Is there a reason Weber is so confident?
Peter Weber is confident his season finale of The Bachelor won't be spoiled -- but that doesn't mean everyone else is.
The 28-year-old pilot has proudly declared that he doesn't think anyone will be able to guess the ending to his Bachelor season, bloggers, fans or otherwise.
"I'm happy he's confident," longtime Bachelor executive producer Martin Hilton exclusively told ET at ABC's Television Critics Association winter press tour on Wednesday. "In all my years of doing it, it's always somehow been spoiled."
"For me, it's actually sometimes free publicity, honestly. Because I think people watch anyway, and the same way you know how a Disney movie is going to end when you start watching it, people still watch it, because you want to see the journey," Hilton added. "So, that's what we really focus on. And if we were to get upset about spoilers, then I'd be upset all day long."
Bachelor host Chris Harrison had a similar attitude about Weber's declaration. "First of all, he's new at this, so you can't make a claim like that," he quipped. "But I know what he's actually talking about, which is, it's a wild finish. It is a season that got turned on its head and is an emotional, dramatic finish."
One fan theory is that Weber's season finale can't be spoiled because it hasn't been filmed yet. "We did do that with Jen Schefft," Harrison noted of season three of The Bachelorette, in which Schefft made her decision at a live final rose ceremony. Weber is believed to have finished filming his season of The Bachelor in November -- except for the Los Angeles-based specials like Women Tell All and After the Final Rose.
Weber told ET that to this day, Bachelorette Hannah Brown remains his "biggest heartbreak" -- which could support that he hasn't yet suffered a devastating goodbye with one of his contestants. "I will say this season was very hard. I have a very big heartbreak, for sure," he teased, declining to comment on whether that heartbreak occurs in the finale (his emotional, feeling-filled conversation with Brown will continue on next Monday's episode.) "I don't know about the finale, but at some point, you'll see it," he offered.
The show did hint at the "wild finish" Harrison promised in a jam-packed flash-forward at the top of Weber's season premiere on Monday. The host is seen warning Weber about "something you should know." "There's something I just found out, all of us just found out. I'm not sure how all of this ends, so I just wanted to give you a heads up," the host tells Weber, who was about to hand out his final rose, but then found himself feeling like he's going to "pass out."
Some fans have speculated that Harrison may be presenting Weber with information about one of his finalists, following Hannah Brown's discovery post-finale that her final pick, Jed Wyatt, had a girlfriend back home.
"I see [how people could think that]," Harrison told ET on Wednesday. "I can't really comment to that, but I will say it is a little bit in that vein of yes, me getting more involved. And I say me -- all of us, as production, taking steps to take care of our guy and make sure that he has the best opportunity to find true love and end up with what he should, and have the best chance of that."
"It's something that none of us saw coming, Peter and I included, and it's just something we had to deal with on the fly. And it's kind of the beauty of this show now is things happen, and instead of dealing with it and putting something together for television, that now is television. We organically really lean into everything now, and you're just going to see everything, warts and all," Harrison explained. "You saw that Peter faints and has to go lie down. You get to see all that now, and it's pretty raw. You get to see me in situations where I'm not 'host guy.' I'm just talking to this buddy of mine who is a friend, and I want this to work out for him, and I'm trying to make it work."
Harrison noted that as seen in cases like Colton Underwood's fence jump, his increased role throughout the season has been an overall trend in the franchise lately.
"I think you can almost argue production is getting less involved, therefore we're more involved, do you know what I mean? It's like, we're really taking our hands off the wheel more, and as producers, letting things happen organically and really letting them go, and just capturing that," he said. "It's a scary thing. It's a scary way to produce a show, because technically you should always know what's going to go on and how things are going to end."
"We don't have that luxury as producers of The Bachelor. You don't know how it's going to end," he added. "You gotta just accept it and lean into it."
The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC. See more on the show in the video below.
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