Chris Harrison is back on television with a faith-driven dating show that drops the rose ceremonies in favor of face-to-face breakups and a single stated goal: marriage.
The Vow, a six-episode series streaming on Fox Nation, follows Jace Cates, a 30-year-old devout Christian mortgage loan officer from Canby, Oregon, as ten similarly religious women compete to marry him. There are no elimination rituals and no place for a lead to hide behind a flower. Rejecting a woman happens in person, at any point, a format Harrison frames as what real relationships and gentlemen actually require.
Harrison and co-creator Lauren Zima insist the series carries no political agenda despite its home on a conservative-associated platform. Their pitch is generational rather than ideological: hookup culture became the norm, settling down turned into a punchline, and Gen Z is pushing back toward commitment. The February casting call, which sought people aged 21 and older wanting a traditional, marriage-minded partnership, drew early social media backlash, a reaction Harrison says he now understands.
The comeback has already produced a legal fight. Warner Bros., which owns The Bachelor franchise, sent a cease and desist letter to Harrison and Fox Nation in mid-September over the show's September 16 teaser, accusing them of infringing its intellectual property. Harrison dismisses the claim, saying a cease and desist cannot be placed on finding love, and jokes that he feels like a lover his former employer cannot let go.
The stakes are personal. Harrison left The Bachelor in June 2021 after defending racist behavior by a contestant during a February 2021 television interview, an episode he later acknowledged amounted to excusing and therefore defending historical racism. His televised apology was widely panned as superficial, and his exit came with a settlement valued at roughly 10 million dollars. Zima, a former Entertainment Tonight red carpet reporter who covered the franchise before their relationship turned romantic in August 2018, works alongside him on The Vow, and much of his former Bachelor crew came with him.
He is not waiting quietly for a verdict from audiences. The Bachelor has not aired a season since March 2025, and ABC announced in late October that the franchise returns in March 2027 with no host casting confirmed. Harrison's message to his old network was blunt: clean up your own mess and stay out of his.