We Need To Talk About Clayton's Surprising Bachelor Elimination

Sometimes on The Bachelor, drama in the house gets in the way of finding love. Unfortunately for Elizabeth Corrigan during Week 4 of The Bachelor, that’s exactly what happened to her. Even though Elizabeth shared a connection with Bachelor Clayton Echard, her feud with fellow contestant Shanae Ankney wound up taking center stage and taking away from her journey to find love. But why did Clayton decide to send Elizabeth home before Shanae? It seems like a mystery to most of Bachelor Nation.

The drama between Elizabeth and Shanae began during Week 2 of The Bachelor. Shanae told Clayton that Elizabeth was “two-faced” because she acted like her friend, but had ignored her during an earlier conversation. Elizabeth and Shanae tried to talk it out and Elizabeth explained that she didn’t mean to ignore Shanae and that she may have done so because of her ADHD diagnosis. Shanae wasn’t satisfied with that explanation though. She told the rest of the women in the mansion about Elizabeth’s diagnosis (without Elizabeth’s permission) and said that she thought it was fake.

The drama continued in Week 3 during Shrimp-Gate 2022. Elizabeth cooked shrimp for the whole house, but Shanae seemingly took more than half of it just for herself. The, when Shanae made some replacement shrimp, she felt Elizabeth and the rest of the house didn’t acknowledge her enough. She told Clayton about how she felt she was being bullied, and then Clayton tried to sort out the drama himself.

During the cocktail party at the beginning of Week 4, Clayton spoke to Shanae and Elizabeth privately, but they only continued to rehash the whole shrimp situation. They rejoined the rest of the women, who were all pretty much fed up with Elizabeth and Shrimp-Gate. After a whole lot of screaming, Clayton was exhausted by it all and decided to cancel the rest of the cocktail party, leaving Elizabeth “feeling sick” about the whole situation. “Every rose ceremony has been eaten up nonsense,” Elizabeth said through tears going into the rose ceremony.

Those tears continued for Elizabeth after Clayton made the decision to send her home. Even though Shanae has been a big cause of drama in the house, it looks like Clayton still had a stronger connection with her than he did with Elizabeth, so he decided to let Elizabeth go. As she left, Elizabeth told Clayton, “I hope you find what you’re looking for.” Now time will tell if he finds that with Shanae.

Season 26 of The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.