Monday night was The Bachelorette: Men Tell All episode, but it should’ve been called Luke Tells All, because he got managed to get the majority of the screen time. We start the episode with Chris Harrison telling the live audience that it’s going to be a “shocking and emotional night,” which is pretty standard Bachelorette hyperbole. This time we’re picking up where we left off last week in Crete, Greece.
You’ll recall Luke P. had just told Hannah B. he would be 100% out if he found out she had sex with the other guys in the Fantasy Suites. Hannah gives us the iconic, “I f----- in a windmill” line. Luke P. insists that she just needs to hear him out, and even offers to pray over her. “I don’t owe you anything at this point,” she retorts. Unfortunately, all of Bachelor Nation has to hear him out later, but for now, “we in Greece.”
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Hannah approaches the Rose Ceremony looking visibly relieved that Luke P. is gone, and understanding that she has to make a difficult decision. “I do love all of them in completely different ways,” she says. Peter, Tyler, and Jed approach Chris Harrison, not realizing that they’re the only ones still standing.
“I have no regrets, I feel like f--- that guy,” Hannah says about Luke in an interview. “Not an ounce of me misses him, wants him in my life, or will question my decisions. I’m so glad Luke is finally gone, and I never have to see him again.”
Cut to, Luke is in a car driving to the Rose Ceremony, vlogging. He’s under the impression that Hannah is “sadly mistaken” for sending him home, because she doesn’t realize that he still loves her. “I know she’s never told me she loves me, but I know she loves me,” he says. Ominous music plays ,and the camera pans to reveal he is clutching a ring (Neil Lane, I presume) between his fingers. “She doesn’t know it yet, but I’m on my way.”
This is a huge problem with the way that the Bachelor franchise portrays commitment and love. It’s not romantic to come “fight” for someone after they’ve explicitly told you that they’re not interested, and Luke P. is just one glaring example of this trope. So, Luke just waltzes right up next to the other men standing for the Rose Ceremony like he deserves to be there (he is incorrect in this assumption). When Hannah enters and notices him, she immediately says, “Why are you here?” Luke tries to explain himself, but she interrupts him saying, “No.”
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Luke says he’s going to stand there until she talks to him and allows him to explain, and Hannah replies, “No the f--- you’re not. Just get away from me.” But he doesn’t leave. He keeps telling her to “listen” and just hear him out so he can get “clarity and closure.” Hannah says she’s “about to go psycho” and has been on an “emotional rollercoaster,” but Luke continues to tell her to listen. At one point, Hannah calls him a narcissist.
“I’m still standing here, and this isn’t over for me,” Luke says, in line with the other men. So, Hannah picks up the podium upon which the roses were resting, and moves it a foot away from Luke P. It’s iconic prop work from Hannah, but Luke still won’t take “go away” for an answer. The other men approach Luke and tell him to go, and he snaps at them saying not to lay a hand on him. “Or what?” Tyler says.
Eventually, Luke gets a word in and tells Hannah, “I know deep down, after everything you told me, throughout this whole process, you still have feelings for me.” She corrects him, saying that she had feelings for him for much longer than she wanted to. However, after talking to everyone about him (ahem, Jed), and trying to figure it out, she finally sees what she needed to have clarity: that Luke sucks. After she looks him in the eye and says that she is absolutely not into him, Luke leaves. Chris tells Hannah that Luke fully thought they were getting married, and even had a ring in his pocket, and she just stares incredulously. Bye, Luke!
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“The Luke P. show is over,” Tyler says. Jed does a little dance to celebrate. Peter says he’s so proud of Hannah for being a badass and standing up for herself. Well, the Luke P. show isn’t completely over, because there’s still a coda left. We cut back to the Men Tell All stage, where Chris is sitting with Luke.
The pair talk for a long time, mostly because Luke pauses dramatically before answering every question, and also because there’s a lot to get into. First, he tries to clear the air and explain one more time how he just wanted to get clarity for himself about what he wanted from marriage, and that’s why he asked Hannah about having sex. Luke says this is how he’d be with anyone he was dating outside of the Bachelor universe. “I don’t get to see her straddle, or mount, or swap saliva with other guys,” he says. “That’s not easy.”
