RECAP TIME We all need a valium and Carina’s mum’s rosary beads after tonight’s MAFS reunion dinner party
BY: Tahlia Pritchard
We wound our clocks back last night, and tonight it’s time to take another step back in time because the MAFS reunion opened up exactly where it left us last week: with Jacqui and Ryan’s final words ringing in our ears as we watch Jacqui get ready and proudly show off the world’s worst kept secret: her new boyfriend, Clint.
Forget the weddings, forget the retreat, forget the final vows: we all know by now the final reunion episodes are the best ones, after our cast of influencer wannabes have a nice, sacred, four week break from each other before reuniting to laugh, scream and cry one more time.
Finish your wines, grab a valium and don’t listen to me for medical advice. Let’s get into what went down.
Pre-reunion: who is still together and who has called it quits?
The only two people who haven’t taken a break from each other are Rhi and Jeff, who’s relationship survived four weeks post-vows, with Jeff sporting a brand new haircut that Billy must’ve given him.
We go through a quick montage of all the people we forgot about getting ready: Billy, Ash, Katie. Katie is keen to remind people though she had a tough journey, she “got back on my throne and slayed afterwards”. I have no idea what this means and it’s exactly why millennials shouldn’t use Gen Z slang. Slayed what? Her sad sack ex-husband Tim? Has he died by the sword? He’s not here, so we can only assume.
One big, big moment is Queen of the 2025 Season, Jamie, is getting ready alone, explaining that she and Dave broke up a week before. In some ways, Dave and Jamie are the realest modern day love story we’ve ever seen on this show: man meets woman, they hit it off, woman gets feelings, man goes cold, man doesn’t want to seem like a dickhead so just puts in a half-assed effort until woman breaks up with him, man sighs with relief and uses phrases like “we’re really good friends” while probably never even putting in effort to maintain a friendship.
“Jamie and I both knew which direction we were heading, and it just fizzled out,” Dave convinces himself and the cameras as though he didn’t display a textbook avoidant attachment style the whole time.
The bar for men truly is buried six feet under the ground at this point.
Speaking of the bar being low, Curious Paul pops up to say he’s SO over Carina. After going home, he realised they just weren’t compatible because of her “crazy jealous tendencies.” “Like, don’t project all your insecurities onto me,” Curious Paul tells the camera. “She’s a big snob, and she’s proven my point again.”
By dumping your weird ass? Whatever helps you sleep at night. Just FYI, we all watched the same show. You can rewrite anything you want in your head Curious Paul, but unfortunately it’s all been filmed.
In VERY GOOD NEWS, Awhina and Adrian are not joined at the pelvis any more, and are getting ready separately. As seems to be the trend of tonight, Adrian thinks they’re all sweet and mates, and Awhina is ready to never see him again. Are the men on this show idiots? I’ll let you answer that.
Sierah is back to tell people to get fucked and has decided that she has nothing to apologise for. This could be more powerful if any of us actually remembered or gave a shit about Sierah’s storyline.
To lighten the mood, we get a montage of Jacqui and Clint kissing with Clint confirming they’ve touched each other. It makes me never want to be touched again, but also at the same time, I just think they’re lowkey funny and I’m kinda here for it.
Things get heated at the cocktail party
As the experts watch everyone flutter in single, their so-called matchmaking efforts circling down the drain again, they practice their best shocked faces, as though it’s a travesty Awhina is arriving solo and not a celebration.
We get the first hints of what drama is set to come, with Awhina asking if anyone knows about the text messages between Adrian and Sierah, where Sierah allegedly calls Awhina a C U Next Tuesday and rips her to shreds. Meanwhile, Sierah’s defence is that she rage-texted Adrian after she left the experiment, and the issue isn’t what she said, the issue is Awhina circulated the messages.
No, babe, I think the issue is you called people that, lol.
Meanwhile, Adrian rocks up genuinely excited to see Awhina because he thinks he’s getting laid tonight after a few dinner party wines, and Awhina promptly runs away from him to top up her champers. Australia cheers.
Curious Paul comes in dressed like a weird pirate and tells Eliot he has no romantic feelings for Carina whatsoever, with Eliot rightfully saying later he thinks Paul is saving face. When did Eliot become one of the smartest people on this show? I need to lie down.
Sierah makes her way in and she’s giving off Dementor vibes because the room instantly goes quiet and everyone is acting like their souls have just been sucked from their bodies. Billy gets the cold shoulder after trying to say hi to his ex-wife, and, well, look, it doesn’t take long for things to kick off with Adrian, Awhina and Sierah.
Sierah Vs Awhina Vs Adrian: Choose your fighter!
YES, this all happens before the dinner!
