When a 28-year-old unemployed journalist named Westling Wilson, who goes by West, was enthusiastically embraced by Bravo fans during his first season on the reality TV show “Summer House” this year, it made some wonder: Could he keep the good vibes going?
Last week many viewers issued a resounding answer to that question: No. Over the course of the first episode of the “Summer House” reunion on Thursday, Mr. Wilson went, in some viewers’ eyes, from fan favorite to villain, due largely to the way he handled a breakup with his co-star, Ciara Miller.
Ms. Miller, a 28-year-old nurse and model from Atlanta who has been on the show for several seasons, is known for not warming easily to new people, which made it all the more surprising when she and Mr. Wilson seemed to hit it off almost immediately.
By the middle of the latest season, the two were cuddling, sleeping in the same bed at their shared Hamptons house and going on dates in New York City. Their will-they-or-won’t-they tension was a main story line, and audiences were fervently rooting for them to make it official.
Their romantic fate wasn’t revealed until last week, when Mr. Wilson and Ms. Miller said in the first episode of a two-part reunion that, after several months of dating — during which Mr. Wilson took her to Missouri to visit his parents — he told Ms. Miller in December that he wasn’t ready to commit to a monogamous relationship.
At the reunion, Andy Cohen, the host, prompted the two to litigate the breakup in front of TV cameras.
Ms. Miller said that Mr. Wilson told her he couldn’t commit “basically, for show-related reasons.”
Mr. Wilson then said that, at the time of the breakup, he was worried about what perceptions would be when the show began airing. He added that he had to make appearances with the heavily female Bravo audience — and that it would be a bad look “to go to these watch parties with women.”
A visibly flustered Mr. Wilson then said that another reason for breaking up with Ms. Miller, which he admitted was “narcissistic,” was that they were often referred to on social media as “Ciara and newbie guy.” He worried he would come off as a “dude who came onto the show and is just Ciara’s puppet the whole time,” as he put it.
This prompted a verbal evisceration from Ms. Miller’s best friend and co-star, Paige DeSorbo, who accused him of caring more about the “allure” of the show than about the “allure” of Ms. Miller.
Mr. Wilson said in an interview on Monday that he regretted using the show as an excuse for the breakup, but that he did so to avoid further hurting Ms. Miller’s feelings.
“I don’t think it was right to place the end of the relationship on those things,” he said. “I think I would’ve read more honest if I was just like, the relationship ran its course, I don’t think we were meant to be together, that’s it. I think me trying to deflect the actual relationship and name all these external things really made me sound like an idiot.”
As quickly as the pendulum swung in Mr. Wilson’s favor while the season was airing, after the first reunion episode, it swung back even more swiftly.
“I am never trusting a straight man ever again,” the comedian Joel Kim Booster wrote in a post on X. “I have been made to look a fool. Humiliated and devastated. You have made a powerful enemy, sir.” Mr. Booster had previously posted that he hadn’t liked a straight white man as much as Mr. Wilson since “friggin Bernie Sanders.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the good will of the Bravoverse turn so fast than it did on West,” read another post on X by the Bravo fan account @BravoOMG. “It took a total of seven minutes for the tides to turn.”
Mr. Wilson said that after filming the reunion in early May, he knew it hadn’t gone well, but he never expected the level of vitriol fans are now throwing at him.
“It’s so much worse” than expected, he said. “I thought people would be upset that we, like, didn’t work out. I had no clue that I would be getting the hate that I have gotten.”
Some have compared Mr. Wilson to Tom Sandoval, a star of Bravo’s “Vanderpump Rules,” who had an affair with a castmate while in a long-term relationship with another — a transgression better known as “Scandoval.” But other fans, and even Ms. DeSorbo, felt such a characterization was going too far.
Mr. Wilson called the comparisons to someone who cheated on his girlfriend of 10 years “shocking.” He added, “I feel like I’ve been, like, blacked out for the last five days.”
There is, of course, a learning curve when it comes to reality TV stardom. How Mr. Wilson handles the fallout of the reunion and filming for Season 9 this summer will dictate whether he’s due for a redemption arc — or if he’ll become another Bravo villain. He said that though his cast members gave him a hard time during the reunion, they have largely been supportive, reaching out to say, “‘We’ve all been hated from time to time, just give it time, you’ll be OK,’” he said.
Still, he expects the first few weeks of filming the new season to be awkward.
“Ultimately I think I handled the reunion horribly and was nervous and said the wrong things,” Mr. Wilson said. “But I still stand on the decision I made. I think our relationship ran its course. I hope that decision doesn’t haunt me forever, even though I still think it’s the right one.”
