After season 22 ends The Bachelor just days before the scheduled premiere date this spring, ABC is reportedly gearing up to air Taylor Frankie Paul’s season.
TMZ reports that production sources say there’s an “excellent chance” the show could air on ABC as soon as next month. The current discussion behind the scenes is that the season will premiere in mid-July, although it is not final.
Editors reportedly never stopped working on the series even when ABC pulled the show from its spring schedule, which could have been a sign that network left the door open for a future premiere.
In fact, network executives even seemed publicly open to the idea of the show returning at a later date in early May. Under Deadline’s Reality TV Summit on May 1, Disney reality TV chief Rob Mills said the network was taking the situation “day by day” and called it a “good question” whether the season will ever air.
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TMZ reports that the network has been conducting audience tests to see how they feel about Paul now, months removed from the controversy that derailed the original premiere date. Paul’s season was terminated earlier this spring after a video of a domestic violence incident in 2023 between The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star and her ex, Dakota Mortensen, were published by TMZ.
“In light of the newly released video that just surfaced today, we have made the decision not to move forward with the new season of The Bachelor at this time and our focus is on supporting the family,” a spokesperson for Disney Entertainment Television said in a statement at the time.
In the video, which showed the incident in 2023, Paul attacks Mortensen several times. The video also shows one of her children being hit during the fight. Paul pleaded guilty to aggravated assault as a result of the incident.
In April 2026, the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office announced that they declined to file charges against Paul for the 2023 incident that was caught on video.
Paul and Mortensen both have restraining orders against each other and have been ordered by a Utah judge to remove their custody.
The prediction market has apparently already responded TMZ‘s latest report. In one Polymarket scenario that predicts who will be the winner of season 22 of The Bachelorthe odds for contestant Doug Mason are already increasing, which means the odds of the season being canceled are decreasing.
Before Wednesday, the possibility of “cancelled season” sat with one 86% chance of happening. But after TMZ published its report that the show could air in less than a month’s time, that the potential result dropped to 31%, with Mason’s probability up to 63%.
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Other Bachelor suitors including Richard Van De Water, Kevin Montero, Johnnie LaRossa and Aaron Kahng have 1% Polymarket odds to win the season. Still others have less than 1%.
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