This post contains spoilers for The Bachelor Season 24 finale.
On Tuesday night’s finale of The Bachelor, Peter Weber proposed to Hannah Ann Sluss—but when the two reunited (on camera) one month after their engagement, things had clearly gone south. The ABC dating show’s 24th season has been a bit of a slog, and Tuesday’s finale certainly did not contain enough dramatic meat to make up for that. But it did contain one delightful twist: Peter Weber finally got roasted. Really roasted.
When Peter and Hannah Ann first sat down on his couch Tuesday night, newly reunited as an engaged couple, Peter eventually admitted that he still had feelings for Madison. He broke things off with Hannah Ann—and in a refreshing twist, the 23-year-old model ripped our infuriatingly incompetent Bachelor a new one. Peter eventually reconnected with Madison, and the two are now dating. (I think? More on that later.) But it’s Hannah Ann who played this disaster of a season just right—especially in its finale. She is this season’s only real winner.
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When Peter and Hannah Ann reunited at the Delta pilot’s home, Peter pulled his fiancée’s leg over his—and she shot him a look that said something like, “Ha, OK, is that how we’re going to play this?”
During the first portion of the finale—which aired Monday—Hannah Ann had already noticed Peter’s ambivalence toward her. During the two’s conversation on Peter’s couch, she made that clear once more. When she said “yes” to Peter’s proposal, she said, she’d expected a partnership—“but if you’re not willing to give me that love in return, then that’s not a relationship, you know? Like, I told you I would stay by your side, even if it killed me... [But] it has to be 50/50.”
Eventually, Peter admitted he couldn’t give Hannah Ann his “whole heart”—meaning, their relationship was kaput. That’s when Hannah Ann brought the sharp knives out.
“I mean, I don’t know what to say,” she said. “All I’ve ever asked for is for someone to give me their whole heart like I’m giving mine to them. And you took away from me my first engagement. You took that away from me. ’Cause I trusted you. And that is what you have continued to ask me to do—to ‘be patient with me, have faith in me, trust me.’”
Peter apologized for the entire situation. “This is never what I ever, ever envisioned,” he said. “Ever.”
“Imagine me!” Hannah Ann countered without missing a beat. “I said ‘yes’ and I get this?... Why didn’t you just let me go—instead of taking this away from me?” She told Peter he hadn’t been true to his words or sincere about his feelings. “You selfishly just didn’t want me to walk away or to send me home,” she said, eventually adding, “I can’t even look at you anymore.”
“I don’t need anything more from you,” Hannah Ann said before she got in the van to leave. She gave him back his ring, throwing in a “We’re done—I mean that” for good measure. And in a transcendent moment of reality television, when Chris Harrison aired that moment before the finale’s live studio audience, Peter’s own mother burst into applause as Hannah Ann excoriated her son.
Chris Harrison eventually brought Hannah Ann out before the finale’s live studio audience—and as she sat down with both Harrison and Peter, Hannah Ann brought even more fire, insisting that Peter had kept the depth of his feelings for Madison a secret from her and that at the same time, he’d told her things he knew would make her stay on the show.
“You knew how serious I was about an engagement,” Hannah Ann said. “You told me things that kept me with you.”
Peter, who spent the entire evening apologizing for his various failings, could only admit that Hannah Ann was right.
“When I told you I loved you, I did love you,” he said. “I swear to God, I wouldn’t have proposed to you if I didn’t feel that love in my heart.”
But Hannah Ann stayed focused, insisting that Peter’s failure to mention how strong his feelings were for Madison was unacceptable. “I had no idea what I was saying ‘yes’ to,” she said. “That’s called being blindsided, Peter.”
To close her immaculate roast, Hannah Ann offered Peter a word of advice: “If you want to be with a woman, you need to become a real man.”
For those wondering, The Bachelor did get Peter and Madison back in touch in pure “Bachelor” fashion—meaning, Chris Harrison personally flew out to make sure Madison found out about Peter’s broken engagement on camera. But as Peter and Madison sat down together before Peter’s parents and a skeptical studio audience, they were clearly not having a good time. At one point, Madison’s face toggled between piercing glares and terrifying, forced smiles as Peter’s mother explained all the reasons why she preferred Hannah Ann. Peter, meanwhile, stared ahead with dead eyes.
Perhaps the most telling moment of the finale, if not the entire season, came when Harrison asked Peter a very simple question: “How does this all end?”
As Peter sat next to Madison, he struggled to string together an answer. He noted that he and Madison have not seen each other since the show ended, but have been able to talk. “We’ve both been really hurt, extremely hurt, and been through the ringer with all this,” he said. “I know there’s a lot of healing that both of us have to do, but I know the love and respect that I have for you has never changed.”
“Like I’ve said—I’ve made more mistakes than you ever could make as the Bachelor, but I’m still sitting on the couch next to you right now,” Peter said to Madison. “And through everything, that makes me happy. So, you know, I don’t know what this actually means right now, but—”
“Do you want to give this relationship a real shot?” Chris Harrison asked helpfully. Rather than take the simple “yes” or “no” route, Peter gave us... this.
“I know how we both feel about each other,” Peter said. “And you know, I think, like, I’m thinking one step at a time—one day at a time—is, like, you know, possibly the smartest way to go with this. I know that I have, like I said, a lot of healing to do, and I know [Madison] does, too. But again, the way I feel for you?” he said, looking back at Madison. “That’s never changed, and I’ve never just lost that. And, you know, whatever that means, whatever this turns into, did we have a million and one obstacles? Yeah. Is it all uphill [from here]? Probably. But...”
Eventually, Peter gave up. He looked to Harrison to save him with another question—which the host dutifully did. From there, it was all predictable prattle and some seriously embarrassing drama involving Peter’s mercurial mother, Barbara, and her extreme distaste for Madison.
And so, once more I say with feeling: Congratulations, Hannah Ann.
