Are The Bachelor's Two Remaining Women Of Color About To Team Up?

Monday night’s The Bachelor was either boring, dark, or boring and dark depending on which part of “Week 6” you were watching. With Hometown dates a mere two “weeks” away — who knows how time actually works on this show? — Colton Underwood and his contestants got serious. As The Ringer suggested following this Bachelor installment, “serious” is, as always for the ABC series, a code word for very blonde and very white. The beginning of season 23’s “Week 6” saw Onyeka Ehie and Nicole Lopez-Alvar get the axe following their baffling feud. Sydney Lotuaco sent herself home in the middle of the episode, while Katie Morton closed it out with a tearful post-rose ceremony goodbye.

Colton’s seven remaining contestants are five blonde white women, a blonde-ish, biracial Kirpa Sudick (who is half Indian if retweets are to be taken as fact), and Tayshia Adams, a Black woman. For a season that started out with so much promise, the inevitable “blonde out” of Colton’s season is disappointing. Yet, a few whispers from Tayshia in the final seconds of “Week 6” proper hinted there’s still some life in this season.

We might just be on the edge of a superhero-style team up between the 2019 Bachelor’s last two remaining women of color.

Colton ended this week’s rose ceremony with an existential crisis, which is becoming a classic form for him. As the former football player paced around The Bachelor’s Vietnam set, Tayshia, a rising frontrunner, took a moment to noticed all the blue- or green-eyed, blonde faces staring back at her. Kirpa, the only other woman of color left standing, just so happens to be perched next to her. This is when Tayshia quietly murmurs to Kirpa, “Let’s take this thing.” For the record, “this thing” is almost definitely the Bachelor win.

It’s such a quiet proclamation, The Bachelor uses subtitles to ensure viewers know what Tayshia is actually saying to Kirpa. While it’s possible the reality show lifted that sentence from another section of filming — we don’t see Tayshia whisper her revolutionary plot, we only hear it — producers show other parts of the conversation to suggest it all happened at this post-rose ceremony powwow. “Watch it’s us two at the end,” Tayshia continues as we see her blinking competition. Then, the camera switches back to Tayshia's face and she reiterates to Kirpa, “Literally us two.”

Kirpa responds, “We’re going to, I feel it.”

Quickly, Tayshia’s last confessional of the episode seems like one of the most important of the season. After Colton sends Katie home, he tells his contestants the eliminated California native cryptically warned him about one of the remaining women. In an ITM, Tayshia confirms she has an idea of whom Katie — and Sydney and Demi Burnett before her — was talking about. “I agree with her and it should be brought to [Colton’s] attention,” Tayshia says of Katie’s concerns. “Colton knows that the tea is brewing and he wants someone to spill the tea.”

It now seems possible Tayshia, who pops up repeatedly in the spoiler heavy after-episode season preview, and Kirpa, who is seemingly purposefully missing from the trailer, will spill that tea to Colton together. Demi's exit doesn't mean all the drama left with her.

And, no matter what happens in the final half of the 2019 Bachelor, Tayshia and Kirpa's growing camaraderie reminds us the former has been supporting the dwindling number of women of color around her for weeks. When Cuban-American Nicole experienced her first on-screen sobfest, it was Tayshia who took her to the side to decompress. Somehow, the phlebotomist accomplished that tough task while avoiding any real hostility with Onyeka, whom Nicole was battling with. To the day, Tayshia maintains a close friendship with both ladies.

Then, one of the most interesting moments of Monday's “Week 6” arrives when Sydney, an Asian woman, reveals she is in feeling “overlooked” by Colton, who is giving “more opportunities” to “other girls.” Tayshia calls them “shiny objects.” While neither woman spells out exactly what they’re saying, the montage suggests they are talking about the many white women Colton is seemingly laser focused on during the cocktail party (Tayshia and Sydney’s conversion occurs during some silly “ninja” antics from Hannah Brown). In an intense situation where no one else looks like Sydney, this honest heart-to-heart clearly means a lot to the professional dancer.

At this point, Tayshia is even tweeting with Caila Quinn, an almost-Bachelorette and proud Filipina.

Forget about about finding out who ends up with Colton — the real love story here is The Bachelor’s burgeoning sorority of women of color, late-in-the season scheming and all.