‘The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On’ Reunion: Shocking Reveals & Baby News (RECAP)

[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On Season 1 Episodes 1-10.]

The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On Episodes 9 and 10 debuted April 13 on Netflix. And the Season 1 finale and reunion special are just as intense as the rest of the season.

The reunion is led by hosts by Nick Lachey and Vanessa Lachey and takes place about six months after The Ultimatum wrapped filming. Here, we break down the special and all of the revealing exchanges between the original couples and trial couples.

Gettin’ Married and Makin’ Babies

Well, for starters, Madlyn’s pregnant. Madlyn and Colby couple got married immediately after Colby proposed on Ultimatum Day in Episode 9. And honestly, my jaw was on the floor.

After Madlyn and Colby revealed their baby news, Nick turns to Nate and asks if he’s jealous. The shade! Viewers will recall that Nate issued the ultimatum to Lauren because they were at an impasse about having kids. But he proposed to her anyway in Episode 3, seemingly chucking his concerns about kids out the window.

Nate explains his proposal, saying he realized life with Lauren and no kids was better than life without her. Lauren stays silent for most of his explanation, but eventually shares, “We sought out expert advice. We did a little bit of outside work with going to therapy.”

“Are they having kids or not?” Alexis presses, to which Nate replies, “Not yet.”

“We have agreed to have one for now,” Lauren says. And then, they move on.

the silver chalices are taking a new form 🍼 Who do you think this belongs to? #TheUltimatum finale and reunion drops TOMORROW! pic.twitter.com/vm7B5QLjzm

— The Ultimatum (@TheUltimatum) April 12, 2022

Alexis and Hunter are still engaged and are planning their wedding, taking place this June. Hunter’s mom is a wedding planner, and she’s been helping out. Vanessa then asks Alexis if she had a feeling Hunter was going to propose, and Alexis explains all that went down that day.

“I’m crying, I’m emotional because everyone has paired up, and I’m like, ‘Well, crap. It’s Colby and Nate who I can pick.’ And no offense, Colby, but that would’ve been a disaster, so I’m like, OK, what am I supposed to do here? I’m freaking out because I don’t want Hunter living with anyone else. I had no idea. It was the happiest moment of my life.”

After leaving the show early, Alexis and Hunter moved in together and it’s been going great. Her feelings about finances aren’t as important anymore for her anymore. She says they both contribute to living expenses and the unexpected joys of living together eliminated her concerns about money.

The Truth Will Out

The middle section of the reunion featured long, emotionally charged exchanges between former couples April and Jake and Rae and Zay. April starts off by explaining her possible pregnancy earlier in the season. She thought she was pregnant, but later figured out it was the stress of the show plus a preexisting hormone imbalance that messed with her cycle during both of the trial marriages. If she had been pregnant, Jake says he would have taken on the dad role and help take care of the baby and April, saying he would’ve been “all in.”

Vanessa then talks to April about going through Jake’s phone, saying she and Nick did that to each other before a therapist told them it wasn’t healthy. In a hilarious moment, they played a side-by-side comparison of April mimicking Rae’s twerking next to the actual video from Jake’s phone that prompted her to accuse him of cheating. It’s… not as bad as April made it seem.

Despite sitting next to each other during the reunion, Jake and Rae are not together. Jake says he shut everybody out and tried to figure out what makes him happy after the show, because that was, as he said, “disregarded the last two years.” April giggles in response, and Vanessa and Nick ask if that’s her saying she doesn’t buy his answer. She says yes.

If my man told me this, my chest would CAVE IN.#theultimatumnetflix #TheUltimatium pic.twitter.com/Yz9I9wONN9

— ♛ ✨Confujan🥴🇻🇨Apr 23rd🎂 (@AquanxD) April 9, 2022

“Watching it unfold, I could tell immediately when Jake and I moved in that he wanted to be back with Rae,” April says. “I was very distraught. I was at my lowest point, probably, realizing this has already been checked out. And being at my lowest, instead of my person I walked on with checking in with me, seeing him check in with Rae, I know that they had a connection, but watching that, it felt disrespectful. It felt like my three weeks was taken when I was with Jake. Jake was out checking on Rae and her mental wellbeing and how things were going on with Zay, and I didn’t get those three weeks with Jake.”

