[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for 90 Day Fiancé Season 9 Episode 12 “Different Ex-pectations.”]
As we continue to be absorbed in Season 9 of 90 Day Fiancé, most of our current couples, who are Americans with international partners, have just over a month to get married in order for them both to stay in the United States. Not going to lie, it’s getting downright tense to witness — but that’s part of the joy of watching! Episode 12 checks in with six of the seven couples for a nail-biting look at where they are in their journeys to the altar.
Yve and Mohamed
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If you’ve been yearning to unearth some kind of emotion in Mohamed, it finally arrives when we see him interacting more with Yve’s son Tharan, who is 12 and has special needs, in Tharan’s Ninja obstacle course class. Mohamed watches Tharan when Yve is at work and they have bonded. Unlike the other couples in the episode, Yve and Mohamed still have 70 days to wed.
The warmth doesn’t last long, though. Once they’re in the car, Yve breaks the bad news to Mohamed that their wedding venue has fallen through and she has postponed the wedding by a month. This will also delay Mohamed’s ability to work in the United States and to visit his mother back in Egypt, so he tells her that he doesn’t care about where they get married — they just need to get married.
“Are you kidding me? I need my green card!” he insists. Mohamed asks why they can’t just marry in Yve’s backyard, but she doesn’t want to get married in a “patch of dirt.”
A week later, Mohamed rides his bike to meet his Muslim friend Rafay for coffee. He lets out his frustration and wonders if maybe he can just find another sponsor instead of Yve. OMG — can this possibly end well?
Ariela and Biniyam
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With 36 days left in their 90-day saga, Ari isn’t feeling well, which prompts her intrusive, visiting ex-husband, Leandro, to ask when she last got her period. Her fiancé, Bini, can’t drive, and Leandro offers to take him to the drugstore to get a pregnancy test. Ari decides she should go back to bed because this scenario of her ex-husband and her husband-to-be running this errand means that she’s lost at life.
In the car, Leandro and Bini have the world’s most awkward conversation. Leandro asks Bini how many kids he wants. Bini says 10, and Leandro assures him that Ari isn’t going to go for that. When they return home with the test, Leandro asks Ari how many more babies she wants, and she says maybe one.
“It’s like my ex-husband knows me better than my future husband — just kidding,” she says, not kidding at all.
Ari takes the test, and Bini crosses his fingers that it’ll be positive. The test is negative. Leandro finally leaves town and goes home, while Ari worries about fundamental differences that she has with Bini, such as wanting 10 versus two more kids.
The next morning, Bini and Ari get breakfast burritos at a pancake house. Ari expresses her frustrations that Bini’s family doesn’t get along with her and that he doesn’t like Leandro, who she still considers family. In an interview, Ari laments that she still doesn’t even know who she is herself — but we can tell her that she’s a person who has just a few weeks to figure that out before lives are changed forever.
Kara and Guillermo
Kara and Guillermo have 21 days left before they need to tie the knot. They attend what she thinks is his first rodeo, but he informs her during a joint interview that it is indeed not his first rodeo and there is a comparable tradition in Venezuela.
In the wake of his brother dying, Kara has realized that it’s important to compromise with Guillermo on the wedding plans to make him happy. While they’re out at the rodeo, she offers to plan a bigger wedding than she was ready to have that takes his feelings into consideration.
Jibri and Miona
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Jibri goes on a hike with Cheyne, his awesome lesbian grandmother, to talk about how he’s feeling about marrying Miona with just 38 days to go.
“My grandma’s a gangster,” Jibri says with love in an interview. “She definitely is always there for me and she’ll do whatever it takes. She understands me in a unique way that not most people would.”
Jibri is really starting to doubt that he should marry anything other than the music and art that he loves making with his band, Black Serbians. Gangster Grandma says she’ll support him no matter what he decides to do, but she offers to officiate the wedding if there is one, which is a happy thought for Jibri.
Later, Jibri and Miona hit the bar in matching sweaters to get serious and make a decision on what they’re going to do. He says he doesn’t want a spoiled princess, he wants a queen who he can build an empire with for the rest of his life.
“I’m not that bougie,” Miona says. “I’m from Serbia.”
Patrick and Thais
A week after they return to Dallas from Las Vegas, Patrick is still refusing to marry Thais if she won’t tell her father back in Brazil that they’re getting married, which they must do in the next 39 days in order for her to stay. He goes out for beers with his brother, John, and his friend, Wagner, who jokes about Thais letting Patrick out of the house and the amount of control she has over him.
“Do you want me to talk to her?” John, who always fights with Thais, asks Patrick. “Someone has to have the testicular fortitude!”
Later, John and Thais are in the kitchen, and Thais is cooking Stroganoff. John tastes some and throws it in the trash when Thais isn’t looking. Thais leaves the room, but eavesdrops on John’s conversation with Patrick, which includes talk about the “100 hookers” John wants to bring to Patrick’s bachelor party. Thais comes back out, yells at John, and makes Patrick choose her over strippers.
John says in an interview that he already knows how this is all going to go, so he’s going to throw that bachelor party.
Bilal and Shaeeda
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Shaeeda will have to go back to Trinidad, where she operated her own yoga studio, if she and Bilal don’t get married in the next 50 days. She invites Bilal and his two kids to do yoga with her in the park, but Bilal spends the whole time joking around with his kids and not taking it seriously.
Three days later, Bilal’s ex-wife Shahidah comes over to talk to Shaeeda alone. They have only met once for a few minutes and Bilal hadn’t set up any further meetings, which bothered Shahidah, who’s concerned about what will happen to the assets and generational wealth that are earmarked for the kids if there is no prenuptial agreement.
Shaeeda says in an interview that she’s nervous and sweating and keeps “grinning like a Cheshire cat” in order to satisfy Shahidah’s questions, but they’re both left feeling uneasy.
“Welcome to America, Shaeeda,” she says to herself.
Next Time
Guillermo looks like his feet are cold the day before the wedding and Bilal and Shaeeda are still hashing out the prenup, while Yve and Mohamed are on the edge of him returning to Egypt, and there are tears. Plus, Miona sits down with Jibri’s mom, Patrick goes suit shopping and Emily’s period is late, which could really mess with her dad’s one rule: Don’t get pregnant again! Wow, is it next week yet?
90 Day Fiancé, Sundays, 8/7c, TLC (Streaming, discovery+)