Love is political? ‘Love is Blind’ Minneapolis season centers politics more than ever

After weeks of watching our state have a moment in the limelight, the season eight finale of “Love is Blind” debuted Friday on Netflix. From a breakup at Bryant Lake Bowl and drama at Buck Hill, the Minneapolis season of the reality TV show dared to ask — what if we talked about politics more?  

Spoilers ahead for those who have not tuned in yet. 

Loyal “Love is Blind” fans will remember season seven when Ramses Prashad and Marissa George’s difficult conversations about military service and birth control factored in their breakup. That same season, Monica Davis and Stephen Richardson broke up from cheating allegations but also discussed their political differences in the pods, taking a sharp turn from previous seasons.  

The first season of the reality TV show came out shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in February 2020. Now five years later, the show has had what could be its most political season yet. 

Production of season eight took place in early 2024 while primaries were still underway for the presidential election. During the pods, participants brought up topics like sexuality, the murder of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, voting and religion. 

Ultimately, of four weddings, only one had a happily ever after. While one couple called it quits at their wedding over an insufficient connection, political differences — or communication around them — were at the heart of two couples breaking things off at the altar. 

Sara and Ben

In the finale, Sara Carton declined to marry Ben Mezzenga, saying she wants a partner “on the same wavelength.” She had disliked his response on Black Lives Matter and protests in Minneapolis after the 2020 killing of George Floyd in the pods. He had said, “I’m not one way or another. I just kinda keep out of it.”  

She also took issue with his church’s apparent lack of acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities, as well as his stance on vaccines, which viewers do not get to hear about on-screen. 

Left heartbroken, Mezzenga said he was surprised when Carton backed out of the wedding. When the two had returned to Minneapolis, they reassured family and friends their core values are aligned.

Carton agreed when Mezzenga told her sister they were both “conservative financially but liberal socially” and said they had talked through many “controversial conversations.” This included some controversy on social media around Mezzenga’s past romantic encounters. 

However, their different values around how to express support for LGBTQ+ people were a constant discussion point throughout the show and came to a head on their last date.  

Carton, who has a queer sister, had emphasized this to Mezzenga when they met in the pods. Though she was put off by his initial response referring to “that community,” she accepted when Mezzenga said he regretted his wording and shared more wholehearted support for queer identities. 

In Minneapolis, at a date at Blackstack Brewing, one of Mezzenga’s friends talked about their own queer relationship. But Carton questioned whether that was sufficient after finding a recorded service from his church she disagreed with and after a meeting with her sister and her sister’s partner who took issue with the match. 

Days before their wedding, Carton reflected on how she had always assumed she would find a partner who was aligned with her in every aspect. “I want everyone to be loved for who they are,” she said. 

Mezzenga, in turn, responded he was open to finding another church and repeated that he is on the same page as her, though he also felt the continued conversations were divisive.  

“I know where my views are, but who am I to say that I’m right and everyone else is wrong. And it’s not my job to convince someone or tell them that I’m right. It’s my job to just be excited for everyone,” he said. 

After the breakup, Carton tells her sister and mother in the car that Mezzenga did not match her “curiosity” or shared the same “priorities,” and she wondered if their relationship was only a surface-level one. 

“Whatever you believe, at least, like, have the conversation,” said Carton. “There was no curiosity coming from his side. I’ve always just thought that I’d want to be with someone who was more curious. More curious about my brain and how I think about things. People prove who they are, you know? Like actions speak louder than words. You can say anything you want but show me. That would have changed everything, if he really showed priority.” 

Virginia and Devin

Virginia Miller and Devin Buckley ran into similar issues. Miller, whose mother is a DFL House member, said she wanted to have more in-depth conversations with Buckley, but he seemed to be less interested. 

“I’m not super big into politics,” he had said in an earlier episode. “I don’t have a strong stance on it, if I’m being honest.” 

Miller told Buckley then that the political system is flawed, but she often votes Democratic, as does her family. Reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights are some issues she mentions are important to her, and she asked if Buckley would vote similar to her at the polls.

Buckley agreed that it would be challenging if they were on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but his choice depends on the candidate in a race. 

He said his family tends to vote for conservative candidates and asked if her faith factors into her votes. She replied that it does and their conversation ends there on screen.

“I know that it’s healthy to talk about things and that’s the only way you can really get through any issues,” Buckley concluded. 

After Miller said “no” to marriage, she said this interaction was off-putting. 

“There was just certain things he just didn’t want me to push on,” Miller tearfully tells the camera. “So there was just like, depths of our relationship that we didn’t get to. We just didn’t get there … I just think that we should be all the way there before we decide to spend the rest of our lives together.” 

“I didn’t like that we had differences in politics,” she added. “I don’t think that was a deal breaker for me. It was how the communication around that was handled.”

