Last night, ABC aired the 3-hour Bachelorette finale to see who Charity Lawson would choose as her fiancé. Today, fans who were not able to see it last night — including those in the Washington DC area where the finale was bumped to show an NFL pre-season game instead — flocked to Hulu where the show is always available the following morning, usually around 9am EST, only to realize it was not on the streaming service at all.
Social media became a hotspot of “Where’s the Bachelorette finale” posts, especially considering that many viewers of the show are now being bombarded with social media spoilers of what went down last night. Trying to avoid such spoilers is not exactly easy for such a major hit franchise.
Hulu has not released any information whatsoever on why the finale has not yet been uploaded to their service, though it’s widely assumed that this will happen at some point today. It’s worth noting that, in some previous seasons, the finale would be a two-night finale that concluded on Tuesday night. Though this was never a part of the schedule for this season, it makes one wonder if it had any effect on Hulu’s plans.
Ironically, the episode not being available on Hulu during its regular time — it still has not been uploaded as of 1pm EST — comes on the heels of Hulu announcing a price increase for their service. Though the platform will not increase the version of their service with ads, they will be increasing their version with no ads.
Of course, ads or not, Hulu’s great Bachelorette debacle of 2023 will be remembered for a long time, and by long time I mean like maybe two weeks.