This TikTokker Has Us Convinced Ben Is Coming Back to ‘The Bachelorette’

Bachelor Nation knows anything can happen during televised “love journeys,” and one TikTok user’s theory that Ben Smith will come back to The Bachelorette seems to be convincing many viewers — us included!

Current Bachelorette Tayshia Adams gave Ben the heave-ho after he couldn’t express his feelings for her, but TikTok user @dilemmafox thinks the Army veteran might make a big comeback in the two-part Season 16 finale, which starts on Monday, Dec. 21.

Tayshia broke up with Ben in the Dec. 15 episode, telling him she wasn’t sure if their pages were “necessarily aligned at this time.”

Ben, for his part, seemed stunned. “I don’t know what to say to that,” he replied. “I would have liked it to go a different way, but it is what it is. I’ll be all right. I’m always all right. … The last two weeks specifically showed me a lot about the things I was feeling for you. But yeah, I don’t know. I’ve been wrong before. Like, I’m heartbroken, but I’ll be all right.”

In a confessional, Tayshia reflected on the breakup. “I’m not asking for, like, this grand gesture, but the fact that he couldn’t give me one ounce of emotion was extremely disappointing,” she said. “There was no emotion at all. He wasn’t angry, he wasn’t mad, he wasn’t sad. It kind of felt empty, and I just felt like, ‘Please make me feel like these past few weeks meant anything to you.’”

“This is not how I thought it was going to end,” she added. “I really did consider Ben someone I could end up with at the end of this. But I put a lot of my time and energy into pulling things out of Ben, and I can’t do that every single time.”

And as he was whisked away in an SUV, Ben revealed he was “still in love” with Tayshia. “I really thought that we were going to be together,” he added. “I wanted to marry her. She’s going to be my wife, the mother of my children, all these things. I should have told her how I felt when I had the chance after my hometown [date]. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to fall out of love with her. Maybe she loved me and she thought that I didn’t love her back, and then, if that’s then case, I f--king blew it.”

In a Dec. 16 TikTok video, @dilemmafox cites an ABC promo in which Ben says, “I’ve never felt this feeling, but I’m in love with you,” a dialogue snippet fans never saw on the show. Perhaps that means he comes to his senses and returns to the show to tell Tayshia the words she wanted to hear from him.

There’s also a part of the promo where Tayshia says, “There’s a rose ceremony. What do I do with that?” Maybe, @dilemmafox speculates, Tayshia is reacting to a sudden reappearance by Ben before a rose ceremony.

Plus, Ben has been saying “I love you” a lot on Instagram lately, @diellamfox points out. His Instagram bio even reads, “I love you a lot.” Perhaps this is Ben telling Tayshia he loves her, and maybe that’s evidence that she chooses him in the end.

Seems like he’s getting in touch with his feelings — with or without Tayshia by his side! But judging from the 113k TikTok users who liked @dilemmafox’s video, it seems like a lot of fans are expecting the guy to pop up again when the two-part Bachelorette Season 16 finale airs Monday, Dec. 21, and Tuesday, Dec. 22, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.