Forget cuffing season — it’s Love Is Blind time. The teaser trailer for Love Is Blind Season 3, premiering Oct. 19, has arrived, introducing fans to yet another pod squad looking for love in the most unexpected of places: behind a glowing blue wall. The upcoming season follows a new cast of characters from Dallas who are willing to find out if they can get engaged without ever seeing their partner face-to-face. After the news-making headlines about Season 2, fans may expect the Season 3 cast to be chasing a similar high — and Instagram–fame making narratives. 

But, as creator Chris Coelen reveals, the new contestants aren’t exactly working from experience in Season 3. This cast filmed Love Is Blind immediately after Season 2, over a full year ago. They never saw Deepti’s “I choose myself” moment or Shayne and Natalie’s complicated romance before they stepped in front of the camera. 

 “You think that people are going to have an expectation coming into a show that’s formed based on what they’ve seen on a previous season. But this show just confounds all expectations at every turn,” Coelen tells Tudum. “No matter how you come into it, it elicits these real, authentic feelings from people — no matter what happens.” 

As Love Is Blind viewers know, those honest encounters can lead to a Love Is Blind wedding, a breakup — or sometimes both, as in the case of Season 2 married couples Iyanna and Jarrette, and Danielle and Nick. Iyanna and Jarrette announced their upcoming divorce ahead of the premiere of follow-up series After the Altar Season 2. But Coelen says the breakups ultimately shouldn’t change how viewers approach the new season. 

“I don’t personally measure the success of the show based on whether people stay together or don’t stay together,” he says. “From a producer standpoint, from a story standpoint, I don’t want [the participants] to think at all about the show.” 

So what does Coelen want for his cast — and for viewers to expect from Season 3? Keep reading to learn what Coelen has to say about the latest phase of his experiment, and watch the long-awaited teaser for what he calls the “most exciting season ever” of Love Is Blind. 

Each cast has its own vibe. How would you describe Season 3 and its cast? 
These people are all in. They’re dynamic, fun, fascinating, layered and vibrant. They’re truly committed to trying to go on a journey that’s going to find them love based on the noblest of reasons: who they are on the inside, and falling in love with someone for who they are.

Is the title, Love Is Blind, a statement the show is trying to prove — or more of a question? 
The show is absolutely not trying to prove that love is blind. When we originally did the title card for the show, one of the ideas was to have a moving graphic where the is and the love flipped. So it would say Love Is Blind and then Is Love Blind? Because that’s really the question of the show: Can love be blind? 

We all go into it thinking, “Of course it’s not.” The show sets up this experiment that really allows people to remove all of the modern-day distractions and disconnections and just see if they can fall in love with somebody by talking to them. Is that love strong enough to overcome anything the real world can throw at it? The real world is full of obstacles. They get in the way of people falling in love. People watching it hope that people who fall in love blindly can see their love sustain. But it certainly is not realistic to assume that that’s going to happen for everybody.

As we’ve now seen with the most recent cast, even getting married doesn’t mean that love will sustain a relationship forever. Do the recent divorce announcements affect the mission statement of the show? 
I don’t want [the cast] to think about whether or not they stay together. What I do care about is them going on a journey of discovery and getting to a place where they make the right decisions for them. The success of this show is for each individual — and added to that, each couple — to make the right decisions for them and for us to watch them grapple with what’s important to them within their relationships. That’s the measure of success.

So it’s a “success” regardless whether people stay together or break up? 
Whether a marriage lasts for their lifetime or whether it doesn’t, all of these moments and all these experiences have a really important place to play in peoples’ lives … Of course, it’s great that we have couples who are still together as a result of this experiment. But I think it would be just as fascinating if we didn’t have anybody still together. 

Personally, it’s an amazing feeling to know that you've been a tiny part of somebody's journey to find someone that they've chosen to spend the rest of their life with. To see people take risks that could result in that [milestone] — which the cast talks about wanting more than anything else —and genuinely put themselves out there, that’s an amazing thing to watch. Even if they don't reach it. 

What would you say to a fan who thinks the underlying message is, ultimately, Love Is Blind is a superior way of finding your life partner? 
We're not saying it’s a better way to meet somebody than any other way. It’s a different way. It’s a response to the way that most people do meet each other. It is a radically different way for people to meet each other. For some people this is going to work and for other people, it’s not going to work. 

Do you really think cast members get something out of the experience if it doesn’t work? 
Whether they even get engaged or not, people say that this has been as much a journey of self-discovery as it has been a journey of falling in love. They find out things about one another and about themselves that they never have really had the opportunity to do. They’re spending 10 days and almost two weeks doing nothing every single day except thinking about who they are, what they want, what’s important to them, what they want out of their lives, and what they want out of a partner and a relationship. 

What are you most excited about viewers seeing with the Season 3 cast? 
I think what's exciting about this season is that people are very, very... Well, I was going to say people are “very, very real” — not everybody on this cast is very, very real, which we have some fun with. We just try to be authentic. The majority of the cast is very authentic, and that leads to stories in really exciting directions.

Authentic casts can lead to intense conversations. What can you tease in that arena for Season 3? 
We try to be really true to the way that people approach delicate subjects. Different people talk about different things, and the beauty of the show is that people get into the issues that are important to them. I love that they talk about stuff. Nobody’s hiding anything.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.