Awhina gets pissed that Sierah has chosen to sit right next to Adrian and goes over to let Adrian know that she doesn’t appreciate him being friendly with Sierah, even though Awhina just said she didn’t want anything to do with Adrian, but, look whatever.
As things get heated, Sierah tries to accuse Awhina of “berating” her in front of everyone, while Jamie gets up and screams, “BECAUSE YOU WERE TRYING TO FUCK HER HUSBAND!”
Sierah storms off, with Awhina and Adrian going after her to talk to her in a less heated setting. Sierah lists off all the negative things Awhina once said about Adrian including that he can’t spell, can’t run a business, is dumb, and treated her badly. I mean, if the shoe fits…
Adrian is VERY upset that Awhina has talked shit about him. “DO I SEEM LIKE I’M DUMB?” he yells at a bewildered Billy.
Sometimes it’s best not to answer rhetorical questions.
Meanwhile Ryan struts in amongst all this chaos, and he’s feeling good. He’s posture is great, he’s beaming from ear to ear, he’s heard the tea that Jacqui is with Clint and is ready to feel validated about it all.
“I don’t give a damn about Jacqui, I care about being betrayed,” Ryan says at some stage. You can tell this man is so thrilled by the events that have taken place because it’s given him a more interesting storyline than his samurai sword-wielding excuse for a personality.
Ryan Vs Clint Vs Jacqui: Choose your fighter!
Clint enters the cocktail party solo, much to everyone’s surprise, and Ryan immediately pounces to ask how Jacqui is. Clint takes Ryan aside for a drink, with Ryan already working hard on his audition for “Betrayed MAFS Groom”.
Clint calls Ryan out on his bullshit straight away, saying they were never friends, with Ryan reeling as his Victim Storyline gets ruined.
Moving into the dinner party (and yes Jacqui has arrived, thankfully, otherwise things would’ve gotten dull), Clint tells the table he and Jacqui are dating with Ryan acting like a gleeful kid because he’s been proven right. He’s RIGHT everyone! Ryan was RIGHT! He doesn’t care, he just wanted to be right!
Everyone is suspicious about Jacqui and Clint’s timeline, because they shacked up soon after final vows and the group thinks it’s weird they would just spend two weeks straight together post-vows without something going on previously (aka in the experiment). Reminder that this is a bunch of people who married strangers at first sight, so IDK if anyone should be making judgement calls about how fast relationships should move, but I digress.
Breaking news: Jacqui and Ryan are fighting again. With Ryan doing the “woe is me” act as though he’s been cheated on, Jacqui starts screaming at him across the table, saying she tried her “literal ass off” to make their relationship work. Ryan retaliates by calling her manipulative and a pathological liar, and labels Clint as gullible and tries to make fun of him for living in Tassie.
“Mate, you live in the Western Suburbs, let’s not go there,” Clint warns. “Jacqui’s gone from a Kia to a Ferrari.”
Someone needs to check Ryan’s vitals, because I’m not sure he’ll recover from that rebuttal.
The rest of the once strong couples implode at dinner
Dave tells the group his version of events: that he asked Jamie her thoughts at their dinner a few weeks after final vows, and she said they were better off as friends.
Jamie listens to Dave’s version with an incredulous look, before she calls Dave out for not being honest about the fact he just never had strong feelings for her.
She ends up in tears and walking out, with the girls following her.
“I feel like the men here are fucked,” Jamie (rightfully) says, with Beth chiming in, “The girls have been completely let down, these men have taken us for a ride.”
As much as I love this “go women!” moment, it’s mind-boggling to me it’s taken 12 season of this show and dozens of average men for someone to be able to point out on national TV that Aussie men are fucked in the head when it comes to dating. If there’s one lesson we can all take out of this, let that be it.
Meanwhile, our once strong Euro-Aussie couple Curious Paul and Carina are feeling testy with each other at dinner, with Curious Paul telling the group that being rejected at final vows “didn’t suit him” and it “created a crack he couldn’t come back from.”
My good sir, she wasn’t asking for you back, lmao.
In maybe the most quietly hilarious moment of the dinner party, Sierah just ups and leaves and we’re given no real context as to why. As she walks out, her voiceover tells us she thinks they’re all “rabid hyenas foaming at the mouth”.
Goodbye Sierah. We barely knew ye.
Meanwhile Adrian and Awhina are still engaged in some sort of breakup war, with Adrian betrayed over being called dumb, and Awhina betrayed over, well, all of Adrian’s shitty actions.
“I can be the bad guy in Adrian’s story, because he’s the fucking devil in mine,” Awhina leaves us with.
Wow. And to think we still have one episode to go!
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