The wives are back with more drama than ever as season three of the hit Hulu series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, is set to be released Thursday.
In 2022, Mormon mom influencer Taylor Frankie Paul announced to her 3.5 million TikTok followers that she was getting divorced after “soft swinging” with her friend group.
Three years later, the drama has snowballed into a must-watch reality TV show that unseated The Kardashians’ 2024 viewership and landed Paul, 31, the lead role in ABC’s upcoming season of The Bachelorette, and two of her castmates competing on the current season of Dancing With the Stars.
Ahead of the November 13 season three premiere ofThe Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, here’s everything you need to know about the Utah scandal that launched a cultural phenomenon.
What is MomTok?
Layla Taylor, Miranda McWhorter, Jessi Ngatikaura, Mikayla Matthews, Mayci Neeley, Taylor Frankie Paul, Jennifer Affleck, Whitney Leavitt and Demi Engemann star in the Hulu reality show Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (Getty Images)When TikTok was gaining popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic, a group of young Mormon moms started to attract a following on the video platform. Paul rose to fame as one of the first of these influencers, becoming known for her dancing and vlogging videos about her life as a married mom of two living in Draper, Utah.
By January 2022, Paul joined forces with other Utah-based influencers and began filming videos with Whitney Leavitt, Mayci Neeley, and Mikayla Matthews. The four began tagging their videos #MomTok. Often dancing together and joking about their religious lifestyles, the women were soon joined by Layla Taylor, Jennifer Affleck, Demi Engemann, Miranda McWhorter, and Jessi Ngatikaura, who are all featured on the Hulu show.
Collectively, MomTok gathered millions of followers and, from an outside perspective, appeared to be made of close friends. The crew dressed similarly in athletic wear, joked about being “sister wives,” and were raking in brand deals left and right.
Then it all came crashing down.
The “soft swinging” scandal
Taylor Frankie Paul revealed in 2022 she had broken the ‘soft swinging’ agreement (Invision/AP)In May 2022, Paul posted a TikTok revealing her split from her husband Tate Paul. In a video posted to the song “Malibu” by Miley Cyrus, she added the text, “In my twenties, getting divorced, started therapy, living on my own for the first time ever along with two little kids.”
The update sent shock waves through fans of MomTok, as TikTok users raced to the comments and asked what broke up the former couple, who married in 2016. Paul then hinted more at the drama with a video of moving boxes accompanied with a cryptic message.
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“My life falling apart. And I can’t even speak on why … without bringing them all down with me,” she wrote.
The truth came out May 25, 2022. Paul went on a livestream and solemnly revealed that she and her husband had been in an open relationship that consisted of “soft swinging” with other couples in their friend group. For the Pauls, this meant that they didn’t go “all the way” with other people unless their spouse was in the room.
“The whole group was intimate with each other,” Paul said in the video, which quickly went viral. “All of us were pretty open to it and on board for it. Obviously no one was forced. We did this on occasion. We would have parties and everyone by the end of the night would go and do all that.”
She went on to confess that she had broken the group’s rules by being intimate with someone else’s husband, who she fell in love with.
Paul added that “the majority” of MomTok wasn’t involved in the “soft swinging” agreement, but the damage was already done. Speculation grew rampant over which of the other MomTok influencers were involved in the arrangements. She told her followers that she was being “shunned” by her former Mormon friends, while most of the influencers put out videos denying the raunchy escapades.
What to know about next season
#MomTok started growing on TikTok in 2022 (Hulu)Following all of the above context, SLOMW was a smash hit on Hulu as viewers immediately clamored for more episodes after season one aired in September 2024. The series returned for season two in May with new cast member Miranda McWhorter, one of the original MomTokers who came forward to admit that she and her ex-husband took part in the “soft swinging.”
Now, after the series was nominated this year for best outstanding unstructured reality program at the Emmy Awards, season three will drop all 10 episodes Thursday. According to Hulu, the new season will reveal more twists and turns.
“The members face a crisis of friendship as loyalties shift, trust is tested, and the lines between fact and fiction blur,” Hulu’s synopsis reads. “When the pursuit of the truth calls character into question, a war over morality begins and a clash between #Momtok and #Dadtok erupts. With their sisterhood and everything they’ve built hanging in the balance, can the women find a path forward to salvation? Or will their collective sins destroy #Momtok for good?”
The new episodes will be available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu.
