Nick and Vanessa Lachey explain why ‘Love is Blind’ Season 8 spends so much time in the pods

Nick Lachey and his wife Vanessa Lachey, who co-host the American version of “Love Is Blind,” say the eighth season is different than the rest.

“They spent a lot of time airing the pods in this season because a lot of stuff went down in the pods,” Vanessa Lachey tells TODAY.com. “Everyone was very much wanting to learn about the other people and wanting to learn about themselves. They weren’t taking it light-hearted.”

The show takes its name to the extreme, having singles go on dates in “pods” where they can’t see each other. Couples need to get engaged before they can see each other and test if their physical compatibility matches the emotional connection they’ve already formed.

Vanessa Lachey says that Season 8 was different than previous seasons as many singles kept multiple people in consideration for their top spot.

“They didn’t just come in guns blazing going, ‘We need to get engaged,’” she says. “They really pulled back the curtain, if you will, and peeled back the layers of themselves and the couples to really get down to it.”

Nick Lachey tells TODAY.com that compared to Season 7, which was set in D.C. and had contestants that were more “intense” and “all professionals,” he says Season 8, set in Minnesota, was a “different sensibility.”

“Minnesota is totally Midwest,” he says. “It’s just a different pool of people here. So, every season’s different. And I think what people will find in this particular season is that it’s very, very … I don’t want to say sweet, but it’s more, it’s more heartfelt.”

He continued to tease Season 8, noting that all the contestants are vastly different.

“You can’t predict them,” he says. “They all have their own personalities, and they all take their own arcs. I think people will be really, really, really excited when they when they see the season. It’s one of my one of my favorites.”

Vanessa Lachey agrees, adding that it’s also one of her favorite seasons.

The Lacheys say they, like viewers, make their predictions about who will get married.

“We are just like every couple watching it, you’ve got the male perspective, the female perspective, and we still do that to this day,” she says. “We watch and he’ll come and be like, ‘I’m telling you, the but look in his eye, he was checked out,’ and I’m like, ‘Babe, she’s ready to get there.'”

After eight seasons of the show, Vanessa Lachey says that she still can never quite tell if a couple will get married.

“But that is the beauty of the show — there’s high highs, there’s low lows,” she says. “They’re figuring each other out. They’re figuring everything out in a condensed time period.”

Over the course of seven seasons, 13 marriages have come to be as well as two babies, with a third on the way.

“It’s just a show that we’re proud to be a part of,” Vanessa Lachey says, adding that they do keep in touch with the couples.

“Something that we like to do is when they do their family grows, we acknowledge it, and we reach out,” she says. “And also, their first-year anniversary, Nick and I always try to reach out and do something for the couple.”

She says the first year is usually the hardest, especially for the “Love is Blind” couples, who live “underground” for a year as to not spoil the show’s ending.

“It’s incredibly gratifying for us to be a part of a show that brings people together who normally would have never met,” Nick Lachey says. “They’re taking a chance to put themselves out there in a very unconventional way and to see something beautiful come out of that. What’s better than that?”

The couple believes they would have found each other if they were put into the pods as contestants on the show.

“We also have the same beliefs on core, fundamental things,” Vanessa Lachey says. “About what we believe in terms of respect in a relationship, about what we want in a family, about how we want to raise our kids, about how we want to treat each other, our love languages, all of those things are pretty similar. So again, we joke, but Nick says, ‘I would find you through a wall.’”

“I really, honestly believe that,” Nick Lachey chimes in.