Married At First Sight RECAP: ‘Villain’ Jono brings the drama during the jaw-dropping reunion and it sends viewers into a frenzy of delight: ‘Is anyone else loving this?’

Jono McCullough has just cemented his place as the latest villain in Married At First Sight Australia after an explosive reunion on Sunday night, and viewers couldn’t be happier.

The groom, 40, kicked up the drama the moment he walked through the door hand-in-hand with Ellie Dix, following their texting scandal behind wife Lauren Dunn’s back. 

But when the spotlight fell on him during the final dinner party, he easily deflected attention by drumming up drama between couple Sara Mesa and Tim Calwell, and calling their tumultuous relationship into question. 

‘I heard Tim say that he felt like he was rushed at Final Vows and if he did have that time he would have made a different decision,’ Jono said, implying the groom doesn’t actually want to be in a relationship with Sara.

‘Deflection, deflection,’ groom Timothy Smith shouted out as the other couples were left stunned by the admission.

As the brides began questioning where Jono got this information, he continued to deflect back at Tim, 31, claiming it was all true. 

Jono’s plan appeared to work as Sara, 29, immediately turned her fiery temper to Tim, saying: ‘What did you say to Jono?’

‘I didn’t say I would have made a different decision, I said I potentially could have,’ Tim said, attempting to play down what he confided to Jono.

‘What do you mean?’ Sara shouted him, to which Tim replied: ‘It was a hectic rollercoaster.’ 

‘But that’s you saying that you would have said “no”,’ Sara pushed, though Tim continued to deny it.

Meanwhile, Ellie, 32, and Jono seemed to be having a happy time across the table, giggling together as Sara and Tim continued to argue.

‘I feel like we can’t laugh. Hold it in,’ Ellie said as Jono attempted to hide his smile behind his hand. 

‘Don’t look so [bleep] happy, you [bleep],’ Timothy told them.  

MAFS viewers flocked to X – formerly known as Twitter – to fans the flames of Jono’s new found villainy. 

One person wrote: ‘Jono sitting back like the cat who got the cream, revelling in the chaos.’

Another commented: ‘Jono is smiling because he’s successfully deflected the attention from himself. And for him and Ellie to be giggling is damn gross.’

‘Jono has made the show tonight I suppose. Weird thing is he’s brought a swagger completely opposite to anything he showed during the last however many weeks… it’s as though these folks are often playing a role,’ a third said.

‘This is so painful lol,’ yet another added, but many were quick to express their delight over the drama Jono drummed up among the other couples.

One happy viewer tweeted: ‘Is anyone else loving this? Can’t stand Jono or Lauren, awful pouting Sara is out of her box and her true psycho is about to emerge again, pure entertainment.’

Someone else wrote: ‘Well, this is certainly making up for the incredibly boring previous episode.’

While another said: ‘We need a villain origin story episode for Jono. This is messy but I can’t look away.’

‘Okay I know we’re all supposed to hate Jono, but he is bringing the drama tonight that we have been waiting for all season,’ a user commented.  

Another viewer wrote: ‘Jono just standing his ground quite enjoying it. He started an emotional rship [sic] with Ellie one week after vows (remember what was said by both) and yes he was friends with Ellie during Lauren’s and his rship [sic]. That is all.’

Despite his deflections and machinations, Jono and Ellie didn’t escape the spotlight completely after announcing their relationship.

After denying they had feelings for one another, the pair struck up a romance with one another only a few weeks after Jono and Lauren split at Final Vows.

And at Sunday night’s reunion, tensions came to a head when they finally faced the other brides and grooms as a couple.

They first travelled together to the party, holding hands in the car on the way and disparaging their former partners. 

‘I wish I got to do this with you the entire experiment, but never mind,’ Jono said to Ellie. 

‘You had to kiss a toad. I had to slay a dragon,’ a giggling Ellie replied. 

Arriving at the dinner party four weeks after filming ended, the couple walked in holding hands. 

The other participants were stunned, none more so than Jono’s former bride Lauren. 

