Love is Blind Season 5 had quite a few twists just in the first four episodes. One of the bombshells was dropped at the end of episode three, and it shed a whole new light on everything that happened before: Uche and Lydia had recently dated each other.
In a flashback after the reveal, the audience learns that when Uche and Lydia got in the pods together, Lydia immediately recognized Uche from his voice, but Uche didn’t recognize her. After a little prompting, he realized that he was speaking to his ex-girlfriend Lydia.
Lydia floated the idea that they could start over again getting to know each other, calling it a “blessing in disguise,” but Uche quickly shot this down because he said it could ruin the experiment of the show. “I don’t think it’s a genuine experience,” he said.
Lydia left and went on to form a doomed attachment to Izzy, who chose two other girls over her. Eventually, she settled with Milton, who was six years younger than her and very enthusiastic over her love of rocks.
Meanwhile, Uche formed a tight bond with Aaliyah that was tested when she opened up to him about cheating in the past. He was very direct and harsh with her, leading her to believe that it was over between them.
When she ran out of the pod sobbing, Lydia was there waiting for her to comfort her. She seemed fixated on Aaliyah and repeatedly told her that they were the “same person.” As a viewer, I personally got weird vibes from Lydia at this time. When we learned about Lydia and Uche’s connection, it validated my strange feelings towards Lydia’s behavior towards Aaliyah.
Lydia and Aaliyah continued to bond, and watching back over the episodes, she was often supportive of Aaliyah’s growing relationship with Uche but would sometimes make strange faces that Aaliyah couldn’t see.
When Uche revealed the truth about Lydia to Aaliyah, she felt so close to Lydia that she was extremely torn.
Eventually, she decided to leave the experiment without telling Uche first.
Aaliyah spoke with Decider about her abrupt decision to leave. “There was just something in my gut, my intuition, telling me, ‘Okay, Aaliyah, I think this is the right thing for you and for everyone involved in this situation,” she said.
Who broke up with whom?
Uche claims he broke it off with Lydia and didn’t love her romantically, although he felt love for her. Lydia claims that she was the one who broke things off.
They had only broken up three months prior to going on the show, so it seems pretty odd that they wouldn’t be aware of the other’s plans. There’s a lot of online speculation that there was prior knowledge from one of them about the other’s intentions to go on the show.
What did the producers know?
Producers spoke to People about the situation and said that they do everything they can to prevent this situation by thoroughly vetting the participants. This time, though, their process didn’t work.
Of course, since they have people monitoring all the dates, they found out right away that Uche and Lydia knew each other.
“We had absolutely no idea. The intention is that we have a pool of people that don’t know each other,” Love is Blind creator Chris Coelen told the publication.
Uche and Lydia were then pulled aside and were asked to leave at first. They both told producers that they really wanted to be there, and that they had no intention of dating each other.
They were allowed to stay under one condition: they weren’t allowed to tell the others that they knew each other.
In the past producers have had instances where the two people of the same gender knew each other, but never romantically.
