‘Bachelor’ finale recap: Find out who Matt James picks and if they are still together
There’s a lot going on here tonight, but we’ll do our best to sort it out for you.
First, we’re going to have our homegrown “Bachelor” star Matt James going on final dates with the two remaining women: Rachael Kirkconnell, a graphic designer from Georgia, and Michelle Young, a school teacher from Minnesota. Rachael and Michelle will each meet Matt’s mother, Patty, and his older brother, John.
Then Matt has to make a tough decision about who to send home. Will he propose?
But wait, there’s more!
At 10 p.m. we’ll switch over to the “After the Final Rose” special, in which Rachael and Michelle — and of course, Matt — will return to talk things out and fill us in on what’s going on. That is going to be a doozy. It’s hosted by Emmanuel Acho instead of longtime “Bachelor” host Chris Harrison. Chris is part of the finale episode, though, running from 8 to 10 p.m.
And we’ll learn the identity of the new “Bachelorette.”
[Brief recap of this season’s “Bachelor” controversy for those who haven’t been paying attention — feel free to skip this paragraph if you’re up to speed: Several weeks ago, a TikTokker brought attention to Rachael’s racially problematic social media posts, including a photo of Rachael attending an antebellum-themed plantation party. Chris defended Rachael’s behavior in an “Extra” interview, saying her behavior was not wrong by 2018 standards and criticizing the “woke police” for coming after her. Chris soon apologized for his take, and said he would “step away” from “The Bachelor” for awhile. Rachael has also apologized and has promised to do better. Matt released a statement calling all of this “devastating and heartbreaking.”]
You might also want to take a look at our Guide to Matt James and “The Bachelor,” which will give you more info on his background, some of the North Carolina “shoutouts” from this season and more detail on the controversy.
And here we go.
Mom loves Michelle, and so do we
The episode starts with Matt seeing his mom and brother and giving them a little basic info on Rachael and Michelle. Matt’s mom tells him that she’s happy to see him so “animated” and happy. She tells us that she thinks it’s a “long shot” that he’ll be engaged at the end of this, but she’s keeping an open mind.
They meet Michelle first, and Michelle shows up with flowers for Matt’s mom. Her aim, she tells us, is to let Matt’s mom know that she loves her son.
Brother John is the first to talk to Michelle, and he tells us he’s going to “keep it real” with her. And he does. He asks Michelle some tough questions, but also reveals to Michelle that he has never seen Matt in a serious relationship before.
But John thinks — observing Matt’s body language with Michelle — that he seems to really care about her. But, John wisely observes, it’ll depend on how things go with mom.
Matt’s mom asks Michelle what her family thinks of her situation with Matt. Then Matt’s mom gets very emotional talking about how Matt always gravitated toward friends with families, saying it meant a lot to her because it was something she could not give him.
Matt’s mom cries again and calls it an “honor” to hear the nice things Michelle says about him. She says she can see Michelle’s “sweet heart,” and honestly, this could not have gone better for Michelle.
Sigh. (And we all know why I’m sighing.)
Matt’s mom tells Matt that Michelle “couldn’t be sweeter,” and Matt talks about how he’s “falling for” Michelle, but never ever says anything about “love.”
Later, Matt says that Michelle continues to “set the bar high” and he can’t believe she hasn’t been “swooped up.”
Before he says goodbye to her — with a romantic kiss in a light snowfall, a scene right out of a Hallmark Christmas movie — Michelle picks up a handful of snow and throws it at him.
And this is why we love Michelle.
Rachael meets Matt’s mom and brother
Rachael meets the family next, also bringing flowers for mom. She says she’s there to let them know she loves Matt and wants to spend her life with him.
Matt warned Rachael that his brother was probably going to grill her, and John is the first to chat with her. He asks her about previous serious relationships and about being in love. She says she has loved people in the past, but hasn’t been in love until Matt. Matt makes her feel safe and comfortable, she says, and he’s funny and goofy.