Chris presses Luke to explain why he didn’t just leave when Hannah asked repeatedly, and he says, “I made Hannah out to be this perfect woman with all qualities I want in future wife.” He thought she was genuinely making a mistake. “Real love is a commitment,” he says, and he was ready to fight for her through anything, and that’s why he went back. (Again: this is not what healthy commitment looks like!) As for the thing about him being a narcissist? Luke admits to being too prideful and arrogant, but a narcissist is pushing it, he says. He also argues that the other guys treated him like a “crazy psychopath liar,” which made being in the house feel like fighting a two-headed dragon. “From day 1 it felt like a rescue mission for Hannah,” he says. The audience laughs at this. Don’t save her; she doesn’t want to be saved.
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The contestants waiting backstage can’t listen to Luke any longer. Devin comes out explaining that his “blood is boiling” hearing him say Hannah needed rescuing. “I feel you’re the man that wants to control a woman so you can feel better about yourself,” he says. “You’re saying you’re on a rescue mission, but the only person that needed rescuing was Hannah from you.” Chris asks Luke if he thinks he’s the type of guy to put a woman “on a shelf in a glass case.” He replies that the last thing he wants, and will ever do is control a woman. But, here’s the gag, “A man is supposed to lead and guide a woman in the relationship,” he says.
The rest of the guys then have their chance to lay it on Luke, but they have little sympathy. Mike calls him a “narcissistic, cantankerous, misogynist.” Connor says he’s a liar, manipulator, and controlling psychopath. Dylan reminds him that it’s 2019, and you can’t talk to women that way. Cam thanks Luke for making him look like a saint.
The inquisition takes a turn when Chris Harrison brings up the issue of faith. Both Hannah and Luke have had sex, he says, so wasn’t there some hipocracy in Luke judging Hannah for having sex? Luke explains that he considers himself a “secondary virgin” or “born-again virgin,” and so he was simply checking that they were on the same page about that. Since they weren’t, he wanted to be removed from the running. Jonathan chimes in from the peanut gallery saying they had talks about religion, but it wasn’t right to project his Christian faith onto someone else. Luke weakly apologizes, and hallelujah, we’re done with him for the night.
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As a palate cleanser, John Paul Jones briefly chats with Chris about his happy-go-lucky attitude, and what it’s like being famous now. An audience member wearing a John Paul Jones T-shirt asks if she can cut a lock of his hair, and he obliges. Everyone gets chicken nuggets, one of JPJ’s favorite foods.
Then, Mike sits down to watch a montage of himself getting dumped. Poor Mike. He says it’s tough to watch, because he could really have seen himself taking Hannah home to his family to meet all the other strong women in his life. She was supposed to be his “fourth queen.” Despite everything, he still thinks “she’s fine as Hell and independent.” If Mike is campaigning to be the next Bachelor, I’m very much okay with it.
Finally, Hannah rolls in to address Luke and explain what was going on in her head while everyone was telling her he was wrong for her this season. On the first night, she recalls feeling really insecure about being the Bachelorette and living up to the perceived standard. Luke’s initial attention did feel like love at first sight, but more importantly, it gave her hope that she could do this. And that’s why she held onto him for so long.
That they bonded over their faith also made it harder for Hannah to let go of him. “I wanted a man of God — the same values that were weaponized against me at the end,” she says. “I was threatened by the shared faith that we had.” Luke judging her and putting a Scarlet Letter on her was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “I’m so over being slut-shamed,” she says. “I live my life and make mistakes in sin every single day — that’s what grace is for.”
The night ends with Hannah apologizing to Bachelor Nation for having to put up with Luke for so long. Unfortunately, a lot of women can relate to being in a toxic relationship like this one, she says. “Maybe. just maybe, me going through that and being able to remember my worth, and figure that out for myself can help somebody that’s in that now,” she says. “Ultimately, that makes me realize I don’t have regrets that was worth all of it.” There are still a lot of lingering questions (Is Mike going to be the next Bachelor? Does Hannah know about Peter’s ex?) left, but the good news is we still have two episodes left — and hopefully they’ll have a lot less Luke.