Secrets of the Netflix ‘Love Is Blind’ Dating Pods

Bars. Parties. Volleyball groups. Dating apps. For singles, the query of the place individuals meet is essential. 

“Am I actually going to fulfill my spouse in a grocery retailer?” asks Cole Barnett, a 27-year-old realtor and contestant on season 3 of Netflix relationship present Love Is Blind. The assumed reply is not any, no matter how typically he stalks the aisles of his native Trader Joe’s, eyeing each the frozen Thai vegetable dumplings and different customers’ ring fingers. 

That’s why, ostensibly, Cole and 29 different singles have opted to go on the lookout for love not in a crowded membership or bustling bookstore. Instead, they’ve headed into “pods” simply large enough to carry a sofa and all their expectations the individual on the opposite facet of a soothing, swirly blue wall is marriage materials.

“There’s one thing in regards to the pods that basically simply permits individuals to be extremely susceptible,” Love Is Blind Executive Producer Ally Simpson mentioned.

The first 4 episodes of season 3 of Love Is Blind hit Netflix this week. For those that’ve managed to keep away from the memes, the present locations singles of their 20s and 30s into small rooms known as pods, the place they discuss to one another for hours on finish with out really seeing one another. Until they get engaged, that’s. 

The present explores whether or not individuals can fall in love with out the same old hang-ups like age, peak or weight getting in the best way. (It helps that many of the solid qualifies as conventionally engaging.) After they do meet in individual, the engaged {couples} spend time at a resort, dwelling in shared flats, and ideally make it to the altar. Since the present began in 2020, there have been 4 marriages, two of which have led to divorce. But all of it begins with dates within the pods.

Every octagonal pod has one of many aforementioned couches — grey and normally rounded or squared off — and a round ottoman that sits on an extended strip of darkish pink carpet (the pink being a nod to like and romance). The partitions are velvety trying, and the pillows are sometimes some mixture of earthy browns and reds. Though you possibly can’t see it on display, every pod has snacks stashed away.

Simpson mentioned there are two most important objectives within the pods’ design: They’ve received to be comfy and so they cannot be distracting. 

“We need you to get in there and really feel at residence, really feel such as you’re on a date, and simply be a cushty place that you would be able to settle into for an extended, very long time — they discuss for hours and hours,” Simpson advised me over the telephone. 

Some daters actually do get comfy. While most begin out wearing three-piece fits and silky semi-formal attire, inevitably, they begin going into the pods with athleisure garments, hauling of their blankets and the signature golden steel goblets which have gone viral. Prim posture offers strategy to sitting on the ground or sprawling on the sofa. Or, within the case of 29-year-old pilates teacher Raven Ross, leaping jacks.  

Though the pods are furnished sparsely, the solid can ask the producers for something from extra elaborate themed dates to facial skincare masks to nachos. In the primary batch of episodes this season, Ross brings in yoga balls for her and her date (and later an train band). There was a silent disco the place the solid may hearken to music with one another by way of headphones. Simpson even mentioned there was a beach-themed date together with seaside chairs that did not make the season’s closing reduce. 

“If you are going to marry somebody, you need to know that you would be able to have enjoyable with them,” Simpson mentioned. “You need to know, Do we join over the music? When she will get her sushi, is she choosy about what sauce was there or wasn’t there? You need to create these experiences to attempt to be taught as a lot as you possibly can about one another.”

Talk to the wall

The broader coloration palette of the pods may be fairly mellow, however there is a notable vibrant streak of coloration in each pod. The couches face a blue wall that type of glows and swirls. Simpson mentioned it is meant to represent the power of the individual within the adjoining pod, to assist the daters really feel nearer and fewer like they’re merely listening to a voice piped in by way of a speaker from some other place. She mentioned the present’s producers have hung out sitting, trying on the wall themselves and asking themselves if it feels proper.

“If it was only a clean wall, you would possibly really feel such as you have been on their own in that room,” Simpson mentioned. They landed on the wall’s blue tone as one thing that feels inviting with out being a distraction. 

When it comes time to suggest, largely, the {couples} rise up off the sofa and stand going through one another by way of that blue wall. 

As keen because the {couples} are to get out of the pods ultimately and, you understand, take a look at one another, for some, these pod conversations find yourself being the best a part of the connection. Season 1’s Mark Cuevas and Jessica Batten went by way of their share of tumult — partly as a result of Jessica was hung up on one other man from the pods — however in a final ditch effort to reconnect, Mark tried to re-create the pod expertise at their house. 

The pair sat on reverse sides of a wall with candles, rose petals and fancy dinners, and as Simpson identified, that night time was the night time they lastly took the step of getting intercourse. 

“It will be scary to look somebody within the eye and to share one thing,” Simpson mentioned. “This simply makes you are feeling secure, like ‘I’m simply gonna put it out to the wall. I do know somebody is on the opposite facet, nevertheless it seems like I’m simply telling the wall.'”

Just do not freak out when a voice from behind the wall asks you to marry it.