As fans may have noticed, this year’s cast of The Bachelorette is a little different than other seasons. On a show known for labeling their contestants with funny job titles, there’s not one social media participant, tickle monster, or Whaboom among the group. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. This year, we got a Harvard-graduated wealth management consultant, a professor of journalism, an aeronautical engineer, an anesthesiologist, and, apparently, a supervillain.

Yep, as it turns out, Noah — the 25-year-old registered travel nurse from Oklahoma and the youngest of the bunch — is actually a strategic mastermind. During the Tuesday, November 24, episode of the ABC series, he put his mind to the test when he schemed to get some of the competition sent home at the rose ceremony. After he used his time at the reality show's cocktail party to talk to Tayshia about the rose she already gave him (and the guys’ less than enthusiastic responses to it), she chose to confront the men about questioning her integrity and end the night early.

It seemed that her mind was already made up about who was staying and who was going, and she wasn’t in the mood to play pretend with the guys for the rest of the evening. Instead, she just wanted to get the whole thing over with, send four men packing, and then pack it up and move on. But while there were always going to be four guys going home — and Noah was never going to be one of them seeing as he’d already secured a rose — some thought his decision to talk to Tayshia was actually part of a complicated, cunning plan.

“You know, Noah, he fed information to T that he thought would make him look good,” Kenny said in a confessional. “He’s doing what he’s doing because I think this is his only chance to stay. It’s very frustrating because, if you cause a bunch of guys not to get time, it seems like a chess move. … I saw him playing chess in the house. Maybe he’s smarter than we thought.”

Let’s just … unpack that for a moment. Kenny saw Noah playing chess, which made him think that the 25-year-old might be smarter than everyone was giving him credit for. So smart that he decided his only chance to stay (despite the fact that he was already guaranteed to stay) was to sabotage the other guys’ time. Apparently, the theory goes that Tayshia might have plucked the rose right off Noah’s chest and given it to someone else instead.

But was Noah really scheming? What were his intentions when he was talking to Tayshia? Join me as I break it all down.

The Recap

With the rose ceremonies no longer bookending each episode, you might need a little refresher, so here’s what went down last week. After skipping the night one rose ceremony so that none of the men were preemptively sent home, Tayshia finally had to say goodbye to some of her guys about halfway through her second episode as the lead. After she bid farewell to Jay, Montel, and Peter, she restarted her date cycle, and the first group date invited the men who’d been butting heads to duke it out in a wrestling match. That meant that — you guessed it — Chasen and Ed would be facing off after their confrontation nearly turned physical earlier in the episode.

However, when the time came, Ed bowed out of the battle. When Chris Harrison asked if anyone else wanted the chance to fight for Tayshia’s heart, Noah literally jumped at the opportunity. Since all of the guys who hadn’t been invited on the group date were in the audience as live spectators, he was ready and willing to step up to the plate and take on a more involved role in the evening. As a reward for his bold choice, he was invited to join the rest of the group date for the cocktail party — and the other guys were pissed.

Right off the bat, they were all venting about how he was “stealing” time from them instead of just also taking advantage of the time that had been (willingly) given to him. After Tayshia asked him if he would step away from the date to shave his mustache for her, he had another idea. “Double dipping,” as one of the guys put it, he grabbed her for round two so that she could shave it herself. When the episode ended with Ben getting shut down after time ran out while he waited to talk to Tayshia, who instead chose to give the rose to Noah, it set the tone going forward.

The Evidence Against Noah

That meant that when this episode started, the guys were already frustrated with Noah. Not only was he one extra person they’d had to contend with during the cocktail party, he’d also gone back for seconds when some guys hadn’t even grabbed her once. Ignoring the fact that it sounds like a “them” problem (seriously, are we not going to acknowledge that Ben was the one who was trying to strategize for a rose here instead of simply valuing time spent getting to know his girl?), it left many with a bad taste in their mouth.

At the end of last week’s episode, Ben said that he was “pissed” with Noah, and he was right back on that same vibe this week. As the guys sat around talking about the group date to come, he made another snide comment, this time in front of Noah. “Don’t be like Noah and worried about looking stupid,” he warned the other men.

When the guys got together later in the episode, Noah was met with frustration from the rest of the group when he expressed disappointment that he wasn’t able to compete for the one-on-one. While this is a totally normal sentiment to share on this show, everyone seemed to have come to the consensus that he’d already gotten his chance at time with Tayshia.

“[That] seems a little greedy, Noah,” Bennett scolded him. “I’m not sure what the purpose of you being on another group date would be. Group dates generally are another award for a rose, as you already received, so —”

Noah butted in to offer his perspective, that getting a rose before the rose ceremony is just a “bonus point” and that what he’s really interested in is spending time with Tayshia, the woman whose heart they’re all competing for, but he was quickly dismissed once again. “Maybe you missed what I just said. It’s OK. No sweat,” Bennett shot back. In a confessional, he continued, “Tonight, Noah expressed interest in being on another group date and taking more time from people. I am glad that he shaved that terrible skid-mark above his lip, but he’s definitely walking a very, very fine line. Obviously, he’s being greedy, and, you know, you gotta teach these young kids some manners sometimes.”

As the episode progressed, even more guys made it clear they had their eye on Noah, including Ed. “Here’s the thing, I think that Noah is, like, pissed that we called him out. I would expect him to be pulling out some moves pretty soon here. Like, I would be on alert if I [were] you, too,” he told Eazy. “The guy has nothing to lose.”

