'Bachelor in Paradise' Ends with Its First Same-Sex Proposal

While it’s standard for shows in the long-running Bachelor franchise to end with a proposal, last night brought a new spin to the familiar format as two women got engaged on Bachelor in Paradise.

Contestant Demi Burnett already made waves once this season when she revealed she’s queer.

Over the course of the season, fans saw her starting to fall for fellow contestant Derek Peth before revealing that she had just met another woman before she left for Paradise and was realizing she had serious feelings for her.

“I didn’t take any time to think about what I was going to be leaving behind,” Burnett admitted. “I was focused on Paradise and what I was going to explore there.”

Fortunately, the producers realized what an opportunity they had, and brought Demi’s paramour, Kristian Haggerty, out to join the show.

The two had the opportunity to explore their relationship further, and when the show drew to a close, they became one of three couples to end their stay in Paradise with an engagement.

“There was a lot of things that came between us, mostly myself and my own struggled,” Burnett told Haggerty before popping the question. “I came here to find myself, but I found myself in you.”

Though the Bachelor franchise has pushed an overwhelmingly heteronormative (and largely toxic) agenda over the years, this season has been applauded by how smoothly it integrated a same-sex couple into the bunch when the time came. 

As the New York Times pointed out, the show didn’t utilize the same-sex relationship for the male gaze, and left in scenes where Burnett expressed concern about how society was perceive her differently in a relationship with a woman as opposed to with a man.

Whether or not this will lead to more queer-inclusion in the most popular reality dating franchise in the country is yet to be seen. But it was nice to see a happy same-sex ending on such a mainstream show at least once. And if that’s as far as it goes, at least we still have Are You the One?