‘She blanked me. Like, girl, I didn’t do anything to you. Like… You’ve got my sloppy seconds,’ Lauren said. 

‘You can say, like, hi to me. Like, I’ve got no issue with the girl but now I do, now it’s a problem. It’s just rude. So rude.’

Sara chimed in: ‘I think Jono’s a snake. Like, the fact that he actually messages, like, with another wife was nothing and then walk hand in hand with Ellie, it’s bulls**t.’

Jono insisted the pair are ‘so happy’ while Ellie said she felt like she had ‘won Married At First Sight’. 

‘She has no right to be upset and, if she is, I don’t really give a [bleep],’ Jono said of Lauren, before praising Ellie. 

‘It was worth crawling through hell on broken glass to end up with this beautiful woman,’ he said. 

The pair were invited to discuss their romance as soon as they sat down to dinner with the group.

‘Everyone says that I’m glowing and I’m like, “Yeah!” It’s not just the tan. It’s Jono,”‘ Ellie boasted. 

‘I’ve been so happy. Yeah, it’s been amazing. We barely spend a day apart. I wouldn’t change anything. Can I have a kiss?’ Jono said before the couple smooched. 

Jono explained that he and Ellie had bonded over a six hour phone call following the end of the experiment.  

Other participants noted how hurt Lauren seemed, and how ‘slimy’ and ‘smug’ Jono was behaving. 

‘Of course, I’m hurt. And I have been made to feel like I am just this, like, evil b***h that has these walls up, giving this nice guy a chance,’ a tearful Lauren said. 

‘The whole time, I am treated as this cold person because I’m reactive and I use swear words. Like, that makes me bad? 

‘I’ve got a loud voice and I swear. But that doesn’t make me a bad person. And he just put on this, like, nice guy act the entire time. Like, it’s so unfair,’ she sobbed. 

Jono and Lauren then came to blows, with a furious Lauren calling her former groom a ‘dog’. 

‘You’re the nastiest person I’ve ever met in my life, Lauren,’ Jono snapped back. 

While some seemed to enjoy the drama Jono and Ellie brought to Sunday night’s episode, many others were quick to condemn the couple. 

‘Oh Ellie don’t think you’re the cat that got the cream princess. If Jono did it too Lauren, he’ll do it to you eventually,’ said one person. 

‘Jono and Ellie are so classless! Pathetic,’ someone else wrote. 

‘I cannot believe Jono and Ellie coming to the reunion together and the nasty ass comments they were making in the car??? Ratty behaviour,’ one more said. 

‘Honestly Ellie and Jono are welcome to each other. They could bore each other to death. They don’t even have half a personality between them,’ said another.

Not everyone was rooting against the couple, with one person chiming in: ‘Lauren, you treated Jono like a POS right from the wedding. Of course he ended up with someone who actually respected him.’

‘Jono and Ellie are entitled to be together. It presents no moral or ethical problems. The cries of cheating or betrayal are confected outrage,’ someone else said. 

‘BUT…do they need to be so smug and flagrant about it?’ they added. 

The pair looked to be in good spirits when they were spotted on a romantic outing on the Gold Coast after the show finished filming. 

Jono and Ellie looked as loved-up as ever in December when the stepped out holding hands to catch up with their co-stars Eden Harper, Tim Calwell and Mike Felix.

Ellie and Jono are still feeling the heat on Married At First Sight thanks to their cheating scandal. 

Last month, tensions came to a head on the show when Lauren finally confronted husband Jono about texting fellow bride Ellie after she left the show.

Lauren’s heart was shattered when she found out her groom was secretly texting Ellie.

A dramatic episode saw Lauren demand to see Jono’s iPhone, only to discover he had texted Ellie hundreds of times after she left the experiment.

‘You reached out to her. These aren’t just relaying information that happened the night before, this is more than that. My stomach dropped,’ Lauren told Jono.

Jono finally admitted he had secretly been texting Ellie – but attempted to downplay their relationship as just platonic.