“Every time I see him I can’t breathe,” she says. John smiles. He’s seeing a new side of his brother, he tells us.
Matt’s mom tells Matt that she thinks Rachael is cute, and that he seems relaxed with her.
Rachael talks to Matt’s mom about Matt’s faith and how important that is to her. Rachael gets emotional, and so does mom. Mom tells Rachael that she can relate to those feelings, and it means a lot to her that she sees that in her son.
So it’s safe to say that Rachael scored big points with the family, too. No clear winner here!
Matt and Rachael kiss outside (no snowfall, no snowball fight) and she leaves.
‘Love is not the end-all, be-all’
After the family meets Rachael, Matt goes back in to talk things over with his mom and brother.
Mom said she thought they were both amazing. “I have nothing but warmth in my heart for those two girls,” she says.
He has one more date with each woman and mom wants to know if he can see himself proposing. Matt says yes, that’s why he came here. But he’s torn, he says.
“I know they both love you, but feelings come and go. And to tell somebody you love them is big because that opens their heart up. Speaking from experience, there’s nothing like being in love, it makes life wonderful, but people fall in and out of love and love is not the end-all be-all.”
John tells him that he supports him with whatever he decides to do, but not to feel like he has to jump in and make a decision if he’s not ready.
Mom nods.
Matt says his mom’s words take him back to a dark place and he’s thinking about his childhood and his mom and dad breaking up, and he’s wondering if he’s ready to make that commitment.
Matt tells his mom and brother that he loves them, but he tells the camera that the assurances he was looking for have been replaced with doubt.
“I don’t what I’m gonna do,” Matt says. “I don’t know.”
A man-to-man chat with Chris
Matt is still haunted by his mom’s words about how love can fade, and he needs to talk it out.
Host Chris Harrison comes over for a man-to-man, and Matt tells him that his mom’s past experiences make him worry that he’s going to make the wrong decision.
Chris says mom’s message of “love ends” isn’t a great greeting card, and well, life isn’t a greeting card, Chris.
He asks Matt what he’s scared of. Matt just wants to make the right decision, he says, and that means not rushing through this. He has to take his time.
You don’t want to get engaged, Chris asks? The show loves a good engagement.
Matt thinks about it and says that the easy thing would be to tell Michelle or Rachael what they want to hear, but he’s just not sure he’s ready.
Matt says he’s going to continue with the dates and see how it goes, but it’s clear he’s not on Automatic Proposal mode.
‘I don’t know where I’m at’: A date with Michelle
For Matt’s last date with Michelle, he takes her to the top of the massive hotel and they must rappel down to get to their snuggle spot.
They’re both nervous, but ready to take a leap of faith together. That first step (or lean) off the building is the hardest, but once they’re moving down the building, it gets easier. They even stop for a kiss now and then.
When they get to the ground, Matt says he’s still “evaluating” everything, but it was a great way to spend the day. They snuggle on a sofa by a fire pit and Matt asks Michelle how she thinks things went with his mom and brother. It was great for Michelle, and Matt assures her that they liked her, too.
Michelle tells Matt that she feels like they’re at “the right place” right now and Matt looks concerned.
“Today was great, but everything is sinking in,” Matt says to the camera later. “It hurts my chest to even talk about it because Michelle is pouring her heart out and telling me how assured she is and I don’t know where I’m at.”
‘I can’t get there with you’
Matt heads to the last part of his date with Michelle, and he tells us right away that he doesn’t know how this is going to go, but he’s going to lay it all out for her.
Matt greets her with a big hug, but it’s clear he’s nervous.
She calls Matt her “teammate” and says “it’s you that I want” and she can’t imagine leaving there without him. Then she gives him World Changing Warriors jerseys that say Mr. James and Mrs. James on the back, and Matt looks like he wants to crawl under a rock.
“I feel terrible,” Matt tells the camera. “I don’t want to tell her something that’s going to break her heart.”
But then he tells her something that’s going to break her heart.
Matt tells Michelle that over the past two days, things have been getting real, and he’s having doubts. He tells her the easy thing would be to tell her what she wants to hear.
