(L to R) Brittany Dodson, Lauren O’Brien, Virginia Miller, Amanda Burke, Monica Danus, Molly Mulaney, Yemi Ajagbe, Kylie Schuelke, Vanessa Boreland, Casandra Barron, Meg Fink, Ashley Sutten, Sara Carton, Madison E, Taylor Haag, Tiera Wright Greg Gayne/Netflix
Love Is Blind went all-out for its eighth season, making sure episodes are longer with licensed music in the background.
“It’s our fifth anniversary, and music has always been such a big part of the show,” Chris Coelen told Variety in an interview published on Sunday, February 16. “We decided to creatively lean into celebrating the great love songs — not all of them, obviously, there’s no way to get every great love song in there, but we got a lot of terrific love songs.”
In past seasons, Love Is Blind used an array of non-licensed music. During season 8, which premiered on February 14, scenes were set to songs by Billie Eilish, Justin Bieber, REO Speedwagon and more popular artists.
“There are a lot of songs that we’ve talked about that we didn’t get a chance to use that I’m hoping in future seasons we will,” Coelen added to Variety. “So much of our experiences around love come from love songs and music. It is evocative of our feelings. Being able to incorporate some of these great songs and great artists into the show is really exciting, and hopefully an elevating, entertaining experience for the audience.”
Love Is Blind has been accused of having a diversity problem, which the creator is defending after season 8 backlash. Chris Coelen spoke to Entertainment Weekly on Tuesday, February 18, about how the newest installment of episodes has the largest cast but appears to be the least diverse, saying, “Well, the show casts itself.” Coelen, […]
Netflix brought the Love Is Blind pods to the Twin Cities for season 8, which was filmed in Minnesota during spring 2024. When the first batch of episodes dropped, there were six episodes purely devoted to the pod experiment rather than the usual three or four.
“It’s always how the edit works out. We film everything and then we go back and look at how we got there. We put the pieces together,” Coelen explained to the outlet. “As always, we’re trying to pick the stories that resonate and that we feel are worthy of telling because they lean into authenticity.”
Devin Buckley, Brittany Dodson Courtesy of Netflix
According to Coelen, the pod footage is a “really fascinating” way that love stories — like Lauren Speed-Hamilton and Cameron Hamilton from season 1, as well as Alexa and Brennon Lemieux from season 3 — have unfolded.
“There are unbelievable love triangles. When we first started making the show, we thought we didn’t have time to tell stories of love triangles,” Coelen said. “But we now embrace the fact that it’s incredibly emotional, dramatic, messy and aspirational.”
Season 8 features five pod engagements — plus an additional two that weren’t shown onscreen — as well as pod participant Madison Errichiello’s love triangle with Alex Brown and Mason Horachek. At the same time, Mason, 33, had also been getting to know Meg Fink. (All four contestants left the experiment single.)
“When you look at the story of Madison, Alex, Mason and Meg in the pods … we’ve never told a story that didn’t make it out of the pods before,” Coelen noted to Variety. “I think it’s really exciting to do that because people will always ask, ‘What else happened? Who else did the date?’ We can never make a show to show everything, but showing some of the other stuff that happens in the pods is just incredibly entertaining. I could probably make 30 episodes of pods and it would be fascinating.”
Season 8, in fact, featured way more leading players than ever before.
“We told more stories than we’ve ever told. We told the stories of 16 people this season, which is why we have more pod episodes,” Coelen stated.
Love Is Blind is currently streaming on Netflix. New episodes drop weekly.
Leave a Reply