‘The Ultimatum’ Creator on the “Shocking” Final Twist and How Season 2 Will Be Different

[This story contains spoilers for the first season of Netflix’s The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On.]

The team behind Netflix’s Love Is Blind has another success on their hands for the streamer with The Ultimatum, even if the producers themselves were stunned by the first season’s twists.

Kinetic Content founder Chris Coelen, whose company is also responsible for such unscripted projects as Married at First Sight and the Little Women franchise, is the creator of The Ultimatum, which premiered on Netflix earlier this month. The first season centers on six longtime couples who are at a breaking point and have agreed to spend three weeks in a “trial marriage” with someone from another couple before then reuniting with their original partners to decide the future of the relationship.

“I love the show because it’s very relatable,” Coelen tells The Hollywood Reporter. “People who participated in the show and in the experience gave it their all — they gave it everything that they had, and I admire them for that.”

There were plenty of jaw-dropping moments for viewers along the way, including Rae Williams and Jake Cunningham leaving their original partners to explore things before announcing at the reunion that they’re no longer together. Plus, two couples — Hunter Parr and Alexis Maloney, and Nate Ruggles and Lauren Pounds — got engaged right before the trial marriages began, throwing a definite wrench into the process. But there was no bigger shocker than Madlyn Ballatori revealing during the reunion that she and now-husband Colby Kissinger are expecting their first child, which follows Ballatori having appeared very much done with the relationship in the show’s early going.

During his chat with THR, Coelen weighs in on the “huge surprise” of her pregnancy, the couples who opted to leave the show early, the debate over the contestants’ ages and why the show’s upcoming second season, featuring an all-LGTBQ cast, will be “very different” from the first round.

What was the biggest surprise for you from season one?

First of all, in production, there were so many things that were surprising in terms of people’s relationship status and how they approached The Ultimatum coming in, and who people gravitated toward to have a trial experience with. The choice, which is in episodes two and three, was really surprising in terms of not only Hunter and Alexis, but Nate and Lauren, and the ensuing fallout from that. That was an incredibly insane night to be a part of. Things go in unpredictable ways, and you follow that, and that’s exciting. We certainly didn’t know who was going to end up with whom. We had feelings, and our feelings were constantly subverted.

The fact that Madlyn and Colby ended up the way that they did was a huge surprise. There were moments throughout that I was like, “Oh, my God, there’s no way these two are going to end up together,” and then to see them not only end up together, but see her pregnant at the reunion, was an incredible surprise. For me, it’s about their real lives. To watch the journey of Shanique [Imari] and Randall [Griffen], and the fact that both of them kind of held themselves back, and then toward the end of the trial marriages, let themselves indulge more; and then to see them come back together — which wasn’t something that I was sure of. And then to see what happened with them subsequently, the fact that they split up, and then they’re trying to make it work. All of that is really, really interesting.

For April and Jake, Jake felt to me, going in, like he was really in, and in the last dinner that he has with April, he’s like, “Look, at the end of this, I want to get down on a knee and propose to you. It’s a lot for me, but I’m hoping at the end of it, that’s what’s going to happen.” And that felt like a very sincere desire on his part. And obviously, he came to discover that maybe he was saying that for reasons that weren’t true to how he really felt. So much was ultimately surprising.

So Madlyn and Colby weren’t expecting during the show? 

To my knowledge, they were not pregnant on the show. There was some misunderstanding — Jake made some comments and got his time-frame wrong. My understanding is they got married, and they went off and got pregnant.

What was your initial reaction to Madlyn’s pregnancy? 

Like everyone, I was surprised. It’s pretty shocking to see Madlyn, not having seen Madlyn in a while, and then she’s real pregnant. That was a big surprise. But, good for them. I’m super happy for them. They’re thrilled. They’re in love. They are happy to have made the choices that they’ve made, and that makes me happy for them.

As a producer, when you see Alexis and Lauren receive marriage proposals before the experiment even starts, is that a bummer?

It’s funny because I was there, and on the one hand, I’m like, “Oh, God, what’s happening to our show? They’re supposed to stay here!” You have a moment of, “Oh, my God, this can’t happen because this wasn’t what was in the plan.” But the plan really just exists in terms of, “What is the experience for them?” And so, as a producer, you step back, and you let happen what happens, and if it’s something that’s contrary to your hopes or expectations, it always does end up being more interesting than what you originally anticipated. And I think it was fascinating. It was incredibly emotional for lots of different reasons for them, and for the other participants. But it was a great story.

By the time we got to the reunion, it appeared that the show’s premise skews toward the original couples being the strongest, between Madlyn having apparently gotten past her major concerns about Colby, and even Rae and Zay having hooked up after the show. Does this process make people more inclined to favor what’s familiar? 

They all come in genuinely loving one another. People talk about commitment-phobia for a reason, but ultimately, the reason that anyone doesn’t choose to make a commitment is that they just are not sure the person they’re with is the one forever for them. And so I think when you come into that, and you’ve got all that history, and you’ve got all that love, and you’ve got all that foundation, the new relationship just doesn’t have the same history.

Given that, say, April was 23, it might be tough to know if everyone on the show was indeed ready for marriage. What went into deciding the age range of the participants?

Different people are ready to get married at different times in their lives. I didn’t get married till I was in my late 30s. When I was the age of this particular group of participants, I wouldn’t have been part of the experience because I wasn’t legitimately ready or talking about getting married. But different people are different, and different parts of the country are different, and different cultures are different. Age is just a number, right? It’s really about — mentally and emotionally — is getting married something that you are talking about in your relationship for real, something that you desire for real? That was the most important qualifier — less about how old are they and more about what is their genuine intention as a couple.

Is it safe to assume that a lot of what we saw in season one will kind of carry over for season two, in terms of ages and the general situations?

No, not at all. You want to put groups of people together who have something in common and who would have a genuine interest in one another. This was a particular group of people who were all interested in the topic; there’s not a single person there who said, “I’m not interested in getting married.” And then you have to think about, as a group of people, you want them to be able to support one another and to explore the idea of potentially being with one another. If we took two 50-year-old people, and you threw them in there, all of a sudden you’re introducing a different dynamic, which is, are the two 50-year-old people going to be interested in the 25-year-old people? So if we had a group of cast members who were more mid-30s, which is a really interesting, viable cast, to me it’s less about the ages than the fact that they’re participating in something where there’s going to be some mutual interest.

I can’t wait for the new season, which exclusively features LGBTQ couples. Now that the first one is behind you, is there anything you wish you could have tweaked prior to season two?

I honestly don’t think so. We’re already well into season two, and it’s amazing. Honestly, it’s so good — stories are so interesting. The cast of participants in season two is a very different set of participants than we saw on season one. This is a very big, common question, and a huge milestone for people who are interested in getting married. Just setting up the experience and the stakes of that, and then just allowing them to really go through this in the way that makes sense for them. It turned out to be very different, but equally as great, as season one.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

The Ultimatum is now streaming on Netflix.