Major clue for MAFS’ 2025 story arc dropped in first episode

There’s a formula we see unfold every year, and Episode 1 gave us a big hint at what we’re going to be seeing more of this season.

As January’s endless heat bleeds on day after day (seriously, how does this month have 87 days?) and the kids began to drip back into school, another milestone we’ve come to identify with the start of a new year has come around again: the dawning of a new season of Married at First Sight, the reality juggernaut Australia loves to hate.

As last night’s premiere unfolded, the scent of fake tan almost present through the screen, we were introduced to our 2025 cast, the bright-eyed bunch of hopefuls who, in spite of everything that has come before them, will still shocked and appalled to see their Frankenstein edits play out on the small screen as the season unfolds.

We met 38-year-old school teacher Tim, who seems bashful and angelic in equal parts, as he nervously admits he’s probably been the one to “care too much” in past relationships.

We met Carina, the Italian glamour from a huge family who’s sick of having only one place set for her at big family dinners, when all her siblings married their high school sweethearts.

But having worked this beat for more than a few years now (by which I mean ‘occasionally justify hate-watching the show by publishing my opinions on the internet about it’), I know that episode one sets the thematic tone for what big societal issues the show is going to unpack.

And that more importantly, the vehicles through which these themes are often unpacked are always the show’s villains.

Because make no mistake, whatever your opinions on the evil genius producers behind MAFS, they know how to work their story arcs into a theme.

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Image: Nine/Geoff Magee Photography.

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So what is it this year?

There was the season that catapulted ‘gaslighting’ into the mainstream by way of a thousand think-pieces, most focused on groom Dean Wells’ behaviour.

Then, the following year, all eyes (and headlines) were focused on the double standard of behaviour that seemed to allow Ines Basic, Series 6’s iconic villainess, to scream abuse at her groom in a move that, had the genders been reversed, would surely have warranted a producer stepping in.

In 2023, groom Harrison Boone became the undisputed bad guy of the season due to his problematic treatment of bride Bronte, focusing the spotlight more broadly on the vein of misogyny running rampant in society.

And this year’s out-of-the-gate villains (we know enough by now to realise there’ll be some more major players that emerge down the track a little) provided the biggest clue last night as to what the underlying theme to the unfolding chaos might be.

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When Lauren met Eliot

First, there was Lauren, the Sydney business-owner who introduced us to the term ‘boganic’ to describe her fellow contestant, and seems hand-picked to be one of this season’s mean girls, if not an outright villain.

In a role that hasn’t been reprised since ‘Cyclone’ Cyrell’s overbearing brother in Season Five, Lauren’s sister Tamara proved a sibling can be even more problematic than the contestant themselves, by calling the bride the C-word, fat-shaming her and then storming out of the reception of her marriage to Eliot, a Gold Coast local with McDreamy hair and Andrew Tate’s talking points.

And speaking of Eliot, (whose dream marriage simultaneously includes “the kind of love that my grandparents had, that isn’t perfect but is nurtured over decades together”, and “an immediate spark - if I don’t have it, I won’t even finish the ceremony”), we need to discuss his vows.

Because it is here, dog-whistling louder than Peter Dutton at a press conference, that we find the kernel of a theme that will undoubtedly play out over coming episodes: the ‘traditional values’ culture wars.

You see, Eliot (who production insiders report left the show less than 48 hours after his wedding ceremony) wants a ‘feminine’ woman. Someone who is ‘shy’. Someone who isn’t too opinionated. “I’ll keep you safe if you keep me wild,” he promises Lauren, before reiterating that he’s looking for “a traditional relationship, where women are women and men are men.”

For her part, Lauren is all in on this.

“People often tell me I was born in the wrong decade,” she begins, before letting producers know that as long as her groom is ‘masculine’, she’s more than happy to ‘serve him in every way possible.’

What could go wrong? Two cast members with values that line up better than a group of incels at ComicCon, paired in holy matrimony to bring ‘traditional family values’ back into the national consciousness by way of a show where drunk people throw red wine at each other’s faces across cold arancini balls.

Their timing couldn't have been better

And not to give MAFS more cultural currency than it deserves, but what a moment to bring the issue front and centre.

Western politics are skewing rapidly to the right. A second Trump Presidency is afoot, achieved at least partly through appealing to the conservative Christian right’s view of gender roles and traditional values. Here in Australia, an upcoming Federal election will be fought closely along the same lines, which means distilling the concept down to a digestible story arc on a nationally popular TV show might just be the most accessible way for the public to get their heads around what this type of rhetoric looks like in practice. Spoiler: it looks like a trainwreck.

Strap in.

Originally published as Major clue for MAFS’ 2025 story arc dropped in first episode