The Truth About Eddie Lucas' Return To Below Deck
If you're a Below Deck fan, you may be surprised to learn that Eddie Lucas is making a comeback. Yep, the OG Below Deck cast member who appeared in Seasons 1-3 is back for Season 8. Speaking about his return to Vulture, the reality TV star said, "I felt like now would be a good time to come back and have a little bit of a redemption." He continued, "The way everything ended up the last season I was on left a really bad taste in my mouth. I wasn't proud of how I acted and how everything kind of played out," adding, "since then I've hopefully learned a lot, and I've hopefully grown."
In case you missed it, Lucas spent his last season of Below Deck cheating on his girlfriend with castmate Rocky Dakota, which caused Captain Lee to confront him. "Eddie and I had a very heart-to-heart discussion, and it was kind of sad," Captain Lee told The Daily Dish after the footage aired. "When I expressed my disappointment, he took that pretty hard, and it was a conversation that I didn't wanna have, but I had to." Lucas then appeared to leave the show for good.
Season 8 of Below Deck was affected by COVID-19
Or so we thought. "This season, Captain Lee didn't have Kate [Chastain] with him anymore and I think he needed a little ace in the hole. Somebody he could rely on," Lucas explained to Digital Spy. "He definitely reached out to me to come back and work with him again." And the rest is history — it's the clean slate we can only assume he wanted and needed.
However, it's safe to say that Lucas' return to reality TV yachting hasn't exactly been as smooth sailing as he thought it would be. Like many production companies, the team was in the middle of filming when the pandemic hit. Speaking to Metro.co.uk about the impact the virus had on the most recent season, Lucas revealed, "It's definitely going to affect the season in a quite massive way." As of this writing, the Season 8 is airing episodes shot in February 2020, so we guess we'll just have to tune in each week to find out exactly how the coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc the an already drama-filled show.