Peter Weber may be warming up his windmill for January 6, but Netflix wants to give you your Bachelor fix a little early. Sometime last month, without fanfare, season 13 of the ABC show appeared on the streaming service, and now I have so many questions: First off, will there be more? What about The Bachelorette? And why did this specific season, out of all the others, make the cut?
That's at least one question that has an answer, because season 13 of The Bachelor was a wild one. The season, which aired in 2009, starred Jason Mesnick, who was the runner-up on season 4 of The Bachelorette with DeAnna Pappas. The first nine episodes contain pretty much everything you'd expect from a season of The Bachelor — albeit with a particularly babyfaced Chris Harrison — but things take a turn on After The Final Rose. Basically, Mesnick was the original Arie Luyendyk Jr., and ended up breaking up with his winner on live TV and getting back together with the runner up.
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Initially, Melissa Rycroft won Mesnick's heart, but shortly after the proposal, a tearful Mesnick informed Harrison that the chemistry had changed. On a special, audience-less After The Final Rose, Mesnick ended things with Rycroft. Rycroft, understandably, did not take it well, and runner-up Molly Malaney was even more shocked when Harrison brought her out to the news that Mesnick wanted to get back together. After many questions, Malaney was on board, and by the time the couple returned for part two of After The Final Rose, they were fully smitten — and still are to this day. The two wed in a televised ceremony in 2010, and currently share daughter Riley and Mesnick's son Tyler from a previous marriage — who ended up discovering his dad's season of The Bachelor on Netflix.
As for Rycroft, she's also happily married. She and Tye Strickland, a former boyfriend, reunited following her breakup with Mesnick and remain married to this day with three children.
And so began what would become a long line of Bachelor rule-breakers, with Luyendyk pulling the same stunt, Colton Underwood leaving the show for Cassie Randolph, and Hannah Brown ending things with Jed Wyatt and asking out Tyler Cameron. But when you settle in to watch season 13 on Netflix and hear Harrison utter his infamous "most dramatic ending in Bachelor history" line, know at that time, it really was true.
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