Everything We Know About the ‘Married at First Sight’ Australia 2021 Couples Retreat

This year, the experiment will be reinvented.

During the first five minutes of the premiere of Married at First Sight, we were not only introduced to the tears, fears and drama that is going to be an epic season, but we were also told about a never-before-seen element — the couples retreat.

“We’re going to shake things up,” Expert John Aiken told participants in a clip. “You are going to all be thrown in the deep end.”

While we don’t have much knowledge of how the group retreat will work, what we do know, is that the couples will be “sent away as a group” to live together under the same roof, while not only navigating their own relationships but also those of the others around them.

MAFS will also introduce “confession week”, which will unlock secrets and have participants baring their soul.

Of course, the series looks quite different this year, due to the ongoing global pandemic and is likely to produce a very different MAFS. While the premise of couples locking eyes for the very first time when they walk down the aisle is still very much alive, the “new normal” brings an unfamiliar setting with additional challenges.

“We incorporated a lot of government regulations this season,” Aiken told POPSUGAR in an interview before the series began. ”There was a COVID manager on set.”

Participants were tested for COVID-19 twice a week and temperature checks were conducted every time the cast and crew went to set.

“There was a real different shift in mindset and we took that extremely seriously,” he said. “It really changed the way we were on set, and we had to adjust the format as well and bring in new concepts like a Couples Retreat. We have communications, we have intimacy but you couldn’t do things like meet the parents or have homestays.

“It was so important that we have a cast that would buy into the process. If they don’t buy-in, it doesn’t work. These guys threw themselves in and as a result, we get the tears, we get the anger, we get the ups and downs, but that’s what you want.”