“That’s not what I’m here for,” she says.
“Am I supposed to fight for you, am I not supposed to fight for you? Tell me where you’re at,” Michelle pleads.
“I don’t think I can get there with you,” Matt whispers.
And with that, hearts break across America. We see Matt get into an elevator and Michelle is sitting on the floor crying.
Matt leaves and he’s also crying. He tells us that “it’s not a good feeling” to put someone through that, especially when he really cares about someone, as he does with Michelle.
‘I don’t know how to go on’
Chris shows up for moral support and they sit on the curb outside to chat. Chris makes that “old person oooooof” noise when he sits down. We feel you, Chris.
Matt tells Chris that it’s hard to walk away from someone like Michelle. He loves Michelle, he says, but he isn’t in love with her. Matt still can’t get his mom’s words out of his head it — words that “shook him to the core,” Chris points out.
Matt talks more about his mom and dad, and said he doesn’t want to put Rachael through what his mom went through, and doesn’t want to “burden someone into a relationship they’re not ready for.”
He doesn’t have the clarity that he needs to make a decision about Rachael, Matt says.
“At this point, I don’t know how to go on. How do you go on from there?” Matt asks.
He tells Chris he needs some time, and he gets up and walks away. Chris is still on the curb, presumably waiting for someone in the crew to come give him a hand to stand up.
Matt’s just gonna hold onto this ring
We pop back in with Rachael and she’s gushing about her upcoming date with Matt.
But there’s a knock at the door, and it’s Chris to tell her that Matt is feeling “emotional” and “lost,” and that there’s not going to be a date today. Chris tells her they’ll let her know as soon as possible what’s next, and he’s outta there.
Rachael is blindsided, since Matt hasn’t expressed any confusion to her.
When we see Matt, he tells us: “I’m thinking about what it means to be a man, and what marriage means and what it means to be a husband and take accountability for things, and now I’m questioning if I’m there,” Matt says.
“My head’s still jacked-up,” he says.
So naturally, it’s time to shop for an engagement ring, and here is Neil Lane.
But Matt is honest with Neil that he’s not sure where he’s at, and Neil asks if Rachael is expecting a ring, and they talk it through.
“I’m not here to make you get a ring,” Neil tells Matt. “But we can look at rings and you can take it from there.”
Neil shows him the rings and talks about what the diamonds represent. Matt picks one he likes and says “I’m gonna hold on to this,” and that’s as far as his commitment goes right now.
So what does an engagement ring represent to Matt?
“It means what my father couldn’t give to my mother. It represents a lot of broken promises,” Matt says. “If I put this ring on Rachael’s finger, I don’t ever want it to come off. Am I ready? I don’t know.”
It’s proposal time. Or not.
We’re getting down to the wire. Rachael wakes up “feeling scared and confused and upset,” but with a full face of makeup.
She’s gets a note under her door, and it’s from Matt. He’s sorry for making her wait and he asks her to meet him at the lake, for “answers.”
Matt is down at the lake in his “proposing suit,” and he tells Chris that he loves Rachael and he’s sure of that, but he still isn’t sure what he’s going to do about proposing — but he’ll know when he sees her.
Matt heads to a Hallmark movie-esque outdoor fireplace setup and takes one last look at the ring, snapping it back into his pocket as Rachael arrives. She tells Chris she’s still in love with Matt, but she isn’t sure where his head is at. Neither is he, Rachael!
When Rachael sees Matt she tells him she was hurt that he didn’t want to see her the day before, but she also hated to think of him hurting. She tells him she’s not going to run when it gets tough.
“I don’t know if you still want this, but regardless, I feel so unbelievably lucky to feel what I have felt for you. I’ve never felt a love like this in my entire life. At the end of the day, I just want you to be happy,” she tells him.
Matt tells her that everything he came to the show looking for, he found with her. He wants to be everything for her that his dad wasn’t for his mom. But he’s “wrestling” with what he’s going to do, and knows that proposing would be the easiest thing to do, because it would make her happy. But he doesn’t want to rush into a proposal and have things go badly.
