Two ‘Ultimatum’ Season 3 Couples Abruptly Exit Filming
Just three days after choosing their trial marriage partners during season 3 of Netflix’s The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On, two couples decided to leave the experiment early with their original partners.
Chanel Watkins and Micah Hardeman as well as Dave Adams and Vanessa Hattaway abruptly quit filming just one week into the season, “abruptly ending their experience.”
Chanel, 27, had given her boyfriend of two-and-a-half years, Micah, 28, an ultimatum which led to them breaking up and choosing other partners for a trial marriage. Likewise, Vanessa, 30, gave her boyfriend, Dave, 34, the ultimatum but decided not to go through with the experiment.
Prior to the couples walking out, viewers watched as Chanel and ex-boyfriend Micah were seen in security footage sneaking out in the middle of the night for a secret meetup. Micah’s trial marriage partner Mariah Zernik was then seen waking up looking confused when she noticed he was missing.
“Do you mind if I just get some fresh air?” Chanel asked her trial marriage partner Dave at 3:25 a.m on the first night of their relationship. He immediately agreed but voiced his concern for her safety.
In a private confessional Chanel told producers, “Tonight I’m feeling so many emotions inside of me, you know. You don’t even know how to articulate them. One minute you’re coming into this experience with your partner. Then choose somebody, now you’re living with them. You’re a whole wife, and it’s like, I don’t even know if I’ve gotten a chance to process everything I just experienced in the beginning. Damn, this is a lot.”
She was seen tiptoeing back to their shared apartment five hours later. She and Dave sat down for a conversation where she explained that she was having a “hard” time with the experiment.
“I apologize for leaving you here,” she said. “It’s not you right now, it’s me.”
Despite seemingly forming a connection with Nick Tramotin, Vanessa went back to her original partner and left without warning. Nick, 38, was seen arriving home to an empty apartment.
“I came back to the apartment, and I’m alone,” Nick said. “Vanessa packed up her things and left. There was no goodbye.”
He added, “I had a really great connection with Vanessa, I think I tapped into something that she’s been wanting to feel in her relationship with Dave. I really wanted to build on that. This entire experience is provided for us to be in difficult situations. It’s challenging. Dave, he may have been threatened, I don’t know. But, Vanessa got her stuff out, and she’s gone.”
Micah’s trial marriage partner, Mariah, had a similar story. “I had just come home from the mall, and Micah is not here,” Mariah, 24, said in a confessional. “His stuff is gone and the book he lent me is gone. I’m confused as to why he left and didn’t say a word.”
A note appeared on screen explaining, “Earlier in the day, Dave, Vanessa, Micah and Chanel secretly met off camera. That evening, surveillance cameras captured them packing.” It went on to claim that the two couples “quickly departed.”
The foursome’s departure left Nick and Mariah without trial marriage partners for the remainder of the three-week period.