We Need To Talk About Keira, The Unspeakably Evil ‘Bachelor’ Villain

How do I begin to describe Keira Maguire?

Keira Maquire is flawed. I hear her hair’s the result of Lara Bingle being on the cover of Woman’s Weekly the day Keira walked into the hair salon. I hear she posts bikini shots… on Instagram. Her favourite movie is a mirror. One time she met Richie Strahan in a mansion… and he told her she was scary. One time she punched Alex-with-the-White-Rose in the face. It was coming.


Yes, Keira – who is quite frankly a producer’s wet dream and quite rightly gets about 50% of the total screen time – is this season of The Bachelor‘s villain. Even if you were thick as shit you could tell she is the villain. She shares a soundtrack with the almost-step mum from The Parent Trap, and her entire aesthetic is ‘on her way to steal your man’.

She’s fucking glorious.

The 29-year-old account manager / Instagram bikini model was the break-out star of last night’s episode, with producers giving her as much screen time as feasibly possible. Nicki gets the single date card, Keira is unimpressed. Keira gets a group date card, and it’s still not bloody good enough. Richie smiles at Sasha during their three-way group photoshoot on said group date, and Keira tells him “Eye contact. Look at me, please.”

Watching her is like watching a drunk train careen into a warehouse filled entirely with photos of ex-boyfriends. THIS, friends, is good TV.

Okay, let’s back it up a bit. Nicki gets the first single date, and Keira is extremely salty about it. So salty, in fact, that when she’s included on the group date (likely thanks to the producer with a gun to Richie’s head) she almost doesn’t go, because it’s not good enough. Single date or bust. Predictably, all the other girls remind her how selfish she’s being because some of them, like, totally would have gone (seriously guys, why are you bothering?), and predictably she goes anyway.

The group date is a 50s style photoshoot, a throwback to a happy and whimsical time when women were at the mercy of their husbands and societal pressures. Fun!

The first photoshoot features Richie with Kiki (looking like the literal embodiment of ‘sex on legs’), Faith and Tolyena in some kind of swimsuit shoot.

This turns out to be spectacular, for the sole reason that it gives us this shot of Keira and Sasha creeping round in bath towels, commentating.

Keira: “Mmmm, a little too sexual for my liking.” 

But it gets better. And here, you can tell producers are just taking the absolute piss.

Okay, bear in mind they JUST dressed the other contestants in these va-va-voom swimsuits…

…and then they turn Keira into the frumpy version of Sandra D in ‘Grease‘. 

I mean, she pulls it off. But wow. Baller move, Channel 10.

Her group photoshoot does not go well. Keira and Richie are the cute couple sharing a milkshake (lol! cute! so 50s!!!!!) and Sasha is the flirtatious waitress who supposedly just served it to them.
Keira seems unable to separate from fantasy and reality, spending the shoot getting snarky as shit whenever Richie’s eyes DARE stray on to Sasha.


Hmmm. You know what? On second watching, Sasha was definitely goading Keira. K-babes might be a total psycho but Sash is willing to play the game and poor Richie probably got whiplash going back and forth between the two. THE DRAMA! BRING. IT.

The final shoot for the date was a single one with Richie and Alex, and it was super romantic in the way that you can tell it was super romantic because the super romantic music was playing. Also, the camera lingered on their close-together faces for an extremely long time. Manufactured romance, tastes just like the real stuff.

~ TRUE LOVE ~ 
Keira: “Little too close, if you ask me.” 

Blah blah second single date. Richie gives Olena a whisper-thin red dress that looks absolutely bloody smokin’ (and is this writer’s current unachievable body goals) and KABLAMMO! It’s time for another cocktail party, and joy-of-joys Keira is drunk again.

Alex (as is her right) uses her white rose to steal Richie away for a cocktail party, and Keira is not fucking happy about it.


“Where are they with the white rose”
she says, using her eyeballs to mentally fire Alex into the sun.

The other girls – even if they’re jealous, and they probably are – have the grace to STFU about it, and try telling Keira to do the same. 
They’re unsuccessful. Shocker.

“At the end of the day, I have my opinion and my morals, and I can back it up,” Keira replies. “Unlike some people.”

Queue bitching, queue drama, queue ratings bonanza.

Keira, getting even more agitated, starts dragging her hands through her hair, and muttering, “Avoid, avoid, avoid the circumstances Keira, avoid it. Just don’t go near her,” which I’d put money on a well-meaning person (her mum, her corrections officer) has told her in the past.

Then Alex comes back from her alone time with Richie. The other girls ask how it was (amazing, duh). Keira pounces.


Keira [swigging champagne]: “I’m surprised that you actually did that tonight.”

Alex [stealing for a fight]: “Did what?”

Keira: “Baaaabe, come oooon. Seriously.”

And so on. This descends into a politely played-out bitch fight, where Keira claims she’s “just being honest” and Alex claims she “appreciates her honesty” even though they’re both lying through their fucking teeth.

Again, ON SECOND WATCHING, Keira kiiinda has a point. The white rose was a strategic move by Alex, and everybody knows it, but hey – this is a goddamn dating show with a bloke and (possibly) a media contract up for grabs.
I mean, Keira’s still in the wrong, going on and on and on about something she supposedly “doesn’t care about” but whatever.

Spoiler: Keira gets a rose (of course she does), Alex gets a rose, the only people who don’t get roses are the ones whose names we haven’t yet bothered to learn. No media contract for you, buh-bye.
Twitter is divided on the value of Keira, to which I say that if you’re tweeting things like ‘she’s bad’ and ‘go away’ then you’re wrong and also welcome to television, sweetie.


By the looks of things, Keira gets a single date next week. Can’t bloody wait.

Photos: Channel 10.

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