“I can’t propose to you today,” Matt says. “But that doesn’t mean I want to lose you. When I think about the life I want to live I think about living that life with you. And I want to leave here with you, and I want to commit to you and to every day, building on to what we started here.”
“I see you as my wife, I see you as the mother of my kids — and I see those kids being crazy,” Matt says.
They laugh. They kiss.
You might think this is a happy ending. It is not.
Stay tuned for “After the Final Rose.”
ATFR: Michelle confronts Matt
“After the Final Rose” starts with Emmanuel Acho, and he warns us that we’re going to discuss all the controversies and that some of the conversations might make us uncomfortable, but he hopes we can move toward “mutual understanding and healing.”
But before all that, we get some time with Michelle.
Michelle is still hurt, and says the breakup caught her off-guard, and watching it on television was “a lot.” She doesn’t feel like she got the closure she wanted.
She said she asked Matt for “two minutes” to get some closure before leaving Pennsylvania, and “he refused to have that conversation with me.”
Emmanuel asks Michelle about the controversy with Rachael and she said she thinks Rachael has a good heart but “there’s a lot of learning” needed. She also found Chris’ defense of Rachael to be “another weight.”
“There’s a point when you’re just so exhausted,” she said.
But before anything else, Matt comes out — still with the giant, bushy beard — to talk to Michelle.
Matt tells her he’s still processing everything, and asks her how she’s feeling. She lays it all out.
“I wasn’t OK, I wasn’t OK at all,” she said. She asks why he wouldn’t talk to her after the breakup and he says he didn’t realize how badly she was hurting, and if he could do it over, he would talk to her. He tries to make her feel better about how much she meant to him during the show.
“My respect and admiration for you is through the roof,” he tells her. And he apologizes.
She’s a forgiving person and says that in talking to him now, she has “already put it down.”
In her final words, Michelle tells Matt she hopes he moves on from kissing with his eyes open and that he finds some new lines besides “thanks for sharing.” Big laughs from Matt.
ATFR: Matt talks about Rachael and Chris
Emmanuel asks Matt how much pressure he felt being the first black “Bachelor,” and Matt tells him it was a lot of pressure because he knew there would be extra scrutiny on him. So he knew he’d have to watch the way he spoke and acted with the women, and he was concerned all the time about how he would be perceived.
Regarding Rachael, Matt says that right after they left Pennsylvania, it felt like a honeymoon period. But when the controversy broke, Matt said he first dismissed it as rumors and prayed it wasn’t true. But when he found out that it was true, he questioned everything.
“As someone who grew up in the South, it takes me to a place that I often try not to think about,” Matt said. “Events, people, places that I’m not welcome.”
Matt said when Rachael spoke out and publicly acknowledged everything, that’s when he had to assess where he was at — and he wasn’t OK, he said.
Where are they now? They are no longer together, Matt confirms.
Matt says Rachael has a lot of work that needs to be done, and he’s taking a step back and letting her put in that work. But he says the breakup was difficult.
And to people who are upset with him for breaking up with Rachael, he asks them to “bring that same energy to supporting folks of color who are asking for change.”
Emmanuel pushes Matt on why he can’t “grow with” Rachael now. Matt says feelings don’t go away overnight and there’s a lot of processing that needs to be done.
Next up, Rachael.
ATFR: Rachael’s first interview, talk with Matt
Emmanuel gets right to it, asking Rachael about the photos of her at an antebellum-themed plantation party. He shows the photo and asks her what she sees.
She sees someone living in ignorance without thinking about who it would hurt. She never thought about what it represented, but she never took the time to make those connections.
Emmanuel asks her who she blames for her ignorance, and Rachael doesn’t blame anyone or any place. But she says just saying “this is normal where I came from” doesn’t make it OK.
