to go on the show. "She was upset because I'm leaving. I had been drinking...and I told her that I loved her. When I said it, it didn't feel right, and I knew it was a mistake, because I was leaving."
"To me, I ended it in my heart, and not verbally," Jed said of the way the relationship ended as he came on the dating show.
"This is obviously humiliating for me," Hannah said tearfully, before presenting him with text messages about other girls who had apparently been in his apartment in Nashville. "How would you ever to be ready to be engaged?... I've been doing all the freaking steps, and I knew what I wanted."
When Jed asked what he could do to convince her of his feelings, and that he wasn't merely using their relationship to further his career, Hannah walked away to spend some time reflecting outside. When she returned, she explained that what she was looking for was "100% honesty."
"It makes sense now why your family was so...skeptical of it, like, no wonder!" Hannah said, as Jed explained that his motivations and lies were solely not to lose her. "Nothing is ever like, how you plan it to be, but I feel like this experience has been taken away from me."
"You got to see all of me, I didn't get to see all of you," she added, also expressing her dismay that Jed told his friends that he "won" upon returning home from The Bachelorette. "This [ring] doesn't mean the same thing. That's not what I said yes to."
Hannah then removed her engagement ring, telling Jed, "I said yes, but it hasn't been good since then...[I don't] know if I want this."
At the Men Tell All taping earlier this month, Harrison told ET that he wanted to "push" Wyatt to explain himself. The musician had previously spoken out on Instagram on July 8, but noted he was unable to address the scandal fully. He simply asked fans to stop attacking his family over the situation.
"I wanna hear him talk. I wanna hear him answer some questions and there are a lot of things that need to be said," Harrison said. "And I'm gonna push him, but I wanna have that conversation. There are a lot of things that remain to be solved as we head into this two-night finale."
"Yeah, we heard Jed's girlfriend speak... And she was emotional, very believable. There's a lot of things to be said there," the host continued. "Look, we know there was a relationship there... But I wanna hear the rest of it. I wanna hear his side of the story, so let's give him that chance. And he's gonna get it on live TV."
Brown's Bachelorette finale continues Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC. ET's live Bachelorette finale coverage starts at 10:05 p.m. ET / 7:05 p.m. PT on ET Live, which you can stream on your Roku, Apple TV or Amazon Fire TV device.
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