Come ye saints and come ye sinners to watch as drama and spectacle continue to unravel around MomTok.
With Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives currently filming its sixth season following the release of its shortened fifth season and its new spin-off The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County premiering on Nov. 12, the age-old question must be asked: will MomTok survive this?
And more crucially, after the mess of season five, should it?
While MomTok may have started as a group of Mormon women looking to change the narrative around their religion and roles in their communities and families, the group is beginning to stray into dangerous territory narratively.
With half as many episodes as usual, season five has twice as much drama because it details the events that led up to production being halted. Cast members Miranda Hope, Jen Affleck, Mayci Neeley, Mikayla Matthews, Jessi Draper and Layla Taylor forced the pause after refusing to work with MomTok “leader” Taylor Frankie Paul following the March surfacing of a disturbing 2023 video detailing a domestic violence dispute with ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen.
Yet, the show can’t seem to quit her.
Frankie Paul is the root reason that production stopped, but the first episode opens with TikTok clips and confessionals filmed months after the fact dissecting the fallout and setting up the season as the tell-all.
Centring a season on the fallout of a star’s removal while exploiting that exact drama is peak reality TV, but it is also a profound disservice to the rest of MomTok.
While Frankie Paul helped construct the core of MomTok, it is past time for the franchise to learn to survive without her, especially given that she says she no longer wants to continue with the show. Cast members have cycled through both permanent and temporary departures, including with Demi Engemann and Whitney Leavitt. But the same revolving door should not apply to Frankie Paul, particularly given the real-world impact of both her legal and personal controversies.
Season four saw Frankie Paul off to film what would become an unaired season of The Bachelorette, which was derailed by the allegations of abuse. Season five deals with the aftermath of The Bachelorette, alongside a tangled web of relationships that includes a technical engagement to a bachelor named Doug, lingering ties to Mortensen and a relationship with TikTok singer Ben Lambert.
When the show forces everyone to orbit Frankie Paul’s toxic cycles, it flattens the rest of the cast to nothing more than harbingers of advice that constantly falls on deaf ears. Viewers are robbed of real growth, even though the ensemble has genuinely compelling arcs outside of Frankie Paul’s drama.
As Layla Taylor says in the first half of the premiere episode, “MomTok is such an amazing thing, but we all have things outside of it that we want to pursue, and I think that makes MomTok better.”
Season five glimpses what this show could be if it trusted the rest of the cast to hold their own: Layla Taylor is fighting against lifelong Mormon beauty ideals and making a complex choice to step away from GLP-1s; Whitney Leavitt is filming the movie All for Love and preparing to star in Chicago on Broadway; Mikayla Matthews is continuing to overcome childhood sexual abuse trauma while managing a skin condition; and Miranda Hope is navigating a complex co-parenting dynamic with her ex-husband.
Throughout the season, Frankie Paul’s drama continues to derail multiple events that the other girls are excited for. In episode one, the cast attends an event organized in collaboration with Utah Foster Care, but Frankie Paul swiftly becomes the topic of conversation when she does not attend.
The same happens in episode three when the cast is in New York to support Whitney Leavitt as she performs in Chicago, but things quickly begin to centre around Frankie Paul, who is sneaking around with Ben Lambert behind everyone’s back despite this being a work-related trip.
The season culminates in a heated confrontation at Jessi Draper’s housewarming party, where the girls try to reason with Frankie Paul and things get messy, causing all attention to be on her, even after she storms out of the house.
Frankie Paul herself says in episode one, “I don’t want a complicated life, but that’s all I know.” While this is self-reflection that invites empathy for someone who is clearly unwell, that empathy should not translate to platforming abuse.
For a franchise that was founded on the shock value of relationship swinging and the efforts to rise above the negative connotations that Mormonism faces, severe real-world harm should always be non-negotiable.
With cast members drawing firm lines in the sand, including Mikayla Matthews releasing a statement that she refuses to film if Frankie Paul returns, the fractures in MomTok are much bigger, foundational cracks than they have been in the past.
Considering the Orange County spin-off that is now afoot and the original show being renewed through to season seven, all formations of MomTok need to continue to draw hard lines when it comes to the people they choose to platform. It should start by making sure that season five is the last for Taylor Frankie Paul.