Love is not patient, love is not kind – at least if you ask fans of Netflix’s “Love Is Blind”. Viewers had to wait over an hour to watch the Season 4 reunion special airing live on Sunday – Netflix’s second live event on its own platform.
“Love Is Blind: The Live Reunion,” hosted by Vanessa and Nick Lachey, was scheduled to air from Los Angeles starting at 5 p.m. PT. netflix subscribers were able to join a waiting room for the show 10 minutes before the start time – and those who did were still there an hour later. The show finally began airing – apparently live – around 6:16 p.m. PT, although some Netflix users still reported difficulty accessing the content.
“We’re sorry to be late,” said Vanessa Lachey, the only acknowledgment of the lateness at the top of the show.
“To everyone who got up late, got up early, gave up their Sunday afternoon… we are incredibly sorry that the Love is Blind Live reunion didn’t go as we planned,” tweeted Netflix at 6:29 p.m. PT. “We are filming it and will have it on Netflix as soon as humanly possible. Again, thank you and sorry.
A request for comment from Netflix was not immediately returned. by Netflix first live stream event, “Chris Rock: Selective Outrage”, did not present any apparent technical difficulty.
On Twitter, Netflix had acknowledged the delay without providing an explanation. Two minutes from the original start time, he promised that the stage would be launched in 15 minutes. Seven minutes later, the company tweeted: “The #LoveIsBlindLIVE promise will be worth the wait…”. with a photo of one of the “bad guys” of the season.
The latest activity on the account was a retweet of U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez making a joke about being late. As the special’s initial end approached, nothing had been released since – and it remained that way even once the show began airing for some, until the apology tweet.
Before the final broadcast of the show, Vanessa Lachey had taken for instagram – briefly live, perhaps ironically – from set in an attempt to entice viewers to stay, indicating the delay was a technical issue in a message thanking fans for being patient and captioned: “Apparently , we broke the internet!”
“It’s so 2023,” she said.
The season’s Seattle-based cast members also took to the social media platform to joke about the delay. Marshall Glaze posted a photo of a man studying a network of wires: “I try everyone”, he tweeted.
Streamers and competing networks also profited from the drama.
“We would never keep you waiting for a reunion,” BravoTV – the home of many chaotic reunion specials – tweeted with a wink.
“Hmm,” read a screenshot featuring Kerry Washington tweeted by Hulu.
While chaos dominated Twitter’s hot topics, the end of the hour posed a significant threat to Netflix’s dominance of the discourse: the latest episode of HBO’s “Succession” was now streaming.
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Associated Press reporters Beatrice Dupuy, Alicia Rancilio and Mallika Sen contributed to this report.