Mormon Wives Season 5 Is Near, But With 1 Major Change

After months of controversy, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Season 5 trailer and release date have been revealed, and fans are in for another drama-packed visit to Utah when the show returns on Sept. 10.

“There’s so much stuff the public doesn’t know,” Mayci Neeley says at the beginning of the trailer, which teases the events leading up to Taylor Frankie Paul’s Bachelorette season being put on ice amid conflict with her ex and co-parent, Dakota Mortensen. “Why did you get my initials tattooed on your lips? It’s giving obsessed,” Taylor says on FaceTime, to which Dakota seems to reply: “I am obsessed.”

Elsewhere in the trailer, Whitney Leavitt’s Mormon Wives castmates visit her in New York during her Chicago Broadway run, where she wonders whether the group really does want each other to succeed — considering her continued rift with Jen Affleck, which also makes an appearance. There’s further tension teased between Jessi Draper and Jordan Ngatikaura, whose divorce was announced the same day that Taylor’s Bachelorette premiere was called off.

But how much of the divorce and Bachelorette fallout will actually be seen in Season 5? That’s the tricky part. People previously reported that filming paused in March — then, in May, cited a source who said production had reconvened, but would only include the cast recording confessionals (aka on-camera interviews). This report claimed that no other footage would be captured for Season 5, and that the new installment would run for a truncated five episodes, a count that Hulu has since confirmed. This will mark the shortest season in the show’s two years thus far.

Don’t worry, things will get back on track soon. Mormon Wives has been renewed for at least 20 more episodes that will ostensibly span a sixth and seventh season, Deadline reports. It’s a hopeful update following a period where fans have been genuinely wondering (to quote the show’s oft-repeated tagline): Can MomTok survive this?

Indeed, it’s been a major time of flux for the show’s cast between Taylor’s legal challenges and Whitney announcing her departure from future episodes — to name just a few group-rocking developments. “It’s such a huge chapter in my life, but I felt like everybody knew that it was time for that chapter to end,” Whitney recently told People of her looming exit. “Regrets? Plenty. But I wouldn’t change a thing.”