Love Is Blind creator explains why they included TikTok accusations about Ben mistreating women on season 8 liennhi

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the first nine episodes of Love Is Blind season 8.

First, Taylor Haag thought her fiancé Daniel Hastings had followed her on Instagram before going on Love Is Blind season 8, thereby knowing what she looked like the entire time they were in the pods. And now, Sara Carton discovered a TikTok user's video accusing her fiancé Ben Mezzenga of mistreating women in the past. (What does it say about this season of Netflix's reality dating series that most of the drama involves social media?)

While Taylor's doubts about Daniel were resolved quickly in episode 7, the second batch of episodes ended in yet another social media cliffhanger as Sara confronted Ben about the TikTok video from a user named Andra Berghoff that never called out Ben by name but included enough information that clearly identified him as the subject. Ben confirmed that the woman was someone he had met on Tinder in the past, they dated but never "hooked up," and that he hadn't seen her in over four years. He claimed that she was "making up stuff" about how he "manipulated her," and that she's "overreacting"... but he also said he didn't remember exactly what happened with her, which set off alarm bells for Sara.

Love Is Blind creator Chris Coelen tells Entertainment Weekly that including that TikTok video in the episode was a no-brainer. "Well, the video was real. We saw it on TikTok," he says. "We saw it, and the cast, the participants, saw it, and it was something that they had to deal with. We had to think [about] how do we deal with that for our participants? I think our commitment to them is just, we're going to document whatever you're doing, whatever is going on in your life. If there's something going on in your life that's an issue for you, or it's affecting you in any way, our commitment is to just tell the story of what's happening, whatever that is."

Coelen is not surprised that social media is playing a big role this season, more than it ever has before on the show. "We live in a world that ever increasingly is that this social media stuff creeps into people's lives," he says. "And people are out there. They seek attention. Not everybody, but a lot of people seek attention, and if they think that they have an opportunity to latch onto something to get attention, some people are going to try to hitch themselves to that."

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The executive producer isn't passing any judgement on the TikTok user who posted the video, but the fact that Ben confirmed it was about him and it caused issues for his relationship with Sara meant that it needed to be included in this season's story.

"I don't know anything about the person who posted the video and I don't know anything about it other than what we documented," Coelen says. "All I know is what we documented, so we see her discover it, and then we see Sara and Ben talk about it, and we see them deal with it and decide what they're going to do about it, if anything. I love that about making the show — that something happens, we're just going to follow it, and try to lean into the authenticity of it."

The first nine episodes of Love Is Blind season 8 are streaming now on Netflix. Episodes 10-12 come out Friday, Feb. 28 and the finale hits on Friday, March 7.