It’s the end of an era for Bachelor Nation. With The Bachelorette not returning in 2025, Bachelor Nation fans have one question on their minds: Why was The Bachelorette canceled?! Well, there could be one person to blame.
The Bachelorette, a spinoff of The Bachelor, premiered on ABC in 2003 with Season 1 lead Trista Rehn, the runner-up of The Bachelor Season 1. Since then, The Bachelorette has had 21 seasons and 23 leads (Seasons 16 and 19 had two Bachelorettes) until February 2025 when news broke that ABC had put the series on pause.
Deadline reported at the time that The Bachelorette was canceled for its usual time slot in 2025. According to the magazine, The Bachelorette typically starts production in March, with the past three seasons premiering in July. This year, however, will be different with the show on hiatus. So what happened? And why was The Bachelorette canceled? Read on for what we know ahead.
Why was The Bachelorette canceled?
Bachelor Nation alums Ashley Iaconetti and Ben Higgins claimed on their podcast,” Almost Famous,” in March 2025 that production sources told them that 75 percent of the filming dates for The Bachelorette Season 22 — including in European locations like Greece and Portugal — were set before ABC decided to cancel the show for 2025. The hosts also alleged that an iHeartRadio podcast-themed date was in the works with Ben and Ashley I., as well as other iHeartRadio podcast hosts such as Jana Kramer, Jennie Garth, Kevin McHale, and Jenna Ushkowitz set to take part. The date was allegedly a competition-themed date with the winner receiving an invite to the iHeartRadio Music Awards.
Because The Bachelorette reportedly planned to film in Europe instead of staying in Los Angeles to save costs — as ABC did with The Golden Bachelor and The Golden Bachelorette — Ben explained that he didn’t believe The Bachelorette was canceled in 2025 due to money. Instead, Ben and Ashley I. alleged that the main reason they heard The Bachelorette was canceled for 2025 was because ABC couldn’t find as strong of a lead as Maria Georgas, the fourth-place finalist from The Bachelor Season 28 with Joey Graziadei, who allegedly was set to become the Season 22 Bachelorette until negotiations fell through.
“It sounds like from our source that Maria was the frontrunner,” Ben said. “The powers that be really wanted to be the lead of this season. It really sounds to me like they couldn’t make it work with Maria for whatever reason that was, and because of that, they had to pull the plug on the show because somebody who had a lot of influence on the show was fairly stuck on that storyline saying, ‘If we don’t do Maria, it’s not worth doing.’”
Ashley I added, “We’re pretty certain Maria was a frontrunner to be the Bachelorette as she was a frontrunner to be the Bachelorette during Jenn’s season. The source says that they don’t know exactly what happened, but they couldn’t make Maria happen and that’s why the show didn’t get picked up because I’m assuming they didn’t have a strong enough lead to get enough ratings.”
Ben also explained that the ratings and negative response to the cast for The Bachelorette Season 21 with Jenn Tran also likely played a part in ABC’s decision to not renew The Bachelorette for 2025. “This seems like the reason this season isn’t happening. The ratings haven’t been good enough. Even though I think there have been great seasons, but I go back to I think the show took a massive hit with the men that were cast for Jenn’s season,” he said. “Jenn did a great job. I think we’ve seen Jenn thrive after her role as the Bachelorette, but I think the men on her season really hurt the show. And because the show did the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ strategy, I think the show is in a really tough place.”
Ben and Ashley I. also claimed that part of the reason ABC canceled The Bachelorette was because the network believed that it could fill The Bachelorette’s usual time slot with Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which has a similar demographic and has already finished filming.
When is The Bachelorette coming back?
While The Bachelorette won’t air a new season during its usual time slot, Ben maintained that he believed the show would come back in the future. “I don’t think the show is going away forever,” he said. Ashley I. added, “And neither do the people at ABC. They skipped [Bachelor in] Paradise last year and now it’s back. And maybe they’re going to do the same thing for The Bachelorette. It’s a little reboot time.”
Deadline reported in February 2025 that, just because The Bachelorette won’t air during its typical time in the summer, ABC hasn’t ruled out a return for later in 2025. The Bachelorette also isn’t the first Bachelor Nation show ABC has put on pause, as Ben and Ashley I. noted Bachelor in Paradise was also paused in 2024, with its usual time slot taken by The Golden Bachelorette, before ABC’s announcement that BIP would return in the summer of 2025.
Who was almost the next Bachelorette?
Along with Maria, Ben and Ashley I. also reported that two contestants from The Bachelor Season 29 with Grant Ellis were considered to be the next Bachelorette, however, they didn’t name which ones. Another Bachelorette ABC reportedly considered was Rachel Recchia, the lead of The Bachelorette Season 19 with Gabby Windey who was cheated on by her winner, Tino Franco. (Rachel was later a contestant on Bachelor in Paradise Season 9.) “Our sources are saying that they were also thinking of giving Rachel Recchia a redo. They said her name was floated around, but they said there’s a reason she couldn’t do it and we can’t reveal that reason in real time, but production and fans love Rachel and I personally would’ve loved to see Rachel’s own season. She’s so likable. I really, really love that girl, but there’s something else exciting for her,” Ashley I. said.
Despite the four options — Maria, Rachel and two contestants from Grant’s Bachelor season — Ben maintained that Maria was, by far, the frontrunner to be the next Bachelorette. As Bachelor Nation fans know, Maria claimed she received the offer to be the Season 21 Bachelorette and even did dress fittings for the show, however, she turned it down close to the last minute. “I was offered the role. It was mine until I said it wasn’t,” Maria said on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast in May 2024. “It became very overwhelming to the point where I had to decline.” She continued, “I just was not ready.”
Jenn, for her part, denied that Maria was ever officially chosen to be the Bachelorette before her in her own interview on “Call Her Daddy” in July 2024. “Obviously I didn’t have my phone at the time all of this was going down because we had went right into filming right after it was all announced,” Jenn said of Maria’s interview. “Coming back to all of that, yeah, obviously I was really disappointed to see all of that because, I mean, the truth of the matter is, there’s a lot of narratives out there and they’re not necessarily the truth.”
She continued, “Multiple people are being interviewed, or doing meetings about it all, doing fittings or filming intro packages, and it’s never really you until it’s you.” Jenn also claimed that she was not approached to be the Bachelorette at the last minute and had meetings with producers for months before she received a phone call with the official offer. “They asked me and I had the choice and I chose to do it. I said yes,” she said. “The thing with the narrative sets out right now is it was disappointing to come back from this incredible journey for myself and then to see all the speculation around it and to almost have these things kind of take away from what my journey was.”
The Bachelorette streams on Hulu.
