Season 35 of Dancing With the Stars sent home its only same-sex pairing in week one. It also sent the other couple home with a brand-new pro.
Some context.
Look, Dancing with the Stars has spent several seasons widening what a partnership on that floor can actually look like.
The show has run same-sex pairings before. One made the finale back in 2021. And for a format that was rigidly gendered through most of its existence, that shift genuinely mattered to viewers who spent years watching a competition that never seemed to have room for them.
Season 35 premiered this week with exactly one same-sex pairing in the cast.
After the women competed for the first time, that pairing went home.
The reaction split precisely where you would expect it to.
The Results
Sarah Jane Nader and professional partner Hailey Bills were eliminated after the first round of competition.
They were the only same-sex pairing on the season.
Conner Leavitt and Adele Zaikman also went home this week.
Here Is What Nobody Is Leading With
Both eliminated pairings were partnered with new professionals.
Hailey Bills and Adele Zaikman are both new this season. Zaikman came to the show by winning the competition to find the next pro.
So week one of season 35 eliminated the two couples anchored by the newest pros on the entire cast.
That points somewhere structural instead of at any individual dancer, and it is the most concrete fact in this whole conversation.
The Bias Argument
Plenty of viewers argued the result came down to audience prejudice.
One post celebrating the elimination went openly political, claiming people were “tired of having a woke agenda shoved into everything they watch.”
The response came fast.
“‘Woke agenda' is apparently what we're calling two women dancing now,” one user fired back. “Nobody shoved an agenda at you. You voluntarily watched a dance show, saw two women dancing, got offended by their existence, and then celebrated their elimination like you personally defeated the LGBTQ+ community.”
Another went at the format's own history. “Hey so the Argentine tango is traditionally danced by two men and a same sex couple got to the finale in 2021.”
The Boring Argument
The counterargument is far less dramatic, and several viewers made it without any hostility at all.
“Or it could be that 1. They're not well known and 2. They weren't very good,” one wrote.
Another spelled out the fuller version. Lower social media following, a new pro, and a cast absolutely stacked with more recognizable names.
Which fits the structural pattern. Week one on this show has always rewarded fame and existing fanbases over technique, because people vote before they have had any time to get invested in anybody.
Now, to be precise about it. Nobody can see inside voting behavior. An elimination result cannot prove motive in either direction, and anybody claiming certainty about why millions of individual votes got cast is guessing.
Both readings are plausible. Neither one is provable.
The Judging Criticism Is Sharper
Separate from the elimination entirely, a lot of viewers objected to how the pairing got discussed on air.
Several went after judge Carrie Ann Inaba's commentary as sexualizing rather than evaluating.
“I'm pretty sure one of the points of them dancing together is to get away from that mindless drooling ‘oOoOoH LeBiAnS' stereotype,” one viewer wrote.
Another made it personal. “Yeah i immediately said ‘eww' like as a lesbian her comments made me uncomfortable. Like this is the exact thing queer people have been fighting against for years, calling two girls dancing together hot is weird.”
Viewers also quoted the actual structure of the critique. “The hot factor was there. It was out of sync.”
That complaint carries more weight than the voting theory, because it concerns something genuinely said on a broadcast rather than an inference drawn about anonymous votes.
The Taylor Hanson Thing
A completely separate conversation has picked up around another contestant, and this one needs care.
Taylor Hanson's casting has revived social media discussion of past controversies involving his brothers and bandmates, Isaac and Zac.
Those claims circulate widely, they are not independently verified here, and not one of them concerns Taylor. The most detailed post going around says outright that Taylor has stayed neutral, while pointing to his work platforming the restoration of Vernon AME Church, the only standing structure from Historic Black Wall Street, and his involvement with Food on the Move in Tulsa.
Keep those threads separate. Taylor Hanson is the one competing. Unverified allegations about other people are not his to carry.
One Week In
Season 35 has lost its only same-sex pairing and both of its newest pros.
Whether those facts connect the way some viewers believe is not something an elimination result can establish.
What is verifiable is that this season's narrative is already partly about who is voting and why, which is nowhere a competition show wants to be seven days in.
The judging criticism may well outlast everything else here. Broadcast commentary is a permanent record. Voting motive never will be.
This article reflects public social media reaction. Claims about individuals referenced in that reaction are unverified, and voting motive cannot be established from elimination results.
