The other shoe fell in the wake of the “Summer House” scandal. Amanda Batula will not be returning for season 11 of the Bravo show, Variety has learned. While this development may be obvious, there were still some in the Bravo sphere who thought she might be able to return, given that Batula started a romantic relationship with castmate West Wilson, who was also kicked out of the show, and changed her life and career forever.
But Batula, the estranged wife of Summerhouse founding member Kyle Cooke and her former best friend and rising star Ciara Miller, hasn’t been possible since she started dating Wilson in March, shocking both parties. As Bravo executive Noah Samton said in a June 16 interview with Variety, the cast of “Summer House” must live with each other as friends. “Summer House is unique in the Bravoverse,” Samton said. “If you have two housewives who don’t like each other and can’t get along, you can still shoot a scene and go back to your own house at the end of the day. In ‘Summer House,’ they actually live together. So if people really have problems with each other, they can’t live in a house together. And we don’t do that to our cast.”
The controversial romance between Wilson and Batula, half-heartedly dubbed #Scamanda, was acknowledged by the pair in a joint Instagram post on March 31, although the nickname never caught on like #Scandvar in spring 2023. The new couple then faced music at the “Summer House” reunion, which was taped three weeks later, but things didn’t work out. During the three reunion episodes that began on May 26, they appeared drugged, vacillating between mostly defensive postures and furious rants (mainly from Batula).
In fact, they weren’t so forthcoming that Bravo scheduled an additional episode, “Summer House: Afterward,” in an attempt to get more answers from them. “When you watch the reunion, as incredible as it is and as great a show as it is on TV, you walk away feeling a little bit frustrated because of West and Amanda’s attitude,” Samton said. “They did not explain themselves in a satisfactory way.”
Season 10 of “Summer House” was already doing great, but the scandal caused the show to hit record ratings. With the exception of Batula and Wilson, the majority of the season 10 cast, including Miller, Carl Radke, Kyle Cook and Lindsay Hubbard, are expected to return when filming for season 11 begins in July in the Hamptons. Also expected to return are Wilson’s former best friend Jesse Solomon, freshman cast member Mia Calabrese, and other newcomers added in season 10. As always, we’ll also be joined by an all-new cast. Ben Waddell, a new cast member for season 10 and former star of the Australian version of The Bachelor, will also not be returning for season 11.
Cooke and Hubbard’s return to Summer House may come as a surprise to some critics and fans of the Bravoverse. They believed that the spin-off “In the City,” led by them and Batula, was designed to graduate the veteran cast, while “Summer House” revolved around a new (and young) cast.
“In the City,” which premiered May 19 after the “Summer House” finale, was never a sure thing, and since “Summer House” has revolved around Cooke and Hubbard since its 2017 premiere, that assumption was never correct. In a recent interview with Gibson Johns on the Gabbing With Gib podcast, Hubbard said: “Let me just say this: Last year was the plan to be a transition year, and the new plan is for this year to be a transition year.”
Of course, Bravo hasn’t renewed “In the City” yet, but they probably will. So the question arises whether Batula, who is very unpopular among Bravo fans at the moment, will return to the show. If there was a second season of In the City, filming would begin after production on Summer House wrapped after Labor Day, so it could be time for Batula’s fortunes to change. When asked to speculate on the prospects for Batula’s “In the City,” Samton said, “I think if you’re doing a show about a group of friends, they need to be friends to some degree. So if there’s a world where Amanda could make sense with that cast, it’s certainly a possibility.”
Amanda Batula first appeared on the first season of ‘Summer House’ in 2016 as Cook’s season 1 hookup and later became his girlfriend. (However, Cooke’s famous mantra, “Summer is supposed to be fun!” ends with Cooke saying, “Amanda? It’s not fun.”) The two got engaged in 2018 and married in front of cameras in September 2021 after their wedding was postponed due to the coronavirus. A feud between the two, largely instigated by Cook, came to a head in the summer of 2025, and they announced their split in January of this year. During Season 10, a newly confident Batula, who appeared to despise Cook from the first moments of the premiere episode, finally broke free of Cook’s belittling and abusive behavior and appeared ready to begin a triumphant post-divorce storyline.
Instead, she continues to align herself with the despised Wilson, who was kicked out of “Summer House” and her prospects for future television appearances are uncertain.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated due to Ben Waddell’s retirement.
