Ben Higgins may have chosen Lauren Bushnell during the final rose ceremony of "The Bachelor" season 20, but it does not mean that runner-up JoJo Fletcher will have no chance to find her true love. After Monday night's "After the Final Rose" special, ABC announced that JoJo will star in "The Bachelorette" season 12
The announcement came as a surprise since the network seemed to be building up another recent "Bachelor" contestant, Caila Quinn, as the next Bachelorette.
Earlier this month, photos were leaked online showing Caila being followed by cameras in her hometown of Hudson, Ohio.
E! News revealed that Caila almost had the gig, but she was replaced by JoJo at the last minute. According to a source, "It was nothing against Caila, but JoJo's storyline was just so compelling. After seeing how she fell in love with Ben and then had her heart broken, there was no doubt that everyone's going to be rooting for her as Bachelorette."
Caila seems not upset with the decision, since the source revealed that she is "doing great," and is preparing to move to New York in the coming days.
JoJo, on the other hand, will be the first Bachelorette of Persian descent. This could be the network's move to address the issue of a lack of diversity hounding the show.
In January, former ABC president Paul Lee revealed that they were doing everything to present a diverse cast for their long-running dating reality show.
"We're doing a whole lot of tweaks. We have the farm team, right, which allows us to pick the next one. But I'd be very surprised if 'The Bachelorette' in the summer isn't diverse," Lee said, as quoted by Variety. "I think that's likely ... The tweaks that [creator] Mike Fleiss has put in place will get us where we want to go."
"The Bachelorette" season 12 is slated to premiere in May 2016.
