What Did We Learn from 'The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives' Reunion Show?

Hulu aired the first Secret Lives of Mormon Wives reunion special yesterday, giving most of the cast a chance to reflect on the show’s first two seasons. It clocked in at an hour and 40 minutes, about an hour and 20 minutes longer than necessary, considering how little new information was shared.

Mostly, it devolved into what can only be described as an “Accountability Olympics,” where the cast repeatedly insisted they were the best at taking accountability, one of many therapy buzzwords tossed around, alongside “trust,” “triggered,” “trauma therapy,” and “second chances.” The good/bad news is that the Mormon Wives — like middle-schoolers — are much better at trash-talking behind each other’s backs. With almost the full cast present, they mostly kept things civil on camera.

A lot of the reunion rehashed old storylines: Whitney’s villain arc, which she’s apparently survived now that Demi has taken on that role; the swinger scandal, which Taylor described in way too much detail; and the mystery of whether Jen Affleck is related to Ben Affleck (she’s not, though she refuses to rule it out).

Speaking of Jen, she and Zac are still together, and Zac seems to have grown since his first-season portrayal as a controlling, jealous mess. Therapy — both ketamine-assisted and otherwise — appears to have helped, and after struggling with depression and suicidal ideation, Jen seems to be in a much better place, too.

As for Taylor and Dakota, the show’s toxic nightmare couple? Still a toxic nightmare. They’re not back together, but they do still hook up. Both claim to love each other, but Taylor says she’ll never be able to trust Dakota again because he was sleeping around in the early weeks of their relationship, which is rich coming from someone whose first marriage ended in a swinging scandal. Everyone, including Taylor and Dakota themselves, agrees they should move on. They just won’t.

Whitney’s husband, Conner, tearfully shared that his past misbehavior stems from being raped as a child. I have a lot of sympathy for him, though I’m not entirely sure how that trauma led to a porn addiction and a Tinder profile. Still, like Zac, therapy seems to have genuinely helped, and Conner seems grounded and committed to Whitney.

As for Demi, whose heel turn dominated the back half of season two, she remains on the outs. She didn’t appear live, citing a pre-planned Disney trip with her family. Convenient timing, especially given the flirty (and sexually charged) texts between Demi and Marciano that her ex-best friend Jessi revealed.

It’s still unclear whether Demi actually slept with Marciano — a Vanderpump Villa cast member — during an apparent crossover episode. Marciano, however, claimed at the end of season two that he and Jessi had an affair. Jessi, who wasn’t wearing her wedding ring during the reunion and said she and her husband are “working through things,” declined to say whether she hooked up with Marciano. She teased that all will be revealed in season three of Mormon Wives, which has either already been filmed or is currently taping.

We also learned that before things blew up, Demi tried to convince Jen not to disclose anything about her flirtation with Marciano. At some point, Demi even sent Jen and Zac a cease-and-desist, ordering them not to talk about the situation. That’s surprising — Demi and Bret always seemed like one of the more stable couples, and Bret is one of the few husbands who actually comes off as self-assured and above the petty drama. It now looks like he’s caught in the middle of it. Whether he and Demi will appear in season three remains to be seen, though Demi appears to have been pushed out. (For the record, Bret also has some reality TV experience — his first wife was a cast member on Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.)

Finally, at the end of the show, it was revealed that both Whitney and Jen have been cast in the next season of Dancing with the Stars, and while I cannot stop watching the messy trainwreck that is The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, it most certainly will not extend to DWTS, although God help us if one of the two fares considerably better than the other.