'The Bachelor': Alayah Is Back And Who The HELL Is Lying?

All’s fair in love and war — unless you’re on The Bachelor, apparently

At this point in Peter’s season of The Bachelor, Alayah, has been thrust into the center of some drama. For those who need a refresher, Alayah rubbed some of the women in the mansion the wrong way. Everyone ganged up on her at last week’s pre-rose ceremony pool party, telling Peter she was fake and she had to go. He ended up sending her home, but seemed really conflicted about it because of the connection he shared with her.

Fast forward to this week, at the after party following Peter’s group date in Cleveland. Much to the surprise of the 13 women on the group date, there was an extra guest who joined for the after party: Alayah, back from the dead after her rose ceremony elimination last week.

Suffice it to say, the women didn’t take kindly to Alayah showing her face on The Bachelor again. Especially considering how they all worked together to trash talk Alayah to Peter, which resulted in her elimination. There were a lot of “What the [bleep]s,” and then Mykenna’s predictable outburst: “Why is Alayah here? Like, honestly, why is she here?!”

Alayah was there to set the record straight about her past relationship with Victoria P., who led the charge to get Alayah eliminated during last week’s episode. But Peter caught Victoria in her lie, the same lie that largely influenced how hard the rest of the women in the house worked to get Alayah eliminated.

Things got even worse after Peter, who clearly still felt sparks flying between himself and Alayah, offered her the group date rose and a spot to come back into the Bachelor game. When the other women saw that Peter had given the group date rose to Alayah, giving her back her spot in the group and ensuring she’s safe through the next rose ceremony, they had a collective meltdown. As in, they all stormed out of the date while talking about Alayah’s supposed bad intentions and how Peter doesn’t know what he’s doing.

“I’m super frustrated because Alayah’s back, and I’m so freaking sick of my time getting interrupted by the drama,” Tammy said, adding that she was “disappointed” in Peter’s choice.

“A girl who got the rose wasn’t even on the date,” Hannah Ann added, while Victoria P., who should probably keep her mouth shut about this situation after getting caught lying to Peter’s face, chimed in, “Peter made a mistake giving Alayah the rose and this makes me question everything.”

The Bachelor isn’t a playground game where a referee makes sure everyone gets equal turns and equal time. There’s nothing fair about it, because the entire point is for Peter to find someone he can fall in love with. If that might be Alayah, who are all these women to say whether it’s “fair” for her to be there? Can they really say that Alayah is the one who isn’t there for the right reasons while they’re undermining the decisions Peter is making as he tries to find love?

Seeing the women gang up on both Alayah and Peter to drive the outcome of the show took all the fun out of watching The Bachelor this week. We’re here to see Peter (hopefully) fall in love. It’s miserable and boring to watch all these women act like they’re being victimized because Peter has feelings for Alayah.

This isn’t the first time this has happened on a Bachelor franchise show. Every season there are contestants who whine about how the process isn’t fair. And a notable event from recent season is when Kaitlyn Bristowe allowed Nick Viall to join her season several episodes in, after they had talked on social media before her season started. The contestants fighting for Kaitlyn thought that was pretty unfair, and several of them were really upset about it. But if Kaitlyn thought she might find love with Nick, shouldn’t that be all that matters? Shouldn’t all of these people want the best for the Bachelor or Bachelorette they’re competing for?

At the end of the day, every decision made on this show, including who goes on dates, who gets one-on-one time, who stays, and who goes, should be up to Peter. The contestants should have no say, unless they want to remove themselves from The Bachelor because they won’t accept Peter’s choices. We’ll see what happens next week, but from the looks of the preview, this mess is far from over.