Here's How Netflix's The Ultimatum Actually Works

Netflix's reality dating series catalogue is about to get more chaotic and dramatic with the drop of The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On on April 6. Fresh off Love Is Blind Season 2, Nick and Vanessa Lachey are back to host this new show with entirely different stakes. In The Ultimatum, six couples who have been dating for between one and three years enter an eight-week experience that will forever change the course of their relationships (no, we are not exaggerating!).

Here is the premise: One person in every relationship has issued an ultimatum. They want their partner to marry them and, if not, they are prepared to break up and find someone else ready to commit. The show's different phases are set up with the goal of helping the person who received the ultimatum give a response by the end of the eight weeks. 

To start, everyone is asked to leave their original partner and find another person among the five other pairs to couple up with. They have one week to date the other participants before deciding with whom to enter the next phase of The Ultimatum: a three-week trial marriage. In the trial marriage, the newly formed couples live together and imagine a joint future. According to the show, this part of the experience is meant to help each participant determine if their original partner is the right person to marry — or if a better future lies elsewhere. 

After those three weeks are up, the participants get back with their original partners and spend the same period of time with them in trial marriages. When the second trial marriages come to an end, it's time for the ultimatum to be answered. The couples decide to get engaged, break up, or split and leave the experience with someone else from the show.

If this sounds like the perfect grounds for betrayal and regret, you are correct. Over the next week, we will follow the journeys of Madlyn and Colby, Shanique and Randall, Alexis and Hunter, Rae and Zay, April and Jake, and Lauren and Nate as they put their relationships to this ultimate test. 

The Ultimatum premieres April 6.