‘Love Is Blind’ Creator Has Something to Say About Those Season 8 Complaints

Season 8 of Love Is Blind premiered on Netflix on Feb. 14. This season is set in Minneapolis and has 32 singles looking for love, the most singles ever to enter the pods in the show’s history. Unfortunately, fans haven’t been receptive to this season, calling it boring and lacking any real substance. Many also complain about the lack of diversity, as the focus is on primarily its white cast members. After so much chatter on social media, the show’s creator, Chris Coelen, is speaking out.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Coelen defends the casting decisions for this season, and says not everyone’s love story is shared. “Well, the show casts itself,” he said. “We put people in the pods, and you try to have a very diverse group of people in lots of different ways [at the start]. And then the people who get engaged are the people who get engaged. The people who fall in love are the people who fall in love. If you’re sort of trying to tick a box, there were lots of people who were in the group coming into the pods who ultimately just didn’t find their person and who we didn’t choose to [follow].”

Coelen says that their goal is always to start the season with a diverse cast. Connections will hopefully form naturally and they make decisions to follow whichever stories they feel would make sense.

“We always, always, always strive to seed the pods for the greatest possible success, and within that, diversity of not only ethnicity or race, but backgrounds, and financial status, and body types and looks and all that stuff,” Coelen said. “You’re less concerned about that, to be honest, than just trying to have a group of people that you hope are somewhat compatible and then seeing what happens. And like I said, then they cast the show for us. We don’t decide, ‘Oh, this is a good couple. That’s a good couple.’ We don’t steer it in any way. They figure it out on their own.”