Blake Anderson exited season 9 of Love Is Blind early but didn’t expand on his reason for leaving until now.
Warning: Spoilers below from the first six episodes of Love Is Blind season 9.
During the first two episodes of the new season, which premiered on Wednesday, October 1, Anna Yuan left the experiment without telling her connections, one of which was Blake. Shortly after her departure, Blake walked away from the pods, telling the cameras, “Last night was a little bit of a wake-up call. I love this experiment, it’s been incredible, but, like, I don’t know if it makes sense to continue.”
Now that his exit has aired on the Netflix series, Blake is opening up more about his real reason for leaving before giving love a real chance.
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“I think everyone in the cast, and certainly, I’m part of that crew, you go into this experiment and know the odds are probably not in your favor,” Blake told Swoon on Wednesday, noting, “We’ve seen the experiment work in the past, and that’s why we’ve all signed up, but you know the odds are low.”
While thinking about the chances of finding love, Blake had a revelation. “You start dating, you start having fun, you get optimistic, you’re like ‘OK, maybe this will work for me,’” he recalled. “But I think that condensed timeline was always in the back of my mind.”
The reality star confessed, “I think sometimes, to a fault, I’m a bit of a practical thinker, and I think as the experiment went on day-by-day, I started doing the math in my head, and I thought a proposal [was] probably not in the cards for me, for any of my connections.”
That realization led him to walk away. “The best thing for me at the time was to remove myself from the experiment,” he said.
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Blake told Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday, “It was communicated, and it should be, that if we’re not working towards a proposal, you shouldn’t be there. And I really took that to heart.”
He mused, “In hindsight, would I go back and maybe see things out a little differently, kind of think through how it might unfold? Yes. But I think ultimately I made the decision that was best for me.”
Since Blake and Anna left the show almost in tandem, some fans were left wondering if they pursued a connection outside of the series. Blake, however, told Swoon that his relationship with Anna is platonic.
“I’ve connected with both [Anna and Megan Walerius]. They’re both great,” he told the outlets of his pod connections. “I think the cast as a whole, I think folks have kept in touch with one another. Especially as we draw near to the premiere, I think folks are kind of reconnecting, and I think that’s really fun.”
While Blake is confident in his choice to leave the pods, he told EW that he doesn’t like that he just left Megan hanging on their final date. (He didn’t show up for the date as he had already left the show.)
“Just hearing how Megan was left hanging in the pods, it was not intentional at all to leave someone hanging,” Blake told the outlet. “I honestly didn’t play that out in my head, and so when I heard about that, I felt horrible, and I’m sure it was far, far worse to go through.”
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He added, “I feel badly about that part, but ultimately I think things unfolded and my story ended the way it needed to.”
Megan turned her attention to her connection with Jordan Keltner in Blake’s absence and the pair got engaged within the first six episodes.
The first six episodes of Love Is Blind season 9 are now streaming on Netflix. Episodes 7 through 9 drop on Wednesday, October 8, with episodes 10 and 11 being released on Wednesday, October 15. The finale streams on Wednesday, October 22.
