Why Litia Isn’t the Next Bachelorette & Who ABC Almost Picked Instead
Jason Pham
She won over the hearts of Bachelor Nation with her scathing speech toward Grant in The Bachelor Season 29 finale, but why isn’t Litia the next Bachelorette for 2025? The reason may frustrate you.
Litia Garr, a 31-year-old Venture Capitalist from Star Valley, Wyoming, was one of 25 contestants on The Bachelor Season 29 with Grant Ellis. She was revealed as the runner-up in The Bachelor Season 29 finale when Grant gave his final rose to his winner, Juliana Pasquarosa, a 28-year-old Client Service Associate from Newton, Massachusetts, and rejected Litia.
During the “After the Final Rose” special, Litia accused Grant of blindsiding her and telling her that she would be his winner. “Grant and I had talked a lot about that day, and everything that he had ever said about it was that it was going to be us,” Litia said. “We were getting engaged from, you know, the first one on one that we had in L.A. until the night before that day. I remember saying goodbye to him and saying, ‘Oh my Gosh, we are getting engaged tomorrow.’ And he said, ‘I know I can’t wait. I love you. I love you. I love you.’ Those were the last words that he said to me before I walked up there. So it was a shock.”
After the finale, fans pushed for Litia to be the next Bachelorette. “litia is perfect bachelorette material, especially after her time in the hot seat tonight!” a user wrote on X. Another user tweeted, “They better hold an emergency meeting & make Litia the bachelorette right now!!”
Is Litia the next Bachelorette for 2025?
No, Litia isn’t the lead for The Bachelorette Season 22. News broke in February 2025 that The Bachelorette—which had aired each year since its premiere in 2003—was canceled from its usual time slot in 2025. The series, which typically starts production in March, has aired from July to September for the past three years. This year, however, will be different as the show will be on hiatus.
Bachelor Nation alums Ashley Iaconetti and Ben Higgins reported on their podcast, “Almost Famous,” in March 2025 that there were two contestants from Grant’s Bachelor season that were in the running to be the Season 22 Bachelorette before the show was canceled. Though the hosts didn’t list any names, fans speculate that Litia was one of them based on her popularity among viewers and her strong performance during the Final Rose Ceremony and her “After the Final Rose” interview with Grant.
As for why Litia wasn’t chosen to be the Bachelorette, Ashley I. and Ben reported that ABC was deadset on Maria Georgas—the fourth-place finalist from The Bachelor Season 28 with Joey Graziadei—as the next Bachelorette, but after negotiations fell through with Maria, the network and producers didn’t believe there was a strong enough choice for The Bachelorette, which is why the show was canceled.
“We’re pretty certain Maria was a frontrunner to be the Bachelorette as she was a frontrunner to be the Bachelorette during Jenn’s season,” Ashley I. said. “The source says that they don’t know exactly what happened, but they couldn’t make Maria happen and that’s why the show didn’t get picked up because I’m assuming they didn’t have a strong enough lead to get enough ratings.”
Ben added later in the podcast, “It sounds like from our source that Maria was the frontrunner. The powers that be really wanted to be the lead of this season. It really sounds to me that they couldn’t make it work with Maria for whatever reason that was, and because of that, they had to pull the plug on the show because somebody who had a lot of influence on the show was fairly stuck on that storyline saying, ‘If we don’t do Maria, it’s not worth doing.'”
However, just because Litia wasn’t announced as the Bachelorette during The Bachelor Season 29’s “After the Final Rose” special doesn’t mean that she couldn’t be the Bachelorette in the future. Deadline reported in February 2025 that the series isn’t canceled for good and will likely return to ABC in the future. The magazine also reported that ABC hasn’t ruled out a return for later in 2025 after Bachelor in Paradise Season 10 concludes in the late fall.
The Bachelor streams on Hulu.
