Wait, Is a 'Bachelor' Spin-Off for Seniors Really Happening?

I'm not joking!

ABC's "The Bachelor - Winter Games"
(Image credit: Paul Hebert)

For better or for worse, this year was already going to be a big one in the Bachelor universe. Coming up, we have: The Bachelorette, The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart, Bachelor In Paradise, and Bachelor Summer Games—and if you hadn't already canceled all your 2020 plans to watch hours upon hours of morally questionable reality television, wait 'til you hear this. A Bachelor promo that aired during this week's Fantasy Suite episode called out across the land for "seniors looking for love," and an ABC casting page confirmed that a "golden years" version of The Bachelor is in the works.

What We Know About The "Golden Years" Show

Please allow me to quote:

Now casting Seniors Looking for Love! Are you entering your golden years and looking for romance? The Producers of The Bachelor are looking for active and outgoing single men and women IN THEIR GOLDEN YEARS for a new exciting dating show!

Here's the promo in question:

If Nick Viall has proven anything, it's that the passing of time nor multiple rejections of marriage proposals need not stop anyone from trying to find love in The Bachelor universe over and over again. I'm picturing some fan favorites—Viall! Ben Higgins! Andi Dorfman!—returning in 30 years, complete with some more wrinkles and many more intros about how their Heart is Still Open to Love.

But in the meantime, I guess we'll have...this show, tentatively titled Golden Years (oh God), per The Hollywood Reporter.

Golden Years has been in the works for a while.

Bachelor producer also posted this last month:

People have...a lot of feelings about it.

They say that change is the only constant, but year after year, the relentlessly cheesy The Bachelor universe proves to be, in fact, the only constant. Amen.

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Jenny is the Digital Director at Marie Claire. Originally from London, she moved to New York in 2012 to attend the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She spent five years at Bustle building out its news and politics coverage before joining Marie Claire in 2018. She loves, in order: her dog, goldfish crackers, and arguing about why umbrellas are fundamentally useless. Her first novel, EVERYONE WHO CAN FORGIVE ME IS DEAD, was published with Minotaur Books (UK) and Little, Brown (US) in February 2024.