Big Love (Hulu's Version)
Spoilers included for seasons 1-2 of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives
So, I recently finished watching the first two seasons of the Hulu reality show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
In short, the series follows a group of Mormon (Latter-Day Saints) women and TikTok influencers that live in Utah and formed “#MomTok” during and after COVID-19. The moms-slash-influencers gained a major following on TikTok through wholesome choreographed dances by the moms in question, generally clad in athleisure, Stanley cups pictured around them. Because of these videos, they have gotten some very lucrative brand deals. The other members of the original #MomTok #squad who are featured on the show include: Whitney Leavitt, Layla Taylor, Demi Engemann, Jessi Ngatikaura, Jen Affleck, Mikayla Matthews, Mayci Neeley, and Miranda McWhorter.1
However, in 2022, the group was shattered by the scandal in which it was revealed that multiple members in the group were swingers, including the group’s defacto leader, Taylor Frankie Paul. Taylor hopped on TikTok and claimed that her and her then husband, who were getting a divorce, had been “soft swinging”2 with other members of her friend group, but she had broken the rules so to speak and gone all the way with an unnamed man in the group, and everything blew up.
Taylor began posting updates of her life in Utah as a single mom and TikTok icon, and eventually, Dakota Mortensen (who is NOT the man that she swung all the way with) began appearing in her videos. In March 2023, Taylor was arrested on assault and domestic violence charges after admitting she “went ballistic” and threw metal chairs at Dakota after he “threw her out” in her garage3. She accepted a plea deal that September, the month in which her and Dakota revealed they were expecting a baby together, at which point season 1 of the Hulu show begins.
Now that we’ve gotten that background out of the way, here are some thoughts about the show in its run.
The show’s theme song is like uncanny valley sexy, and it’s kind of unnerving, which well, is probably the point.
So, despite their extensive plastic surgery4 and usage of ketamine, all these women are definitely quiet MAGA/MAHA devotees. Mikayla revealed in a podcast that she thinks root canals are poisonous and harbor infection, and Demi is tackling her infertility issues with “energy healing” (whatever that is) instead of like, going to a OBGYN or looking into IVF. That said, the show is very apolitical, at least on an electoral level, even though I guarantee that all these women’s husbands (and probably some of them too if they’re even registered to vote) voted for Donald Trump, which is honestly unique for mainstream media personalities circa 2025.
Whitney is honestly one of my low key favorites (despite her doing insane shit like posting a TikTok of her dancing in front of her baby who was in the in the NICU with RSV). Here’s the rest of my ranking. Miranda is only on season 2 but she feels so much more real than the rest of the women, and despite her role in the swinging scandal, seems like a genuinely nice person and a good friend.
Mikayla and Layla5 being several years younger than the other women on the show is very apparent. They’re both in their early 20s with multiple kids, and were both teen moms: Mikayla got pregnant with her first child when she was 16, and the father, who she married, was 21, while Layla, the singular LDS convert on the show, got pregnant at 19, and by 23, was divorced with 2 kids. Layla being the only non-white woman in the group could be so much more interesting than it is, but I almost feel like the show is scared of touching that facet of her identity, and I wonder why.
It’s kind of fascinating how the women use the church as an aspect of their personal brand. They use secular music in their videos and dress in revealing outfits (complete with ghastly hair extensions), but still very performatively maintain their identity as Mormon women. In fact, one of their videos literally teases the concept of “sisterwives” since well, nothing is more stereotypically Mormon than polygamy. Moreover, it’s kind of morbidly funny how (extensive) plastic surgery and ketamine therapy are a-okay but like, having a glass of wine or cup of coffee are unforgivable sins.
Maycie honestly seems like the only woman in the group who’s remotely well adjusted. She got pregnant at 19 when she was a freshman at Brigham Young University and the father of her child died in a car accident during her pregnancy, but she met her now husband and from what we can see, he seems to be the least terrible husband on the show, which definitely helps her not become utterly unhinged at the smallest inconveniences (cough cough Taylor).
I think it’s funny that despite their motherhood being the premise of MomTok and the show in general, the women’s kids are basically props. Sarah MacLean, who’s a prominent romance writer, has said before she hates writing kids in romance novels since they’re almost always cloying and annoying and distract from the main plot, and well, I think the Mormon Wives sort of agree lol.
In season 2, Demi is basically sets herself up as the “big bad” who’s trying to take over MomTok despite the fact Taylor is the OG, and at one point, Taylor says about Demi, “I’m not scared of her but she’s a scary girl”, and honestly, I get it, Demi seems kind of like she’s about to snap and it’s not cute. In the final episode of season 2, Demi, who’s struggling with infertility, breaks down because some of her friends are pregnant, and I honestly thought she looked like she was going to slap Mayci, and that … is not healthy.
