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The panel grows to four.
Not a swap this time — an expansion. San Diego is the first season with four experts weighing in on every match.
A rhythm worth tracking.
San Diego is the first season to run with a four-expert panel — Dr. Viviana Coles exits, and DeVon Franklin and Dr. Pia Holec join Schwartz and Roberson at the table. It's a genuine expansion, not the usual one-for-one swap, and the biggest shake-up to who's running the matching process since Miami rebuilt the panel back in Season 4. Five new couples go through the format under four sets of expert eyes instead of three.
The #07 slot.
Slot #07 of 19 in the Married at First Sight Editor's Canon. San Diego ranks high because it breaks a pattern this canon has watched calcify over several seasons — the one-for-one expert swap that, by Charlotte, had already started to read as routine. Adding a fourth expert instead of simply replacing a departing one is a real structural bet: more perspectives weighing every match, more expertise brought to bear on couples who are still marrying total strangers under legal vows. It's the biggest change to who runs the matching process since Miami rebuilt the panel almost from scratch back in Season 4, and it comes at a point in the show's run where genuine risk-taking had gotten rare.