Colton Underwood Just Made Bachelor History and It's Not Pretty

The Bachelor season 23 has almost come to a close, and the outcome is not at all what anyone could have expected when the season started in January. In what might be the most dramatic Bachelor finale ever, Colton ended the competition, did not give out a final rose, and sent his final two suitors home early. In the 17 years The Bachelor has on the air, it’s the first time this has ever happened.

Here’s what got us to this point.

Following last week’s fence jump, the first part of the finale began with the show’s producers and Chris Harrison searching the streets for Colton, who had wandered off in frustration after Cassie unexpectedly left the show. For those who missed that drama; Cassie told Colton that she was worried she wouldn’t be fully in love with him and ready for an engagement in the short amount of time that was left on the show. He confessed she was the only one he was in love with. She left anyway. Then Colton did the whole fence thing.

“I have my wallet and that’s about it,” Colton said on Monday night’s episode. “I’m fucking done.”

Once he gathered himself, he had to tell the two remaining women, Tayshia and Hannah, that he was calling it quits because he’d realized Cassie was the one he really wanted. As he told Chris during their conversation about this surprising turn of events, “I was falling in love with Tayshia and I was falling in love with Hannah, but I fell in love with Cassie.”

Obviously, the breakups came as a shock to both Tayshia and Hannah. But Colton was honest in each of their conversations and said straight up that he was in love with Cassie. He was also a little too honest with Hannah when he told her, “I thought it was going to be you.” Yikes.

During the live portions of the episode, Colton got to speak to Tayshia and Hannah, who both clearly had a hard time reliving everything that happened a couple of months ago. Hannah seemed to take things especially hard.

“People come up and say, ‘hey, let me see your engagement ring,” she told Chris during her live interview. Honestly — everyone thought Hannah was going to win.

Colton’s dismissal of Tayshia and Hannah, along with Cassie’s unexpected exit, means that for the first time ever, there are no remaining contestants on The Bachelor. There’s not going to be a proposal or a rejection in front of a stunning vista. There’s not going to be a conversation with Neil Lane. The most closely related situation to this one was when Brad Womack rejected his two final suitors, Jenni Croft and DeAnna Pappas, at the end of season 11. Still, he had two final suitors.

Colton has no one.

And yet, somehow, two more hours of the season are being aired Tuesday night. Obviously, something has to happen. At the very end of Monday’s episode, Colton said to the camera, “I’m willing to do anything and everything, because that’s how much I love Cassie.” And with that, we get a clip of Colton walking up to what appears to be Cassie’s hotel room door, giving a knock, and saying a quiet, but loaded "hey."

It’s unclear what will happen from this point — especially because in the clip of Cassie packing up to leave she sounded pretty stoked to get out of there and back to her friends and family — but we shall find out soon. The only things that are certain for tomorrow? The reveal of the new Bachelorette and 40 minutes of footage being stretched into two hours once again.