The Golden portion of ABC’s reality dating programming has wrapped for the year, as Bachelor Nation now looks forward to Grant Ellis’ journey as The Bachelor on the 2025 TV schedule. It hasn’t been announced who will lead The Golden Bachelor Season 2, and as we wait for that, many are wondering if there will be yet another spinoff akin to Bachelor in Paradise for the older contestants. Many fans have been asking about this — even Jesse Palmer is in favor — but Joan Vassos just spoke out about why she’s not sure it would work.
Following the first-ever season of The Golden Bachelorette, in which Joan Vassos fell in love and got engaged to Chock Chapple, she talked about the chances of combining her suitors with Gerry Turner’s women from The Golden Bachelor for a new spinoff. The thing is, she smartly pointed out, that she and Chock weren’t the only ones to find love. The 61-year-old educator explained to Decider:
I think like at least five of them have girlfriends and are matched up, so I think the pool of people ready to go on a Golden Bachelor in Paradise season may be smaller than what we were thinking. I don’t know if all these relationships will work out, if these are just new romances and may fizzle out. But right now, if you were going to have a Paradise soon, I think we might have a hard time finding enough participants.
Joan Vassos makes a lot of sense here. For one thing, many of her men and Gerry Turner’s women are already dating again — some are even dating each other! Secondly, we have no idea when this theoretical Golden Paradise spinoff would take place, so who’s to say how many of them would even be available?
Either way, she’s not waiting for ABC’s cameras to roll, as Joan Vassos has already been playing cupid for the two casts. She also said she’s not surprised that the seniors are ready to move on so quickly after being on The Golden Bachelorette:
But I’ll tell you — what hasn’t really surprised me, but has happened very quickly, was a lot of the men from the show have entered into relationships really quickly, which shows you the power of the show. They hadn’t been in relationships up until this point. Some of them have been single for a really long time. And after being on the show and having these interactions with other men in what they called their ‘free therapy sessions’ every day, they came out ready for love.
We loved watching the Golden men and women bond and heal together, which is exactly why Bachelor Nation wants to watch their continued journeys! To Joan’s point, though, we know of at least a few who appear to be off the market. Mark Anderson appeared to hard-launch a relationship with One Tree Hill actress Barbara Alyn Woods when they attended a Halloween party as Cinderella and Prince Charming, respectively.
Gerry Turner’s runner-up Leslie Fhima posted pics with Joan Vassos’ fourth-place finisher Jordan Heller at a soccer game, and Jack Lencioni was sitting next to Susan Noles at The Golden Bachelorette’s “After the Final Rose,” after saying on a podcast that they were planning a date. Many are also wondering about Sandra Mason and Gary Levingston after the two seemed to hit it off at Joan and Chock’s engagement party, and Jonathan Rone has also confirmed that he’s dating someone.
I guess these guys don’t need ABC’s help after all! There may not be any plans for Golden Bachelor in Paradise anytime soon, but tune in to see Grant Ellis attempt to find his person when The Bachelor Season 29 premieres at 8 p.m. ET Monday, January 27, on ABC and streaming the next day with a Hulu subscription.
