The Golden Bachelor Effect

When Haley DeLeon’s family named their group text “Bachelor Nation,” it was meant to be ironic. It’s not so ironic anymore.

DeLeon, 33, started watching The Bachelor with her now-husband and his family when the couple started dating about eight years ago. Since then, it’s become a regular family activity, with her siblings and parents getting into the show, too. They’ll watch special episodes together, like finales or “hometowns.” Sometimes she even makes themed snacks, like pizza pinwheels in the shape of roses.

“It’s almost like watching sports,” says DeLeon, who works in marketing in Tampa. “You’re all watching it together and commenting on the plays that are happening, but you also can talk during. It’s a social thing.”

So when the franchise debuted The Golden Bachelor last year, a spinoff featuring singles in their 60s and older, DeLeon tuned in.

“The stakes are a lot higher for them, [since] a lot of them are widowed. There’s more emotional investment there,” she says. “My dad is the right age to be on that show. It’s been really nice to see people who are his age sharing their emotions.”

The Golden Bachelor premiered to wild success last year, becoming the most-watched new unscripted series of 2023, according to Nielsen data. A few months after its finale in November — the most-watched finale in the entire franchise since 2020 — ABC announced The Golden Bachelorette. The new show, which premiered in September, hasn’t had quite the cultural cachet or viewers as its predecessor, but they’ve both paved the way for a new subgenre of television focusing on later-in-life dating. Call it Hollywood’s “senior moment.”

Earlier this week, in Only Murders in the Building’s Season 4 finale, Meryl Streep and Martin Short’s characters got married. The romance, which started last season, has made Streep emotional. She reportedly told co-creator John Hoffman that, “To play romantic scenes at this age with this band in this way, it’s just the greatest thing ever.”

There’s more where that come from. Later this year, Netflix joins the trend with its own later-in-life dating show: The Later Daters, an unscripted show following older singles who dive into blind dating. And that doesn’t account for projects set in assisted living facilities (yes, really!) like Netflix’s comedy series A Man on the Inside, out Nov. 21, which stars Ted Danson as a widowed retiree who goes undercover at one such locale. And in case you missed this summer’s Thelma, the fantastic thriller starred 94-year-old actor June Squibb as a grandma who eludes her family’s watch to solve a crime. In both, romance — or the potential for it — are charming subplots.

These projects, while all heartwarming and entertaining for entertainment’s sake, are also normalizing experiences that often come with love but don’t get the airtime, like grief and loneliness. In A Man on the Inside and Thelma, the main characters have lost their spouses. And on The Golden Bachelor and Bachelorette, virtually all of the contestants have been married before.

“These men really remind me of my dad and my uncles, the way they’re accessing their softer sides around each other. It’s very beautiful.”

For Ky Dates, who’s “somewhat obsessed with reality dating shows,” this aspect of The Golden Bachelor made them nervous. Dates’ mother passed away two years ago, shortly after Dates graduated from college, and they worried the show would bring up too many painful feelings, but the 24-year-old was “pleasantly surprised” at the show’s treatment of grief. Watching contestants talk openly about their experiences turned out to be “helpful and beneficial.”

“It normalizes what it means to lose someone before it’s their actual time,” says Dates, who works in theater in Brooklyn. “It’s a room full of 20 people who aren’t afraid to talk about death.”

Watching people acclimate to life without their partners echoed Dates’ grief process. “I had thought my life was going to look so much different than it did,” says Dates. “You still deserve love and happiness and a new idea of what your life will be, rather than trying to live in the old life fully.”

For almost 10 years, Claire Fallon and Emma Gray have hosted the podcast Love to See It, in which they unpack portrayals of love onscreen, from rom-coms to dating shows like The Bachelor. “We started recapping this show in our 20s, and now we’ve fully aged out of the age range that’s cast on the main show,” says Gray, who’s 37.

They say one aspect of The Golden Bachelor and Bachelorette that feels unique in the franchise is the friendships among contestants — on the latter in particular, men have shed tears saying goodbye to each other as they leave Joan Vassos’ season.

“These men really remind me of my dad and my uncles, the way they’re accessing their softer sides around each other,” says Fallon, 36. “It’s very beautiful.”

It’s also aspirational for a new reason. Unlike The Bachelor, these spinoffs suggest there’s not just one perfect partner for us out there. “Shows like these give us hope,” adds Jennifer Hurvitz, a relationship expert who coaches singles on dating in midlife and after divorce.

Wandy Felicita Ortiz agrees. The 29-year-old grew up watching early seasons of The Bachelor and Bachelorette with her parents as a way to spend time together, and found her way back to the franchise five or six years ago.

“This show is showing me that as I age, I can expect what love means to me [will] be different, the same way I should be becoming a different person as I get older,” says Ortiz, a journalist in Brooklyn. “Love is something you will never stop wanting.”