I’m sorry but none of these women have an IQ above like 95. At one point, Layla shows Taylor a group chat with all the other women where they’re trashing Taylor and when Taylor confronts them, Layla says absolutely nothing. It’s cowardly yes, but it’s also just plain stupid like why would Layla do that and then go full “cat got her tongue” and why would the other women not call Layla out on sharing the chat? Does nobody on this show think about cause and effect and like, follow through on logical inconsistencies?
Mikayla’s backstory is honestly horrifying. She was sexually abused for much of her childhood, and then, she got pregnant at 16 by a 21-year-old, and married him, so at only 24, she has a 2nd-grade child. Season 2 shows her going to therapy and trying to combat the demons in her past, including her own mother not believing her abuse, but I think that being so involved in the church might be hindering her process since it doesn’t feel like she’s made any progress on letting go of the shame.
A quiet implication of the show, one that the women on the show don’t even seem entirely cognizant of6, is that every single one of their male partners is so utterly consumed by the patriarchy inherent to the Mormon church and it’s metaphorically the Big Brother of their entire lives. Aside from the infidelity and constant accusations of impropriety and public shaming from their husbands and community, there’s a very real financial conflict implicitly underpinning these women’s romantic relationships. Prior to #MomTok, their husbands were the sole breadwinners of the household, but once #MomTok took off, the women became inundated with brand deals and soon, they began to outearn their husbands, and the power dynamics within their marriages shifted. These women gaining financial autonomy severed their unequivocal interdependence to their husbands, and the men rightly see that as threatening the very fabric of their society, antithetical to everything they’ve ever known.
One of the wildest moments of the show is when the women are all talking about the Mormon temple, Jessi accidentally says that she doesn’t understand how anybody knows that God exists and the other women at the table stare at her like she’s insane, since clearly, none of them have ever considered the prospect of God NOT existing. I honestly am curious to see if any of these women will end up leaving the Mormon church, and my money’s on Taylor.
In the final episode, Taylor is invited to the CMAs, but when she posts on Instagram, none of the other women comment on the photo, and Taylor entirely melts down over it. Obviously, it’s irrational that she gets that upset, but when your friend gets that upset about a little thing, there is USUALLY something else that’s wrong, and it’s your responsibility as her friend to figure out what, not, as Jessi does, accuse her of playing the victim. But the reality is that a lot of these women aren’t really friends, they’re well, the icy sisterwives of Hulu. For that reason, among others, it would really surprise me if this show goes beyond season 3. Unlike the Vanderpump Rules cast, these women don’t seem to genuinely like each other enough to care when they’ve been betrayed, and that doesn’t make for good reality TV. There isn’t enough emotional resonance to pack a punch.
All that said, I really am looking forward to the next season of the show, and if anybody has any opinions, comments are open.
And, as always, this is me @ myself.
Everybody on the show besides Rachel and in season 2, Miranda has denied being involved in the swinging. I personally think that one or all of them is lying.
In her own words, no one went “all the way” together unless their spouses were in the room
I think that Taylor is protecting Dakota and was actually acting in self-defense because aside from the fact that I doubt the Utah police would just let her get away with “domestic violence” scot free and be on TV if she actually put her children in danger, there is no way in which this woman is physically capable of actually injuring this man in a way such that he needed to call the police. I hate to break it to the “reverse sexism is real” people online but a 5’4” woman who’s like 120-125 pounds isn’t physically capable of doing much physical damage even if she wanted to.
Looking at Demi before and after her plastic surgeries is kind of jarring. She doesn’t just look like a better version of herself, she looks like a completely different person.
I have a pet theory that Layla is actually the Rachel/Raquel (of Vanderpump Rules’ #Scandoval infamy). Bret, Demi’s husband, is accused of cheating on her, and because of a “joke” Demi made about Layla having Bret’s baby since Demi is infertile, I think Layla might have slept with Bret, either without Demi’s knowledge or with it. This is why I think some or all of the women are outright lying about now being involved in the swinging like there are just some very weird comments here and there, and my hunches are almost always right.
In the show, Taylor refuses to marry Dakota even though he keeps on pushing because he fucked a girl the night before they hooked up for the first time, and after they had sex for a week, he fucked someone else the next weekend, and lied about all of this to Taylor. Taylor refusing to marry the father of her child, regardless of the social and familial pressure to do so, is that it’s one of the only real ways she can take agency and put her foot down in the Mormon community, but the only reason she can do that is because she has her own money from #MomTok, even though that autonomy is antithetical to the role of women in the Mormon church.
When was the last time you ate some avial?