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The biggest format shakeup since the founding season.
Seven couples, two experts, one new city — Seattle stacks more format change into one season than the show has tried since it left New York for the first time.
Group sessions make their return.
Seattle is the first season to film in the Pacific Northwest, and it arrives with the largest cast the format has ever fielded — seven couples, up from the five-couple norm of recent seasons. The expert panel is rebuilt from three voices to two, with Paul C. Brunson and Dr. Lisa Paz taking over the matching. Group sessions, where all the couples meet with the experts together, make their return after being dropped last season.
The #03 slot.
Slot #03 of 20 in the Married at First Sight Editor's Canon. Seattle earns this spot by raising the real stakes of the matching itself, not just moving cities. Two experts instead of three means each match carries more individual judgment and less committee cover — a genuine test of whether the format's psychological stakes hold with fewer voices at the table. Seven couples, the largest cast the show has fielded, means more legal marriages and more pressure on the experts' process at once. Add a first-ever Seattle season, and this is the most structurally ambitious run since the founding two proved the premise could travel. It doesn't unseat New York or its sequel, but it edges past every panel swap and cast expansion ranked below it.