“Why did you bring me on the show?” Jake presses, to which April quickly replies, “I brought you on the show because I wanted to marry you. I’m glad you didn’t propose, because I don’t want to be, five years later, divorced to you and I’m unhappy and I’m forcing you to do stuff that you don’t want to do.”

“But I was already trying to do those things,” he adds. And April shares her take of the whole experience.

“The whole purpose of this is we weren’t compatible. There were things that you wanted that I wasn’t taking into consideration. So, I do apologize,” she says. “I’m glad we went on the experience. I want to marry the right person. Looking at it at the end of the day, I feel like the experience did what it was supposed to do. And as heartbreaking as it was to realize you weren’t the person for me, things unfolded, sh*t happened, sh*t hit the fan.”

Jake challenges his ex’s perspective, saying, “I was already trying to do everything in my power — kids, house, car, marriage — previously.” He says April “totally disregarded” his vehement desire not to go on the show, but made him do it anyway.

“And I apologize, but I put my foot down. If you were buying Rae a car or a house, why was it so f***ing hard to marry me?” she replies.

Despite breaking up in The Ultimatum Season 1 Episode 9 finale, Jake and April continued living together for four months after the show ended out of routine. She eventually moved out and is now in a serious relationship with a partner she lives with. They want to get married and talk about it frequently, and she says she’s at peace in a healthy relationship where they don’t argue and agree about wanting children. Overall, April’s grateful the show led her to this.

Y’all, meet Rae! As far as she’s concerned she’s the total package and her bf Zay is taking too long to propose. She said what she said 😂

📺: @TheUltimatum: Marry or Move On: Season 1 pic.twitter.com/M3IvoerhjO

— Strong Black Lead (@strongblacklead) April 6, 2022

Over on the other couch, Jake and Rae revealed they never ended up not going on that trip.

“We came to a consensus that everybody needed time to heal. And I felt like it was really insensitive to be like, ‘OK, bye. F**k y’all. We’ll get on a plane and go somewhere.’ So, we decided not to go on the trip,” Rae says.

Rae says she and Zay tried to fix things after the show ended, saying, “We gave it a shot, but ultimately, it didn’t work.” She tried to express herself more to him, and she thinks he became a better communicator after the show. Zay didn’t seem to buy any of Rae’s words. He then revealed they continued to hook up after the show ended, saying they had fully gotten back together.

“You didn’t go on the trip because you was with me the whole damn time,” he declares, and Rae doesn’t really fight him on it. When Nick asks Zay about his confusion over Rae’s ultimatum, Zay summed it up as, “You’re not trying to work with me, you still don’t know what you want. Why the f**k are we here?”

Vanessa then brings up the all-nighter that ended with Rae hitting Zay. Zay explains he was heartbroken when Rae said she didn’t want to leave the experiment with him and “wanted some answers.”

“I asked her all these things, like, ‘If you feel this way, let me know why.’ Because you see me trying to make this work, trying to change any and everything to make you happy,” he says. Her refusal to participate and explain her feelings was a non-starter for him, saying, “I didn’t get any answers, and I wanted to escape. And I left. I didn’t turn my phone off — my phone died. I was with one of my friends and one of her friends, and I end up getting drunk and passing out at his house.”

All Rae says is that he should have come home earlier. Girl, is that really the problem?

“I’m communicating to you the way that you told me to communicate to you. I’m in this experience crying my freaking eyes out,” Zay says, defending himself.

“And we’re different people. I have a hard time expressing myself,” Rae chimes in.

“When you love somebody, that’s no question. It doesn’t matter. I won’t shrink up because there’s people in the room. You’re right, we’re different people. But at the end of the day, if you love somebody and really care about somebody, you’ll say it in front of anybody,” Zay declares. “It’s about reassuring the person that you’re supposed to be in love with that you care about them and that you wanna be with that person. But I just needed to hear from your mouth what you wanted and how you felt.”

In a surprising moment of self-expression, Rae takes responsibility for her cold shoulder.

“I’m sorry for that. I wanted to be able to express myself because you deserved that. You deserved for me to be open with you, but I just couldn’t do it,” she says. As Rae explained, she thought she was expressive enough in the beginning of the show, and then watching it back realized how “cold and shut down” she was and apologized.