Bennett and Ed both continued to talk shit throughout the show. “Noah’s a joke. We know that. Tayshia deserves someone who’s here for the right reasons and, you know, he’s just trying to stir the pot. Tayshia’s ultimately never gonna pick the guy. I think he needs to back off,” Ed said. “People will be leaving tonight. It’s not a joke, it’s not just fun and games.” In his own confessional, Bennett added, “I don’t think Noah stands a chance with Tayshia. Noah is juvenile, and it’s ridiculous for a woman of Tayshia’s, you know, stature, beauty, prowess, to end up with a guy like Noah.”

And then, of course, there’s the fact that Kenny saw him playing chess. Damning.

The Evidence For Noah

Let’s talk about the group dates. Normally, when men aren’t invited on a group date or one-on-one, they’re on the second group date. It’s rare that someone passes a whole rose ceremony without getting invited to something. So we can understand why Noah thought maybe he would have a chance to write a love song for Tayshia’s heart and earn a one-on-one. After all, he technically wasn’t invited on the first group date — he just volunteered to participate when Ed created an opening.

Chris Harrison and Tayshia also both commended him for his decision to be bold and to show that he was proactively seeking out time with Tayshia (unlike Ben, who waited until the night was over before he asked if he could grab a one-on-one moment). You can also forgive him for knowing that, in the past, the Bachelorette has been interested in outgoing guys. After all, John Paul Jones wasn’t exactly shy, and we all saw how his exuberant nature won her over on Bachelor in Paradise.

As for the repeated bashing from the other guys, he laughed it off at least once (like when Ben told the other guys not to look stupid like him), but he also brought up how it was frustrating him to Joe. “I didn’t go on a group date, so the only time I had with her was the party I crashed. Right?” he asked. “People are acting like weenies because of it.”

From Noah’s perspective, he was never actually invited on a date at all, and yet somehow he had become the villain of the episode. “In this group, there’s a lot of people that don’t like me. You know, me hopping the fence on the group date pissed a bunch of guys off, ‘cause I wasn’t even supposed to be there and I got time, but I would’ve never expected the passive-aggressive tiny little jabs and stuff like that,” he said in a confessional. “It’s starting to bother me more to be honest. I think the sooner some of those guys are gone, the better.”

But was he actually scheming in order to ensure that “some of those guys” would be “gone” soon? Let’s take a look at what he actually said to Tayshia.

The Confrontation

When he finally got a few moments during the cocktail party before the rose ceremony, he used the opportunity to vent about what had been going on in the house. “I’m not gonna lie,” he told her. “There have been a few things on my mind. I mean, when I hopped the fence, I knew I would be getting a lot of heat from the guys, I think that was expected, but obviously I didn't care about 16 of their opinions as much as I care about one of yours.”

He continued, “I think what we have has been electric, nothing short of that… The other night kind of solidified that for me, but it’s kind of been implied that you gave me the rose just to kind of shake things up. There has been a lot of rolling eyes, talking, [people saying] I don't deserve it, she’s just doing that kind of for show, to get [the guys] going, things like that.”

While Tayshia tried to assure him that the other guys were just jealous, he wanted to hear more from her. “I’m cool with getting trash talked about it, I’m cool with gossip, but what’s been bothering me the most is mocking the fact that you gave me a rose would mean that you’re not taking it seriously. You know this process works; you’ve said, ‘I can see my husband in this room.’ It has been frustrating seeing them, like, discredit your thought process through this.”

First off, I want to acknowledge that this whole speech was more than a little manipulative. But if you ask me, Noah wasn’t trying to manipulate Tayshia into getting pissed with all of the other guys. Instead, he was simply asking for validation from her in a (dumb) round-about way. What he wanted her to say was, “I’m taking this seriously. I’m taking you seriously. My thought process is considerate and thoughtful, and I gave you the rose because I like you.”

What he didn’t expect was that Tayshia would take the conversation as an insult to her integrity — and then push him to name names, something he refused to do. It seemed clear to me that the conversation didn’t go the way he wanted, and that was made even more evident when he walked back inside. “I don’t know, I think [our conversation] got a lot more serious than I had anticipated,” he said when Brendan asked him how his one on one time went. He further claimed that he “wasn’t sure” how it turned out when Bennett asked him if that was good or bad.

After Tayshia confronted the guys and Noah reluctantly admitted that he’d been the last to speak with her, sharing what they talked about, it was just round two of shit-on-Noah time. The thing was, it only seemed to prove his point. Right after Tayshia assured the men that anyone who had already received a rose had gotten one because she made the purposeful decision to give them one, they were already dismissing her words.

“There is zero percent chance that you end up with Tayshia, everyone here knows it, she will know it very soon. I'm sorry to be the one that tells you the truth. You owe all of these gentlemen and her an apology, and if you don’t realize that, you don’t belong here,” Bennett told him.

“I believe you’re bullshit. I believe the rose on your chest is bullshit. So your day will come, Noah,” Ed added.

The Verdict

If Noah really was playing (metaphorical) chess (in addition to literal chess), he got outplayed when he didn’t predict Tayshia’s next move. Just based on how things played out, we seriously doubt he was just hoping to stir up drama and get other men sent home. The fact that he has a permanent smirk on his face does not actually make him Littlefinger from Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, in this scenario, it seems like everyone got played.

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Images: ABC