Could 'The Ultimatum' Work With Gay Men?

Time​ Magazine

25-06-2025

Since the dawn of gay culture, generally when something has been described matter-of-factly as 'gay' or 'queer,' it has referred to the stuff of men. Gay bars and clubs, for example, historically have been distinct from lesbian bars and clubs. This gendered default has persisted even though 'gay' is not an inherently gendered term, and many women who love and have sex with women often describe themselves as such. But connotatively, this linguistic habit has worked to prohibit and exclude women, as part of a pattern that has left them under-examined and often ignored.
And so, it is refreshing, and even progressive, that Netflix's reality series The Ultimatum: Queer Love, now in its second season, has focused on women (and a few nonbinary people) without further qualification. 'Queer' means a lot of things, and women in relationships with women is one of them. They have been underrepresented, among many other places, on reality TV. Bachelor rip-offs like early Bravo series Boy Meets Boy and Logo's Finding Prince Charming have, predictably, focused on men, as has Netflix's Japanese dating show The Boyfriend.
The Ultimatum: Queer Love's creator, Chris Coelen (also responsible for the Netflix megahit Love Is Blind and the similar Married at First Sight, which now resides on Peacock), described the impetus for making a queer version of the preceding hetero-focused The Ultimatum to the Hollywood Reporter in 2023: 'The Ultimatum is super easy to do a fluid version, a queer version, a gay version, a straight version, whatever. As a format, it's totally built for that.' This implies that the producer believes an all-male version of The Ultimatum would be possible, and perhaps it's even in the pipeline. But Coelen's confidence about the ease of such a version of the show is as yet untested.
For the uninitiated, The Ultimatum convenes a group of couples on the fence (in Season 2 of Queer Love, out on Netflix June 25, it's six). One partner, perhaps inspired by the simplicity of the show's path to a clear resolution, has issued an ultimatum to the other: We get married or we're through. In ostensible service of helping these decisions get made, the show puts everyone through a speed-dating process and allows them to pick new partners from the pool for a three-week 'trial marriage.' Then they reunite with their original partners for another three-week 'trial marriage,' after which they make The Choice to either stay together, leave with their first trial spouse, or exit the show alone.
It is unclear exactly what inspired this rather inane process beyond the cliche that starts, 'If you love something, let it go…' It's not unlike Love Is Blind in the way its artificial, forced format fails to align with anything natural or organic about the process of pairing off. Both shows are a last resort when the natural methods have failed. If there is a modality here, it's one from the school of making (supposedly) good TV. (Whether or not you consider it good, it has been successful; Season 1 was Netflix's most watched series for four weeks, inspiring both the queer seasons and international spin-offs.) Why any of this intentional drama-conjuring would make its participants' lives easier is a mystery. Queer Love Season 2 participant Britney illustrates how muddled this is to her partner AJ: 'Like, I brought us here because I want you, and now I'm losing you to hopefully gain you forever.' No matter the logic or lack thereof, many participants talk about trusting the process and frequently use the show-issued terminology ('trial marriage,' 'The Choice,' ultimatum 'issuers' and 'receivers'). Squint and you can practically see their Kool-Aid mustaches.
One guess as to why The Ultimatum has not yet been attempted with gay men is its relationship to monogamy. The show invests heavily in monogamy, albeit via non-monogamous means. Upon entering the first trial marriage (the one with a virtual stranger), the participants describe themselves as having broken up with the partners that accompanied them on the show. During the mingling process, several note how strange it all is. 'It's not normal to experience, like, your partner holding hands with someone else,' says Dayna. 'It's weird to see your partner dating other people,' says Marie. Well, sure—if you've never experienced ethical non-monogamy before.
Given the rather commonplace discourse on open relationships, it's odd to encounter a show in 2025 that relies on its participants' oblivion to the matter. Odder still is it to encounter queer people who, by and large, don't wrestle with the very concept. Data analyzed from the 2012 National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior showed that five percent of lesbians reported being in open relationships—more than twice the amount of heterosexuals. That number in gay men, in contrast, was a whopping 32 percent. The numbers have almost surely gone up since, given the increased social acceptability of non-monogamy, but a show that focused solely on gay men's fealty to monogamy might be at least somewhat more challenging to cast given the sheer statistics. Sure, you could find six gay male couples seeking monogamous, life-long marriages. But the balking at those who stray would be less likely in the community at large.
Another guess? The Ultimatum depends on people thrusting themselves into dramatic situations and then reeling from said drama explicitly. The way this plays out is via a series of extremely earnest conversations about feelings, something women tend to be better at than men just given the way they are socialized. As psychologist Walt Odets puts it in his 2019 book Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men's Lives:
'Girls are expected to maintain conscious connections to [their] feelings: they are allowed, even encouraged, to sustain a sense of vulnerability, to show emotional sensitivity, and to be expressive of their emotional lives; and they are often encouraged to remain dependent on men. In contrast, boys are expected to separate themselves from feelings of vulnerability and dependency, initially with the suppression of 'inappropriate behavior,' and, ultimately, an internal denial or repression of the feelings themselves. For boys, the objective is a false, socially constructed male sensibility of physical and emotional invulnerability and needlessness.'
So much of Season 2 The Ultimatum: Queer Love is taken up by long conversations about jealousy, comparing and contrasting the current relationship to the previous one, and ideas about how love should work. Men socialized to be less expressive—without women partners drawing said expression out—could make for a less chatty experience. Sexual contact that occurs between the first trial spouses on Season 2 of Queer Love results in major drama when the participants reunite with their initial partners. Gay men, who by and large are more experienced in non-monogamy, might not provide such explosive reactions. They might be more likely to shrug and say, 'Well, you had us live together for three weeks. Of course we had sex.'
This is, of course, pure speculation—Netflix did not respond to TIME's query as to why there hasn't been a gay-male version of this show. The above two possibilities, though, would have resulted from careful consideration from producers as to why that population might be less suited for this format. Bias, however, could also play a role here. A 2015 study regarding attitudes toward different types of relationships found that gay-male couples were seen as being less loving than heterosexual and lesbian couples. Could it be mere coincidence that The Ultimatum has only focused on the latter two populations?
The Ultimatum: Queer Love is, above all things, a reality show. As invested in the process as its participants claim to be, the priority here is content, not necessarily giving people tools to work out their differences or think alternatively about their relationships. (If they wanted to do that while still being filmed, they might opt for Couples Therapy.) While some issues regarding queer life do come up (Magan's traditional Lebanese family tries to talk her out of being gay; Mel tells Dayna that her nails suggest she is a bottom; varying attitudes toward pregnancy and the convenience of having not one but two potential wombs), the show generally takes an agnostic approach to the culture. Host Joanna Garcia Swisher elucidates the guiding vagueness: 'I'm not in a queer relationship but I understand that there are different complications. The conversations are different.'
Each couple is made up of a partner who wants to get married and one who isn't so sure, but what's truly surprising is that none of those who were issued the ultimatum discuss political reasons for not wanting marriage. They speak of it somewhat abstractly and some almost get there, but nothing explicitly political arises. Ever since gay marriage became a topic of conversation, there has been a visible anti-assimilationist segment of the community that is resolutely against such a traditional and heteronormative concept. Queer Love's title is probably the most revolutionary thing about it, but given the attitudes of its participants, the show is essentially queer in name alone.