The Ultimatum: Queer Love’s Yoly spills the tea on dramatic love triangle: ‘Terrible and tough’
Yoly gives the behind-the-scenes drama on her love triangle with Mal and Xander. (Netflix)
The Ultimatum: Queer Love star Yoly Rojas has opened up about the fallout from this season’s most dramatic love triangle between herself, ex-fiancée Mal and co-star Xander.
Netflix has knocked it out of the park with their first ever LGBTQ+ reality dating show The Ultimatum: Queer Love. The chaotic second season sees five established sapphic couples date amongst each other to figure out if they want to marry the partner they came with, explore a life with someone new, or leave single and ready to mingle.
Perhaps no one embraced the experience more than contestant Yoly Rojas.
In the 10-episode series, hosted by Sweet Magnolias‘ JoAnna Garcia Swisher, 34-year-old Yoly issued the marriage ultimatum to her partner of three years, Mal Wright. The couple arrived on shaky ground, having broken up once before and moved from Chicago to Seattle to re-ignite their relationship.
However, after only three weeks of dating, Yoly shockingly fell in love with fellow contestant Xander Bojer. As Mal fought to win back Yoly’s heart and Xander broke things off with their own girlfriend Vanessa Papa, Yoly kept viewers guessing who she would choose to the very end.
In an all-encompassing interview with Entertainment Weekly, Yoly explained how it all went down.
“It was incremental,” she said about falling in love with Xander so quickly.
She pointed to Xander filling her water bottle after returning from interviews with the producers and making Yoly “carrot-fries” before her own as just some of the reasons why a relationship developed between the pair.
“The carrot fries were a big thing,” she explained. “All my friends heard about the carrot fries. She was such a lighthouse for me during this chaotic experience where there’s dog stuff going on and we were living in our corner peacefully and happily together. It was really beautiful.”
Despite her feelings for Xander, in the dramatic season finale, Yoly decided to accept Mal’s proposal. But as viewers later found out in the reunion episode, their engagement ended just three weeks later.
“Three weeks was not enough time to sort through the problems that we had,” Yoly continued. “Apparently three and a half years was also not enough time.
“As beautiful as [her proposal] was, why did it take me falling in love with somebody else for [Mal] to propose. ‘Did seeing you almost lose me make you want to propose?’
“In that moment, I’m regretting giving Mal the ultimatum and putting her in that position, but I am thankful for the outcome.”
After getting engaged, Yoly had one last tear-jerking meeting with Xander to reveal her “terrible and tough” decision to choose Mal.
“It was a matter of Xander representing a lot of things I was compromising within myself to be with Mal. And I was like, ‘Am I making the right decision?’ It was terrible and tough. I didn’t know if I would ever see Xander again,” she said.
Although Yoly and Mal briefly tried to make it work, Yoly shared how things catastrophically ended.
“We were together for three weeks [after the show], then we had a friend’s wedding in Mexico.
“When in Mexico, she [Mal] had a one-way ticket back to her parents where she stayed for up to two months. In that time, she let me know that she was moving out. It was just apparent that we’re going to keep harming each other and causing more distress to each other. It just was not gonna be it.”
Although newly single, Yoly shut down hopes from fans that she may have rekindled her romance with Xander. So what really happened between them after the camera’s stopped rolling?
Well, Yoly confirmed that they stayed in touch for a while, but eventually stopped to “reevaluate where we were at”. Then Coachella happened, and Yoly decided it “made sense” for the two to meet up again at the annual Californian music festival.
“Nobody knows who we were at the time,” she shared. “But upon meeting, we just had some much healing to do. She was getting out of her own relationship and I was coming out of a three-and-a-half year relationship and a broken engagement.
“Being in a relationship together wasn’t the right decision.”
Sorry Xander and Yoly stans!
While the season proved full of jaw-dropping drama, it didn’t end in success. From the four couples who got engaged, only one couple now remains together.
All 10 episodes of The Ultimatum: Queer Love are now streaming on Netflix.