In contrast, the one happy couple that makes it to marriage — Taylor Haag and Daniel Hastings — seemed grounded in similar values, particularly around faith. Viewers get to see both of their families coming around to the dating experiment, with Hastings asking for Haag’s parents’ blessing. During their wedding vows, both promised to keep faith at the core of their marriage.  

Viewers react

Online, a few Minnesotans shared their feelings that diverging views shouldn’t be a relationship dealbreaker. They also appreciated seeing political diversity on screen. 

“Everyone knows Minnesota is lib [sic]. I think it’s ok to have some conservatives on a tv show for once,” read a comment from one anonymous poster who clashed with others in a Facebook group dedicated to “Love is Blind” updates in Minneapolis. 

There, others had criticized the show for highlighting what they saw as more conservative or traditional men in a season centering Minneapolis.  

In the 2024 presidential election, 85 percent of Minneapolis residents voted for the Harris-Walz ticket.

Minneapolis had a stronger liberal base than other major cities: Chicago saw 77 percent of residents vote for Harris, in New York City it was 68 percent and Los Angeles was 70 percent.  

Yet the discussions between participants on this season also mirror what people in the Minneapolis dating scene say they see.  

Nikki Block is a 28-year-old from Minneapolis who works in DFL politics. She said like the men featured on the show, men she finds on dating apps often do not put their political affiliation or hedge on how they feel until later.  

“After the election, I went through some of the guys I had recently been talking to and asked them how they voted. I was surprised to find that about half of them voted for Trump and about half had not voted at all. Very few supported Kamala, which it had not come up in our conversations at that point ... it’s not something they’re super vocal about, or say things about, it’s a little bit more sneaky.”  

Block said she enjoyed that the Minneapolis season was more political, but she said she believes the men in season eight represented more greater Minnesota politics, or the politics of men living in the North Loop neighborhood. Block also said as shown in the show, politics are often a dealbreaker for liberal women, but not for conservative men. 

“I have had guys that are like ‘you’re a cool liberal chick’ and that is really interesting if you are voting the complete opposite of me. For a lot of women, this is their rights on the line. It is a lot more personal. And I think that some men, specifically white men, don’t always apply their politics to their morals and values because they don’t have that need to.”  

In a 2020 poll by market research firm YouGov, 86 percent of Americans reported it has become harder to date someone from the opposite political party. Women and Democrats, in particular, said they were less willing to date someone with views different from their own. 

However, in a poll from last month, only 24 percent of Americans said shared political views were very important to a successful relationship. The top factors for most people were trust, honesty, respect and open communication. 

Tarkor Zehn is a Liberian American writer from Brooklyn Park now living in Brooklyn, N.Y. She wrote a recent PS commentary on how the latest “Love is Blind” season portrays the difficulties of dating in the Twin Cities as a Black woman.  

Zehn said Carton’s initial flexibility around Mezzenga’s values was a familiar scene. She doesn’t see similar compromises made in relationships around her on the East Coast, but has seen acquaintances, former classmates and colleagues in Minnesota take the same approach. 

“A lot of times women who tend to lean more liberal, when you’re in a Midwest socially conservative environment, you can be a lot more forgiving with politics, for better or worse,” said Zehn. “When you’re in that environment, where the pressure to get married and to start a family is so encompassing, like you do what you have to do.” 

Zehn was rooting for Virginia Miller and Devin Buckley because they’re from her hometown area. She said the dialogue online around them has been polarizing, reflecting a very divided political environment generally, but she had hoped Buckley would dig deeper into his beliefs following his bedtime chat with Miller in episode 10. 

“I don’t think Devin has actually figured out what his political relationship is outside of his family,” Zehn said. “And maybe he has and he isn’t fully exposing that. But I think for me, that scene was a great reflection of how so many people tend to grow up a certain way and that’s the way they stay. And so even though your soon-to-be partner is telling you, like, ‘this is how I vote and this is why this is important to me,’ there didn’t seem to be a lot of interrogation on his part.” 

Zehn said while it’s a big deal that “Love is Blind” showed political conversations this season, she found it “comical” that they most frequently centered Carton’s lesbian sister, as if that is controversial, and not any deeper policy interests. 

“It’s almost like, ‘Is this for real? Is this 2025?’ but that’s real in the Midwest. That’s real in like, I would say even in Minnesota, a state that is perceived to be blue and liberal.” 

Zehn said she felt like overall, the season was reflective of where the country is at politically with the rolling back of DEI efforts, the second Trump administration and the “trad wife era.” 

She hopes future seasons balance this one out. 

“I hope that the next season of ‘Love is Blind’ is so Black. I hope they take us to Memphis, to Detroit, to Philadelphia, somewhere. Somewhere else.” 

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