“Just like Jake and April,” Vanessa says, “I think that Rae and Zay, while you guys came in together and glued, you now know you’re not meant to be together. Before marriage, before a messy divorce, before kids are involved, before any of that.”

Zay isn’t dating anyone and hasn’t since the breakup. Rae reveals she connected with a woman after their breakup, and now she’s exploring her bisexuality more and says she’s very happy.

Different Versions of Trying

Now, it’s time for a Randall and Shanique checkin. Given time to reflect, Shanique realized she and Randall had different definitions of trying in the experiment. Where Randall was more willing to fully immerse himself in the experience, Shanique was more reserved. She admits she was jealous about Randall and Madlyn’s physical attraction (and everyone else’s), making her question why she was racking herself with guilt about her physical attraction to Zay.

She then addressed their hookup, and by extension all of the other trial couple steamy moments. (These people are not comfortable with non-monogamy, y’all. Poor things were not ready for these conversations about being naturally attracted to other people.)

“I will say, hindsight 20/20, that physical stuff between Zay and I definitely solidified that this wasn’t my person,” she says as Zay nods in understanding. “I feel like I needed to experience that to know that, ’cause there was that question in the back of your mind. I don’t feel embarrassed by it. I think it was a natural thing. I think everybody had some level of physical attraction to the person that they chose.”

Shanique says the first thing she told Randall after reuniting was that she hooked up with Zay. He says it sucked to see that play out on the show, but he wasn’t upset with Shanique. One person who didn’t know about that hookup? Rae. She calls Zay out for never telling her about that moment, revealing that not only did Zay not tell her, but he also accused her of hooking up with Jake and “freaked out” anytime she would hang out with Shanique after filming wrapped.

“I’m not mad at you because it was not your place to tell me. You told Randall, and Zay should’ve told me,” she tells Shanique before telling Zay she wants an apology, later adding, “You flipped out every time I spent time with her instead of telling me why. You let me have a friendship with her.”

Zay and Rae get into another screaming match. He admitted he was wrong not to tell her, but the fighting kept escalating, leading Zay to walk off set. As he returns, Vanessa and Rae are both in tears as the host addresses the group, saying they want them all to be happy and expressing her pride in Rae for finding herself. Zay ends the exchange by saying, “I’m sorry.”

Another shocking reveal came next: Shanique and Randall broke up for six months after “reality set in” after the show. As she explains, the cracks in their relationship’s foundation shown on the show “started presenting themselves in real ways” at home. Randall says they tried to make changes, but couldn’t get through their differences. They decided to take their own break outside of the show, admitting it was hard for them. Now, they’re back together, but not engaged. And they’re much happier now trying to figure things out.

They say they’re “mortified” by how they communicated on the show watching it back. After experiencing the loss of several loved ones during their breakup, Randall says he realized how much Shanique’s unwavering support meant to him. Their “relationship refresh” helped them more than anything.

First comes The Ultimatum, Then Comes Marriage

Madlyn and Colby share they had to refresh their trust after leaving the show as well. And the baby raised all the stakes. They say all the turmoil ended up being worth it, but that watching the show back was shocking.

“I was going through the experience with the thought that giving myself to Colby, I would be losing,” Madlyn says. “When I was finally on that edge, like, do I give him up or do I lose myself is kind of what I was thinking.”

Nick brings up the open relationship, asking, “Was there something we didn’t know about, or was that something you were not entirely honest about?”

“He felt like he wasn’t getting the same experience that I was. That was his way of doing it. It was the wrong way of doing it,” she says. “We don’t have an open relationship. But I think that his excuse was me having my relationship at the time with Randall, he could go find that elsewhere.” She adds she was never OK with it, but that it won’t happen again moving forward.

As for Colby, he says everyone had to open up their relationships on the show, but that he didn’t connect with any of the other available participants. “It didn’t happen like everybody else, so I was trying to find a way and that was the worst possible way to do it, obviously,” he says, actually taking responsibility for once.

Asking about Madlyn’s friends, who vehemently disapproved of Colby, she says her friends are “100 percent support Madlyn.”

After a long hour of emotional reveals, the couples, singles, and hosts played some drinking games and called it a night. And with that, we bid a tense farewell to The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On Season 1.

The Ultimatum, Season 1, Streaming Now, Netflix