TLC has a HUGE hit with their international romance franchise 90 Day Fiance, and right after the successful run of the first season of the show’s Before the 90 Days spin-off, the original show will return for a fifth season featuring five four brand new couples!
TLC released the very first trailer for 90 Day Fiance Season 5 this weekend, as well as some background information on each of the couples to be featured this season. Viewers will get to meet four new couples, and they will also catch up on fan favorite lovebirds Nicole and Azan! Here is the trailer:
I swear, the Emmy committee needs to create a Best Reality Show Casting award because the folks at Sharp Entertainment would win EVERY year! Twice! All four of the new couples look soooooooo interesting — and completely unique! And, of course, Nicole and Azan (aka #Azole) are the same wonderfully dramatic mess, only with the added exponential drama of a young child in a foreign country. Just like Evelyn says in the preview trailer: “Bring on the 90 days! I’m ready!”
OK, here are all of your soon-to-be favorite reality stars — aka the cast of 90 Day Fiance Season 5 — along with my take on each, based on just the trailer and the bios from the press release. I’ve arranged them in the order that they appear in the preview clip:
Molly (From Woodstock, Georgia) and Luis (From Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)
Molly and Luis look to be a mix of Darcey and Jesse with Chantel and Pedro. (I’ll let you sort that personality gumbo out.) Molly is 41 years old and met 26-year-old Luis while on an all-girls trip to the Dominican Republic. Luis is a bartender at a local bar, and that’s how he met Molly. Thing escalated quickly, and Luis proposed less than two months later.
This relationship looks to have the most red flags of any of the ones featured on Season 5. First, there is the 15-year age gap. And, as viewers of the show know, age gaps generally become a bigger issue when there are children involved, which is the case with Molly. She has a 17-year-old daughter (who is closer in age to Luis than her mom) and another daughter who is six. In the preview trailer we see her older daughter (I assume) talking with Molly about her relationship with Luis as tensions rise. Her daughter seems exasperated as she tells the camera: “I just wish this wasn’t happening.”
In addition to her daughter, Molly will also reportedly have problems convincing her “stoic conservative” father that Luis is looking for more than just a green card. 90 Day Fiance fans — myself included — love an opportunity to shake their damn heads, and it look like Molly and Luis are the most likely *NEW headshake inducers this season.
UPDATE – If Molly looks familiar to you it may be because 90 Day Fiance isn’t her first reality show. Molly Hopkins was one of the two main stars on Lifetime’s Double Divas reality series! Click the link for more info.
Nicole (From Bradenton, Florida) and Azan (From Taroudant, Morocco)
While Molly and Luis look to garner the most headshakes of the new couples, I doubt very seriously they will be able to take the crown from Nicole and Azan! 23-year-old Nicole’s trip to Morocco on 90 Day Fiance Season 4 was nothing short of an epic cringefest, and this season she looks to recreate the trip WITH HER 2-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER MAY! What could go wrong, amirite?
From the trailer and information included in TLC’s press release, it looks like the focus of Nicole and Azan’s tension this season will be all about little May and whether or not Azan is ready to step up and be a father. Nicole looks to be the same emboldened emotional mess as before, and Azan looks like he is still a sympathetic mixture of innocence and dread. In other words, we know at least 20% of the new season will be guaranteed to be entertaining! I LOOOOVE me some #Azole!
Evelyn (From Claremont, New Hampshire), and David (From Granada, Spain)
Evelyn is an 18-year-old musician from New England who is hoping to marry her 27-year-old Spaniard beau David. David found her via social media, and after meeting in person, the two immediately connected — thanks in large part to them both being very devout Christians. In the trailer, Evelyn reveals the two are saving themselves for marriage.
Evelyn and David remind me of Amy and Danny Frishmuth from Season 2 — and I mean that in the best way possible! These two seem absolutely, genuinely smitten with each other in a wonderful way. I think they are going to be the couple everyone is pulling for this season. I know I already have a couple crush on them!
Ah, but Evelyn and David won’t be completely without the drama as they will apparently clash over whether or not to leave Evelyn’s hometown behind for life in a bigger city. Nah – that’s all made up for the cameras! Davelyn is TRUE LOVE! (Am I too invested already?)
Elizabeth (From Tampa, Florida) and Andrei (From Chisinau, Moldova)
Close behind Molly and Luis in the red flag department are 27-year-old Elizabeth and 31-year-old Andrei. “Where he’s from,” Elizabeth explains to her gal pals in the clip, they “expect a woman to be submissive.” She later says that Andrei is “very stubborn” and has “zero patience” as we watch a clip in which he angrily demands the cameras to stop rolling. We then see Elizabeth wiping tears from her eyes.
So essentially, it looks like we might be getting a watered down male Anfisa (Manfisa?) with Andrei, and Elizabeth will be playing the part of Jorge — as far as the relationship dynamic based on what I saw in the trailer. I’m not sure if money will be playing a major part as it did with Jorfisa — we will just have to wait and see.
Oh, and I should point out that Elizabeth and Andrei are the only ones that didn’t pose for an official portrait together. Is that a spoiler indication that maybe they didn’t work out? Or maybe Andrei is just “very stubborn” about having his photo taken and/or had “zero patience” with the photographer. đ
Josh (From Mesa, Arizona) and Aika (From Quezon City, Philippines)
43-year-old Josh looks to be something unusual for 90 Day Fiance — a rather tough guy from America. I was wondering what that kind of dude was doing looking for love outside the US, but the network’s press release explains that he was on a dating app and was “accidentally matched outside of his local search” with 36-year-old Aika from the Philippines. “Accidentally matched?” Hmmmm…
Anyways, in a story that seems to mirror that of Larry on the current season of Before the Days (with the addition of the afore-mentioned masculine toughness, and the possibility of an accidental match), Josh flew to the Philippines with an engagement ring and proposed to Aika just a few months after they first started communicating.
When Aika makes the trip to the US, she runs into the expected barrage of doubt from Josh’s pals — including one dude who looks to have stolen Russ Mayfield’s hair. I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that these two are not like Evelyn and Paul as far as the “saving themselves for marriage” thing goes. That’s 100% pure speculation though! (Is Aika’s side eye in that photo intimidating anyone else?)
90 Day Fiance Season 5 premieres Sunday, October 8 at 9/8c on TLC. Take it away Evelyn…
UPDATE – We have one more couple to introduce! Click here to meet 48-year-old David from Louisville, Kentucky and his 24-year-old fiancĂ©e Annie from Thailand!
