I Thought the Ed Gein Story Would Give Me the Creeps, but Love Is Blind 9 Is the Scariest Thing on Netflix Right Now

By the time I was done with the first batch of Love Is Blind episode released on Oct. 1, I knew I didn’t want to continue watching. I also hoped against hope that things between the six couples that matched in the pods would get better. Unfortunately, I am as much an eternal optimist as I am a masochist, so nine episodes in, and I am wholly saying: Love Is Blind season 9 is the scariest show on Netflix right now.

The premise of the dating series is that 32 singles go on a bunch of dates while sequestered from the people they’re dating. The point is to forge bonds and connect with the other sex, “sight unseen,” casting aside the superficial barriers that come with physical appearances and focusing more on values, beliefs and other fundamental things that actually make a relationship last.

Fans of the show — myself included — will argue that it hasn’t been the same since Lauren Speed and Cameron Hamilton got together in season 1 back in 2020. Several other couples have emerged over the years, of course — Taylor Haag and Daniel Hastings; Taylor Krause and Garrett Josemans; Tiffany Pennywell and Brett Brown, among others — but for the most part, the show has produced more mismatched pairings than harmonious ones. And season 9 is the perfect example of that.

There are way too many wild moments that have transpired thus far, but let’s start with the one that gave me the first pause: the pairing of Patrick and Kacie.

Patrick had really hit it off with Anna to the point where he could really see himself proposing to her. However, after Anna self-eliminated, the construction manager decided to continue on his quest for love and began moving things along with Kacie instead. And things got really weird, really fast.

In one of their conversations, Kacie revealed that her boyfriend — present, not past — had encouraged her to join another reality TV show prior to LIB. Not only that, she proceeded to tell him that the same boyfriend had also urged her to go on Love Is Blind. Patrick — like me — was clearly stunned and attempted to press her about how she planned to break off that relationship, given they were meant to get married at the end of the current experiment.

We never got a clear answer on that, as their conversation became bizarrely sexual, with talk about landing strips and other things that were just TMI.

A day after they were finally allowed to meet in person (Patrick proposed!) they broke up in yet another perplexing scene that I promise you, could have been masterminded by Jordan Peele. She was crying, he was trying to console her while also trying to figure out the status of their relationship and I felt like my brain was going to break while trying to piece both their trains of thought together.

The second couple that had me genuinely nervous was when all the couples were on vacation and Joe had a little too much to drink at the bar, he went back into their hotel room to try and rest up.

What was so alarming about that particular case wasn’t that he just got drunk, but it was the fact that when Madison finally got back hours later, he was so incoherent and so out of it, it seemed he had completely blacked out. Though a lot of us have had our fair share of drunken nights where one moment you’re having a good time and the other you’re waking up the following day begging for bland toast and some coffee just to get through your day, watching it play out on TV is a different matter.

Some fans have accused Madison of “overreacting” in that scene, but we have to remember she was dealing with someone who couldn’t even recall the question they were asked two minutes before.

Of course, one particular clip that has gone viral a million times over on TikTok and that’s the video of Edmond weeping while in bed with his fiancée, Kalybriah, because she won’t have sex with him before marriage.

The idea that a woman still has to defend her decision to be abstinent till marriage in 2025 is disappointing, especially given the fact that he freaked out only after realizing other people had been intimate.

The “I gotta hit before marriage,” conversation he had at the pool with the rest of the guys was perhaps the most troubling of all — way more troubling than when he laid down and put his mouth on the floor or when he licked her sunscreen-lathered toes in front of everyone, or (playfully) stuffed himself inside a kitchen cabinet.

On paper, Love Is Blind is meant to do away with all the small and really inconsequential things that sometimes hinder us from pursuing people because we’re so focused on how they look. However, after nine seasons, it seems like the show is proving that love is, in fact, not blind and that just because you take away one aspect of the process, it doesn’t mean it gets easier.

In actuality, it seems like season 9 is proving that taking away the physicality causes other problems to arise and that maybe, just maybe, people should go after whoever they are actually attracted to and take it from there.

The three couples mentioned above are just examples; the majority of the pairings for season 9 seem to have major communication problems, often opting to skirt around issues for fear of disturbing the peace. But they find themselves in terse arguments anyways.

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I can honestly say, when I began watching season 9, I thought the show was going to bring the lighthearted drama it has in the past. A little shade about someone’s apartment, a quippy, “you are going to need your EpiPen because you’re going to be in disbelief of what you missed out on,” — you know, lighthearted, yet biting moments.

However, I can honestly say, Love Is Blind has provided me with some unexpected scares, cringy scenes and heart-racing moments this spooky season — and we haven’t even reached the wedding episodes yet.