Emmanuel also asks Rachael why it took her so long to apologize. Rachael seems to say she wanted to take her time to make sure she said the right things. He also asks her if she ever laid awake at night worrying about the photos coming out, and she said she never thought about it, because she didn’t think of the trauma it would cause.
Remarkably, Rachael says she was blindsided by the breakup. She says that for him to end things, he must have been very hurt. She regrets that she lost the love of her life and also that she hurt him. She says she still loves him.
Then Matt comes out and he gives her a hug. She tells him again that she’s sorry, and she believes their love was strong so for him to end things, he must have been hurting very badly.
Matt doesn’t say anything.
When prompted by Emmanuel, Matt says it’s “heartbreaking and devastating and disappointing,” and that’s all he can say. He looks at Rachael for a long time, but neither of them speak.
It’s clear he’s having a hard time. Rachael rubs his shoulder, and he still doesn’t speak. He sighs, and looks down at his lap. Rachael reaches for his hand and he lets her take it for a moment.
Matt finally tells Rachael that the worst part of everything was having to explain to Rachael why it was problematic. He says it showed him that she didn’t understand what it meant to be Black, and he knows she has work to do, and she needs to do it on her own.
“That’s why we can’t be in a relationship,” he tells her.
Rachael tells him that she still loves him and doesn’t see anyone else out there for her.
Is the door for reconciliation even slightly open, Emmanuel asks?
Matt tells Rachael that feelings don’t go away overnight, and he hates to see her hurting, and he doesn’t want to be responsible for her tears. He doesn’t want people canceling her or calling her out, but she needs to work this out on her own.
In her parting words, Rachael tells Matt she just wants him to be happy and that she’s sorry. She said she thanks God for putting Matt in her life, and she’ll always be thankful for the time they had together.
Emmanuel asks if they want to share “one final embrace” and Matt simply says “I don’t know if it will ever not hurt hearing those things.”
So, OK, no embrace.
Who is the new ‘Bachelorette’?
Emmanuel promised us a “curve ball” in the “Bachelorette” news, and he delivered.
The internet has been telling us that the new “Bachelorette” was going to be Katie Thurston, from earlier this season.
Well, that’s true.
But we’re also getting Michelle Young — that’s right, Matt’s heartbroken Michelle — as Bachelorettes. Not in the same season, but in two separate seasons.
Katie’s season will come first.
So that’s it. Thank you for joining us on our “Bachelor” journey, and best of luck to Matt James!
More about ‘Bachelor’ Matt James
James, who made news this past summer when he was named ABC’s first Black “Bachelor,” is 28 years old and works with a real estate investment firm in New York City. He is also involved in a program in New York that helps children affected by homelessness.
He is a graduate of Sanderson High School in Raleigh and played football at Wake Forest University.
We will recap the show each week.
Catch up on our previous Matt James coverage:
▪ Raleigh’s Matt James named ABC’s first Black “Bachelor”
▪ Durham woman is a contestant on “The Bachelor”
▪ See Matt James in middle school yearbook photos
▪ Episode 1 recap: Meet, pray, love with Matt James
▪ Episode 2 recap: Matt James is a prince, but there’s an evil queen, too
▪ Episode 3 recap: The Sarah Show finale
▪ Episode 4 recap: A (literal) battle for Matt James
▪ Episode 5 recap: Matt James ousts bullies Victoria and Anna
▪ Episode 6 recap: Matt James loves the State Fair
▪ Episode 7: Matt James picks the four women whose families he’ll meet
▪ ‘Bachelor’ Matt James and his ‘dates’ attend Wake Forest basketball game. Sort of.
▪ Episode 8: Matt meets the families, Serena breaks his heart
▪ Episode 9: Matt James - The Women Tell All
▪ Episode 10: Overnight dates + Matt’s conversation with his dad
How to watch ‘The Bachelor’
New episodes of “The Bachelor” air at 8 p.m. Mondays on ABC.
You can also stream “The Bachelor” the next day at abc.com/shows/the-bachelor or on Hulu.
This story was originally published March 15, 2021 at 8:54 PM.
