Warning: There are spoilers for the Bachelorette finale ahead.
For Tayshia Adams' Bachelorette season, many of the staple moments of the show had to be reworked to account for the pandemic. The hometowns took place in the Palm Springs filming bubble rather than in the men's hometowns, the Men Tell All was much smaller and socially distanced, and there will seemingly be no After the Final Rose for Tayshia to catch people up on her life today.
Bachelor spoiler blogger Reality Steve reported that there wasn't going to be a separate ATFR special following the finale of Tayshia's season. There was also no information about an ATFR in the ABC press release for the finale. Instead, the majority of the episode focused on the final two men meeting Tayshia's family, going on a final date, and contemplating proposal.
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However, host Chris Harrison did want viewers to learn what Tayshia got up to post-filming. "Bachelor Nation will see where Tayshia is from the end of production until now," he promised in an interview with Variety. Unfortunately, after Zac Clark proposed to Tayshia and she accepted, we got a Matt James Bachelor promo... and that was it.
He added that Clare Crawley and Dale Moss would not be returning for another update during that same time. "I think their updates are kind of done because you know where they are," Harrison said. "There really isn't anything to update. Now, you just see them on social media. They're doing great." Clare and Dale also already got to do their own in-person taped update following their initial exit from the show.
The same setup apparently isn't the cards for Tayshia, and that's likely because the show has been making things happen on a moment to moment basis. There almost wasn't even a Men Tell All.
At the end of October, Harrison told Entertainment Tonight that he was unsure if they could safely bring all the men together for a reunion. "We want to deliver that for everybody," he said. "I can't promise anything, but we are desperately trying to pull something together." In the end, they did pull off a smaller Men Tell All with just the most talked-about contestants who were all seated far apart to allow for social distancing. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the contestants also had to undergo another quarantine and testing to participate in the reunion, so perhaps it wasn't possible to safely have the ATFR in the same way. Maybe Tayshia, Zac Clark, Ben Smith, Ivan Hall, and/or Harrison couldn't or didn't want to quarantine and get tested for a one hour taped update.
It also appears that Chris Harrison prioritized a sponsored virtual pre-show event ahead of The Bachelorette finale where he also gave some inside information on the upcoming Bachelor season. It was kind of its own mini ATFR, only you had to pay for it. I sincerely hope this isn't the way of the future for this show.
At least Bachelor Nation will still get their update, though, even if it doesn't necessarily come in the way we're used to seeing it. That's now par for the course on this show.