SPOILER WARNING: The following story contains plot details from Season 5 of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”
From its very first moments, “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” has been inextricable from the toxic entanglement between #MomTok influencer Taylor Frankie Paul and her on-again, off-again boyfriend Dakota Mortensen. Two years ago, the show began with a violent encounter between the pair as captured on police officers’ body cameras. (The incident resulted in Paul’s arrest and subsequent guilty plea for aggravated assault.) Then, earlier this year, a planned season of “The Bachelorette” starring Paul — a bit of crossover corporate synergy between ABC and “Mormon Wives” streamer Hulu, both owned by Disney — was canceled after more graphic, harrowing footage of the same fight was leaked to TMZ.
Paul’s new venture may have been scuttled, but her flagship star vehicle remains intact. This week, “Mormon Wives” returned for an abridged Season 5, almost entirely filmed before production went on hiatus in March amid Paul’s public relations furor. The new information revealed in the five episodes is minimal. We learn the eventual winner of the final rose on the unaired “Bachelorette” season, making it even less likely the competition will ever see the light of day. We also learn how irrelevant the victor’s identity is, because Paul slept with Mortensen again the very night she returned from filming. Paul and Mortensen, by her own admission, have “an addiction” to one another and their toxic relationship. Most pairings formed during the “Bachelor” franchise don’t last; Paul’s was doomed before it even began.
