For months, viewers have been waiting to find out what happened behind the scenes of Taylor Frankie Paul’s unaired season of “The Bachelorette” and what led “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” to abruptly halt production midway through Season 5.
Now, with the new season streaming on Hulu, they finally have some answers.
The show reveals what was happening between Paul and her ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen in the months before their tumultuous relationship erupted into a public scandal that halted production and derailed her season of “The Bachelorette.”
Over the course of the season, Paul admits she began sleeping with Mortensen again after returning from “The Bachelorette” engaged to a contestant from the show, Doug Mason. She also compares their
relationship to an addiction, repeatedly telling her friends she wants to break their toxic cycle.
“It needs to be intervened with and we can’t just sit by,” Jessi Draper tells the group in the fifth and final episode of the season. “One of them is going to end up dead or in jail.”
Season 5 shows what happened before Taylor Frankie Paul's scandal
Before viewers get to the scandal itself, they watch the months leading up to it. Paul returns from filming “The Bachelorette” engaged to Mason, but in conversations with some of the other women, she reveals that she began sleeping with Mortensen again the night she returned home to Utah.
“When you have an addiction, there’s not a lot of things that are more powerful than that drug,” Paul says about their relationship. This metaphor comes up repeatedly throughout the season, including from Mortensen himself.
“I don’t want a complicated life but that’s all I know,” Paul says. “Chaos has been so heightened for the last few years that it’s all I know. It’s so normal to me.”
It doesn’t take long for Paul to break off her engagement to Doug, saying the two of them failed to communicate, but some of her friends point out that she’s minimizing the fact that she cheated on him with Mortensen. While all of this is happening, Paul also reconnects with Ben, a musician who viewers met during Season 4, and begins contemplating yet another relationship.
When MomTok travels to New York to see Whitney Leavitt perform in “Chicago,” Paul secretly brings Ben and hides him in her hotel room. Mayci Neeley and Mikayla Matthews eventually discover him there, with Neeley asking, “Does Doug know about Ben, or is he going to find out on TV?”
Just one episode later, Paul starts to question whether she is emotionally capable of starting another relationship, especially with someone as serious as Ben, who has expressed wanting a girlfriend and ultimately a wife. She describes herself as “not being completely healed” and worries she's sabotaging something potentially healthy with Ben.
Meanwhile, Mortensen films a scene back in Utah with Zac Affleck and says, “in a perfect world,” he wishes he and Paul could reconcile. “Am I a little addicted? Absolutely,” Mortensen says.
Paul also laments about her connection with Mortensen, emphasizing how she’s stuck in a toxic cycle.
“Dakota was the first time I truly was in love with someone, someone I wanted to marry and be with forever, and it literally has destroyed me,” she says of their years-long relationship. “I want to get out of this and never do it again and learn this lesson, there’s just something in my brain that will not click.”
MomTok's frustration with Taylor Frankie Paul turns into fear
At first, the women are frustrated with Paul’s behavior and actions. Neeley, Matthews, and Draper confront Paul about constantly prioritizing the men in her life while expecting her friends to be there whenever something goes wrong. Paul, in turn, feels judged by women who don't understand how difficult it is to leave an unhealthy relationship.
The tension follows the women to Draper’s housewarming party, where another explosive fight erupts. Paul clashes with Neeley, Matthews, and Draper before storming out of the party, only to return and continue arguing with the group.
“MomTok is in shambles right now,” Neeley says afterward. “It’s really sad to see because MomTok started with the purpose of empowering women but I fear MomTok lost the plot a long time ago.”
The arguments become increasingly vicious with Neeley crying because she feels like she repeatedly sacrifices her own well-being to support Paul, and Draper draws from her own relationship history with her then-husband Jordan Ngatikaura, saying she understands how the trauma of an unhealthy relationship can influence someone’s behavior, and how difficult it can be to leave.
“The trauma of a relationship like that can make you do and say crazy things and it’s hard to get out of that,” she says.
Paul tells the rest of MomTok she's finished with Mortensen and is walking away from him for good. But then, in the season’s final scene, the women gather at Jen Affleck's house and Paul calls to say she won't be filming because she's dealing with another situation with Mortensen. According to Paul, one of Mortensen’s friends called Child Protective Services after she and Mortensen got into a fight. When Paul mentions how she’s being accused of abuse, the mood in the room shifts.
“I think Taylor thought that we didn’t support her, but I don’t think any of us knew how to navigate it. I don’t think any of us know how to navigate it even still,” Miranda McWhorter says in an interview filmed after production resumed.
Immediately after Paul's phone call, a title card says that production was paused. The show then cuts to the media firestorm that followed, including news of the leaked video involving Paul and Mortensen obtained by TMZ and the cancellation of Paul's “Bachelorette” season.
“This whole thing has spiraled. It’s tearing friends apart,” Neeley says through tears in her interviews.
When the cast finally returns months later for interviews, the women seem unsure how to talk about what happened at all.
“It’s hard to see the public paint us to be these bad friends and these villains in Taylor’s story,” Layla Taylor says. “If anything I would argue we’ve been by Taylor's side through all of this.”
When it comes to the cast's loyalties, Matthews says, “Really at the end of the day, the only side anyone should be on is her kids’ side.”
When does the new season of 'Secret Life of Mormon Wives' come out?
"The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" Season 5 is now streaming all five episodes on Hulu and Disney+. Previous seasons can also be viewed on the streamers.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Mormon Wives' reveals truth of Taylor Frankie Paul's scandal, broken engagement
