When Was The Bachelorette Season 20 Filmed?

Love’s journey moves pretty quickly on The Bachelor/ette — where leads go on countless dates, travel the world, meet several sets of prospective in-laws, and make a (hopefully) permanent decision about who to spend the rest of their life with in the span of two-ish months or less. But according to reports about Charity Lawson’s Bachelorette filming timeline, Season 20 might have moved even faster than usual.

First, a quick recap: Charity found out she’d be the next Bachelorette during the Women Tell All taping on Feb. 24. The special aired on March 14, and according to Reality Steve, she started filming her season one week later. In fact, Charity gave an interview to Entertainment Tonight about her first night on March 22, apparently speaking from the mansion. “It was a good one,” she said. “I’m a little giddy. Definitely smitten. I have a good batch of boys ... I was laughing the whole night.”

But if you’ve been following along with Reality Steve’s filming updates, you know that the season seemed to fly by after that. “There is something happening this season that has never happened before,” the Bachelor Nation commentator said in an April 7 podcast, later elaborating on Twitter that Charity was down to six suitors within just two-and-a-half weeks of filming, with hometowns beginning shortly thereafter. According to Reality Steve, this signaled that Charity’s season would be a bit shorter than usual.

The trend apparently continued into overnights, too. In another podcast, Reality Steve noted that host Jesse Palmer was already posting from Los Angeles on April 30 — proving he’d returned from Fiji (the reported Fantasy Suites destination) and the season was done filming. “If you go back to when they left for Fiji, to them being home now ... definitely something happened in Fiji that wasn’t normal,” he said. “I don’t know what it is.” (If you want specifics about who reportedly went home during overnights, those spoilers are out there.)

It seems, then, that Charity’s season filmed for just over five weeks this spring. (By comparison, Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia’s season reportedly filmed closer to seven weeks; Michelle Young’s, about six.) That doesn’t necessarily mean the season will air for a significantly shorter period, of course: The Bachelorette can definitely use a “to-be-continued” or two to stretch out certain arcs over the course of multiple episodes. However, the reports about Charity’s season seem to suggest that men were sent home quicker (or in bigger batches) than usual — which will likely make for good drama, at least.