Bachelor Nation fans are still completely lost as to why Clayton Echard from Michelle Young's season of The Bachelorette has been chosen to be the lead of The Bachelor season 26. Before Michelle's season even started airing on ABC, producers had already chosen Clayton to be the next Bachelor. This was a rather strange move from production given that there hadn't been any actual response to Clayton from viewers yet, but there was a lot of confidence that he'd be a great lead nonetheless.
As Michelle's season premiered, Bachelor Nation kept a close eye on Clayton and looked everywhere for clues as to why he had been chosen so prematurely to lead the next season of The Bachelor. On TV, Clayton was introduced as a 28-year-old medical salesperson from Eureka, Missouri. He was clearly attractive and had a sweet demeanor on the show, but nothing about Clayton necessarily popped during that first episode. So viewers waited to see how Clayton would do in episode 2, then episode 3, then episode 4.
Four weeks in, viewers are still overwhelmingly confused as to why Clayton Echard was picked to be the next Bachelor. As seen in the many tweets below - which have gotten thousands of likes, retweets, and replies - not that many people within Bachelor Nation can make sense of what Clayton did or said for producers to have fallen in love with him so much and so quickly. In the past, even some of the most controversial choices for The Bachelor leads have made some sense. Colton Underwood wasn't a particularly interesting contestant on The Bachelorette, but the premise of casting a virgin man to lead The Bachelor had viewers feeling at least curious. Peter Weber was another not-so-great choice, but thinking back to before his season, there were definitely plenty of fans who looked forward to watching him as a lead.
But as one can gather from the tweets above, there's just nothing about Clayton that has been shown so far that makes viewers want to watch his journey on The Bachelor or feel at least curious to see what happens throughout his season. Four weeks into Michelle's season, Clayton feels like a background character who has no relevant storyline and no connection with Michelle. To be fair with Clayton, it is not his fault that he's being portrayed this way. Theoretically, Clayton might've been a fantastic contestant on The Bachelorette season 18 that just had most of his scenes cut from the episodes. He might have a fascinating storyline that was never featured, and potentially had amazing conversations with Michelle that were never shown.
If that's the case, however, production is doing a pretty lame job at setting Clayton up for The Bachelor season 26. If they're deliberately saving a lot of his background story and personality traits for the upcoming season, there's a risk that many people won't even care to tune in. Hopefully, though, Clayton will show up a little more in the coming episodes of The Bachelorette so viewers can get more excited about him as a lead.
The Bachelorette season 18 airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.