The Big Picture

Couples on The Ultimatum signed up for the show despite its controversial premise, hoping to find clarity or test their relationship. Antonio Mattei and Roxanne Kaiser joined the show out of love for each other, while Brian Okoyein introduced it to Lisa Horne to address commitment issues. Despite the challenges, all the couples expressed gratitude for the show, highlighting personal growth and self-discovery as the ultimate reward.

Many reality TV fans wonder why anyone would ever do a show like The Ultimatum. Two of this season’s new couples, Antonio Mattei & Roxanne Kaiser and Lisa Horne & Brian Okoyein shared the reasons why they gave it a shot in a recent interview with Collider. The Netflix relationship reality series puts couples to the test in an attempt for one of them to decide to commit or quit. With such an ultimatum, viewers believe couples are doomed to fail.

‘The Ultimatum’ Is a Terrible Idea…But Perhaps Not As Bad As Many Think
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Why would any couple in their right mind sign up to do this series? The Ultimatum, which is now in Season 2, features couples who are in crisis: one person wants to get married and the other does not. The series, which was born from Nick and Vanessa Lachey’s personal experience, gives couples the opportunity to break up, have a trial marriage with new people, and then have a trial marriage with their original partner. After these trials, the couples must make a choice: do they get engaged to their current partner, get with their newly found partner, or leave the experiment single? What adds to the conflict of the series is that the couples form these new relationships within the unit, and the couples have to watch their real partners as they flirt with other people. For a person in a committed adult relationship, this sounds like a nightmare. But upon chatting with both couples, they all agree on one thing: regardless of the outcome, they are grateful for the show.

Antonio, who came into the experiment with his partner, Roxanne, shared his reasons for wanting to do the show, stating:

I personally, Roxanne doesn’t feel the same way, probably, but I knew from the moment that I met her that she was a person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. So, that was always in the back of my mind. And then, honestly, it was after watching the first season of The Ultimatum, I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m gonna get her in a position where she has to figure this out, if I don’t do something like this.’

Roxanne echoed his statement, sharing that she only did the show out of love for Antonio, saying:

I’ve been very opposed to marriage, never felt like I needed to get married to have a fulfilled life or, you know, whatnot. I think Antonio thought this was the extreme measure to see if it was me or nobody else. That’s how I said yes [to doing the show], I guess. I love the dude, because I said yes and I did the [show] thing.

Unlike Antonio, who wanted to get married, Brian introduced the show to Lisa for entirely different reasons. Lisa shared with Collider:

Brian watched the show, and then he had me watch the show. He was talking about, ‘Those people are crazy! you don’t make someone [get married].’ And I was just like… really? And so I was like, ‘You know what? It worked for them. Let’s see if it works for us.

Brian agreed to do the show despite his own trepidations for Lisa’s sake. In the interview he told us:

I was actually like rolling the dice, you know what I’m saying? By deciding to come on the show, more and more it made her realize like, ‘Maybe this isn’t the person I should be with, because he’s not ready to marry me right now.’ I’m a person who takes risks, and I think it was definitely a risk worth taking.

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‘The Ultimatum’ Was A Life-Changing Experience
Image via Netflix

It’s pretty surprising to hear that they are grateful for the experiment with all the good and bad that comes with it; perhaps this means the idea isn’t as crazy as we think it is? Will these couples get engaged or break apart? Time will tell, as the season will be uploaded in two parts to Netflix. One thing that is clear is that the gratitude so emphatically expressed by everyone for the show is less about their actual relationships and more about personal growth. Roxanne touched on this as she reflected on her experience:

For me, it was more than what I thought it would be. I thought I would go on, it’d be really stressful filming all the time, and not really gaining anything from it mentally, and it was way more than I thought. I actually grew a bunch personally.

Antonio shared similar feelings:

I wanted to make that distinction. I mean, it was like high stakes therapy, you know? I was forced to address all the ways that I fall short as a human being, [and] as a partner universally with anybody.I really got to work on those things, and I am so satisfied and proud of how I came out on the other end, as far as being able to work on the things that I’ve never really been good at. Then see[ing] real progress and a roadmap [on] to how to continue to be good at those things, and how to continue to improve. Really it was like therapy.

Lisa also felt that she had grown and warned the faint-hearted against doing the show themselves:

You had no other choice but to grow. Either you were gonna grow, or you were just gonna sink to this experiment. You didn’t have a choice because it’s like it’s hitting so close to home. It makes you face all of the things you usually are able to ignore, or put on the back burner. Going into this experiment is not for the weak. You had to have some real self-awareness in order to grow from it. But that’s the best part, that you did have to grow from it.

And while viewers will form their own opinions of these people, they are just happy that they’ve grown and learned more about themselves and their feelings about relationships.

Is ‘The Ultimatum’ Worth It?
Image via Netflix

As tiresome as Nick and Vanessa Lachey are, this series has done some particular good for the people on it. One major example is that of April Marie, who was on Season 1. Fans were heartbroken for her after her partner, Jake Cunningham, left her for the new connection he made during the experiment. Since then, she has found a new partner, and they’ve recently welcomed a new child together. The Ultimatum may have not given her what she wanted at the time, but it’s clear that her life has changed for the better.

We can’t make any guesses as to what will happen with these couples, but we do know that there are some surprises in store. Will there be another shocking pre-experiment proposal? Will any of these couples actually give in to the “all-tomato”, or will they fall apart? Fans will just have to wait and see.

To hear more about these couples’ experiences on the series, check out the rest of their interview with Collider above. Part one of the new season of The Ultimatum is currently streaming on Netflix. Part two will be available for streaming on August 30th.