The Big Picture
Netflix’s
The Ultimatum: Queer Love
is a groundbreaking reality series featuring LGBTQ+ women and non-binary individuals.
The series goes beyond dramatic trappings to discuss real issues affecting queer couples today.
The Ultimatum: Queer Love
showcases important conversations about LGBTQ+ dating, offering both drama and valuable insights.
When it comes to cutthroat programs filled with pulse-pounding moments and nonstop chaos, nothing does better than a reality dating show. There are countless different series that offer unique ways for their contestants to find love, yet it’s unfortunate how many of these refuse to create a setting where LGBTQ+ individuals can fight for their chance at romance. That’s what makes Netflix’sThe Ultimatum: Queer Love, so refreshing; created by Chris Coelen, this spin-off of the infamous The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On kept the original’s niche approach of conditional romance but filled its cast with LGBTQ+ women and non-binary folks hoping to either get engaged to their current partner, leave their current relationship, or potentially begin a new one. It’s an explosive premise that is filled with drama whether its cast is queer or not, yet this series goes beyond the simple dramatic trappings of its predecessor. It still offers thoroughly enjoyable messiness — the most of almost any dating series out now — but it uses this chaos as a platform to discuss real issues affecting Queer couples today. It offers just as much important information as it does thrilling drama, and quickly became the most groundbreaking reality series this streaming service has ever produced.
The Ultimatum: Queer Love
Follow couples of women and non-binary people over eight weeks, as they find themselves at a critical point in their relationship, one, ready for marriage and the other one not.
Release Date May 24, 2023
Cast Vanessa Papa , Lexi Goldberg , Raelyn Cheung-Sutton , Mal Wright
Seasons 1
Netflix Is No Stranger to Messy Dating Shows
The Ultimatum: Queer Love joins a pantheon of Netflix reality shows that offer some truly unexpected premises. From Love is Blind to Dated and Related, the streaming service seems to delight in creating programs whose unique relationship hurdles truly test any potential romances their contestants hope to develop. These are all great, but few have a premise as intriguing as The Ultimatum. Couples come into the setting with one person making it clear: either they get engaged by the end of the experiment or they break up. The twist is that at the beginning of every season, the couples break apart, with each person having to find someone new to date in the group and live with them for a few weeks before returning to their original companion. In the end, they get to decide if they will leave the series single, get married to their first partner, or leave to pursue a romance with the person they’d temporarily dated — an expectedly messy process that leaves all of its central relationships deeply changed. Audiences loved the interesting results of this novel premise, with LGBTQ+ fans especially becoming thrilled when the show announced its next cast would be all women.
A concept as chaotic as The Ultimatum’s transcends identity, so viewers knew this spin-off would be messy no matter the gender or sexuality of the people involved. And they weren’t disappointed, as within the pilot’s first few minutes Vanessa Papa, flighty girlfriend of the grounded Xander Boger, is scoping out potential partners for their time apart and making it clear that her main reason for coming was to sleep with the other participants. This snowballed into Vanessa being verbally eviscerated by the youngest contestant, Lexi Goldberg, as she calls her out for disrespecting the process and not respecting the wants of everyone there by not taking this series seriously, a shockingly honest takedown unlike the petty confrontations of similar programs. Vanessa wasn’t the only source of drama, though, as Xander’s passionate affair with fellow ultimatum-giver Yoly Rojas creates one of the most jaw-dropping “relationships” this franchise has ever seen, and the extremely toxic behaviors of Mildred Bustillo and Tiff Der create cringe-inducing moments of toxic communication all season long. But it becomes clear quickly that this isn’t your usual reality series mess, because these women each make it very clear: they have fought through unimaginable hardships to get to where they are today, so when they cause drama, it means something much more than any reality fan could expect.
‘The Ultimatum: Queer Love’ Shows Modern Dating Today
Image via Netflix
Rarely is televised conflict as moving as it is on The Ultimatum: Queer Love.Whereas similar shows owe most of their drama to toxic masculinity or trivial squabbles, these participants emphasize how much the theatrics of this series impact them personally. And it’s extremely understandable; for many, to live as a proud LGBTQ+ person means facing discrimination on a personal and social level, the determination to live authentically taking an immense amount of courage — making it even more meaningful when a person believes they’ve found someone to share their life with. Any series that broadcasts a person’s path to romance gives an intimate view into their personality, but rarely does a show feature a cast who has fought so hard to be secure in a world that tells them their wrong. These women have experienced a myriad of struggles to be able to star in this series as their proudly queer selves, showing a commitment to their relationships and trying to be who their partner needs them to be — which makes it so, so much more shocking when chaos ensues.
From insurance companies refusing to pay for IVF to childhood trauma impacting a person’s ability to be vulnerable, as the women work to understand each other, the series becomes a platform for many extremely important topics. These conversations don’t occur at the expense of drama — in fact, the drama usually brings up these important talks. It’s Yoly’s blatant lying to Mal Wright about her feelings for Xander that leads the pair to discuss IVF (with Yoly throwing Mal’s lack of financial stability in her face), and it’s Sam Mark and Tiff’s explosive argument about letting a dog sleep in their bed that leads them both to understand how deeply unhealthy their original relationships were. Drama in an adult’s life can be life-changing, with most reality dating shows failing to stress how influential romantic struggles can be on a person’s mental health and life path. Because these women were forced to understand early on how hard it can be to live freely, though, it’s clear they understand how deeply this conflict will affect their daily lives. And it’s because of that understanding that the series not only creates some of the most compelling moments of drama the genre has ever seen but that it also becomes an important platform for what it means to live as a queer woman today.
Related ‘The Ultimatum: South Africa’ Is the Most Brutally Honest Dating Social Experiment Ever
The South African spin-off of the reality franchise has viewers on the edge of their seats.
‘The Ultimatum: Queer Love’ Is Messy and Miraculous
A person’s identity doesn’t immediately entail a harder experience, as there are many other reality series aside from The Ultimatum: Queer Love that feature important conversations about healthy romance and toxic behaviors. These are also extremely necessary and should not be discounted just because the people within them aren’t members of underserved populations. But while this is true, it’s undeniable that this series — and the few others willing to cast only Queer folks — immediately creates a space filled with pertinent information and people who understand the cost of love more than people from more privileged groups ever could. There are so many other moments that stress this, as well as innumerable more scenes of pure drama that will leave watchers shocked (the series’ final batch of episodes are some of the most jaw-dropping Netflix has ever seen). These participants understand what it means to fight to live genuinely in this world and, even more, what it means to find a partner you can love proudly, which means their relationship struggles often touch on real issues people watching can relate to and understand the severity of. It is an enlightening series filled with important information on living as LGBTQ+ that more people should know about — all while showcasing some of the most riveting, exhilarating moments of mess that reality television has ever seen.
The Ultimatum: Queer Love is Available to Stream on Netflix in the U.S.
WATCH ON NETFLIX