Mya Asked for an Empire. A Prince, a Decathlon, and a Golden Retriever Answered.

By Patio Gossip

Last episode Kween Cece put us through the wringer. Mya's Season 1 finale is Saturday brunch, and if you think brunch is safer, you should watch the episode before you scroll. I have notes.

If you haven't seen the Scottsdale season finale yet, check it out below, then we can unpack the warm mimosa together!

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Kween Mya Benway

Mya Benway is 23, originally from Minnesota, now living in Tempe with her entire family inside a twenty-minute radius. She built Gray Cloud (a loungewear brand) from an iPad, renovated and fully designed her own house in six months, and runs her career off YouTube because, in her words, "you really get to know someone in ten minutes versus thirty seconds." Shout out Shortcake, her French bulldog. She has customized Catan pieces that a friend had made for her. She walked out to "Clumsy" by Fergie and our host, Jack Yaeger, called her a queen who built her empire before 25.

Here's the setup you need before the dates start. When Jack asked her what an ideal man does for work, Mya did not say "kind." She said, on a hot mic, in front of Boondocks: "some sort of entrepreneur, or construction, really. I have a lot of business ideas in my brain and I need someone aligned with me to achieve those. I really want a power dynamic."

Power dynamic. Write that down. Everything that happens in the next forty-five minutes only makes sense if you remember she said those words out loud.

Three men. Ten minutes each. Blind dates. Let's go.

Date #1: Chace — Golden Retriever, Construction of Hoodies

Walk-up: "Let It Happen" by Tame Impala.

25, 6'2", originally from Portland, Oregon. Two years ago he interviewed for a Scottsdale job on Zoom without ever having set foot in Arizona, packed his car, and moved sight-unseen into an apartment he'd never visited. He now lives two blocks from Boondocks (no excuse for being late, as he pointed out during his casting call). He works in creative sales, does DJ sets on the side, hunts, fishes, plays baseball, and has golden retriever energy on record from at least three separate people including himself.

The first thing you need to know about how this date went: within the first two minutes, Mya killed mini golf as an ick, and when Chace pivoted to pickleball, she killed pickleball too. She's a tennis girl. (She was very clear: "pickleball is not a real sport.") Chace recalibrated to tennis in real time and survived.

Then the career question landed and it did not land soft. Mya said her ideal man is an entrepreneur or does construction. Chace's job is creative sales in custom apparel printing. Jack, who I am convinced has been waiting to deliver a line like this his entire career, jumped in with "construction of hoodies." Brutal. Accurate. Chace laughed. He took the hit with grace, which tells you something about him.

And then the real moment. Mya asked, in the middle of a hunting tangent, "do we like killing small innocent animals?" Chace hedged the way a man hedges when he knows half of America's single women won't text him back if he tells the truth. And Mya flipped it on him: "I'm a big fan. My dad grew up doing all of that." Green flag detonation, both sides, on stage. This is where Chace quietly won the date and he probably didn't even know it yet.

They traded breakup stories. Both had long relationships end over "walking different paths." Both claimed "great breakups" which Mya correctly flagged as impossible. They were aligned on that too.

Mya after: "With Chace I feel like it went really good. He was good banter. So sweet. I could see myself bringing Chace home for Christmas." Remember that bar.

Date #2: Devon — The Prince of Persia With a Warm Mimosa

Walk-up: "Canción del Mariachi" by Antonio Banderas and Los Lobos.

Devon swapped his walk-up to this one that morning, in the SHOWER, after he found out production had assigned him and Chace the same Tame Impala track and he heard Ilia's anthem come on. He made an entrance choice!

26, lives in Scottsdale. Originally from Michigan by way of Iran. His great-great-grandfather was the Shah of Iran, his family was literal royalty for 250 years, and yes, he dropped "Prince of Persia" into the first two minutes of the date unprompted. He owns EIGHT businesses. A private wellness spa (cold plunge, cryo, infrared sauna, the whole menu). Lead generation for real estate and wealth-management firms. Five life-optimization apps that work like Whoop but for spiritual, emotional, and financial tracking. He's a man of God. Doesn't work Sundays.

On paper Devon is EXACTLY the entrepreneur-with-power-dynamic energy Mya said she wanted. On paper.

Here's what he brought to the stage physically: a mimosa, strawberries, and a rose. He kept the rose in his shirt for an hour to keep it warm. When Mya said the mimosa was warm, Devon said, without breaking eye contact, "that's actually my favorite type of mimosa." Then he opened with: "I talked to your parents for thirty minutes before this started." (Mya, deadpan: "My mom loves to chat.")

He did a Jack Sparrow impression when Mya said Pirates of the Caribbean was part of her starter pack. He pulled a deep-cut personality test where your favorite color reveals how you see yourself (Mya: pink, cute, girly, happy. Devon: blue, emotional range, cold, deep). He walked her through all eight businesses including the one he "legally can't talk about." He dropped the royal lineage. And then he closed with THE line.

"Are you looking to build a homestead with a white picket fence, or are you looking to build an empire?"

Devastating. A finisher. Pure first-date game, tournament-level.

But. Mya afterward said she was "stumbling over her goddamn words." The Twitch chat was calling it a LinkedIn date in real time and Jack read it out loud on camera. The audience poll came back with at least one human voting ATROCIOUS. Devon didn't play it wrong. Devon played it TOO right. Too prepared. Too polished. The rose-in-shirt went from romantic to calculated in retrospect. Mya liked him. Mya was intimidated by him. These are not the same thing.

We'll get to what happened in the final round.

Date #3: Mitch — Midwest Confidence, Receipts in Hand

Walk-up: "Confident" by Demi Lovato. On the nose. Entirely on purpose.

25, 6'4" (easily the tallest of the three), from a town in northeast Wisconsin with 400 people where he graduated high school with 28 other kids. He's a f&b manager at Desert Mountain, which is the #8 private golf club in the world. He was a four-time national champion in the decathlon in college (two team, two individual, which he mentioned with the exact right amount of quiet confidence). He was state champ in pole vault. And he did not drink a single drop of alcohol until he was 22 years old.

Mitch walked out, introduced himself, and said "Mitchell Richard rolls off the tongue like Maya Stegman." Minute two. Swinging for it. The audience lost it. From there, he kept hitting.

He asked Mya what three apps she'd keep on her phone. When she asked why he wanted to know, he said "you're a content creator, you're on your phone a lot." That was intentional. It handed Mya a layup to deliver the biggest ick of the entire episode: "people on their phone. I call my friends screen agents. I HATE that." Massive alignment. Huge green flag. They then realized they're both from small Midwest-adjacent towns (her: Red Wing, Minnesota. him: half his track team was from Red Wing). Immediate click.

Then he did the thing.

Mitch set up a shot-trade bit about Not My First Rodeo (Mya's favorite bar, Mya's favorite green-tea shot). And then, casually, like he was commenting on the weather, he said about Devon's earlier entrance: "Last guy, I got a plum strawberry, a rosy... instead he brought me a green flag he got for free." He SHADED DEVON ON THE STAGE. While Devon was sitting ten feet away. The room detonated. It was the single best line of the episode and it was delivered by a Wisconsin farm-town boy.

The rest of the date was clean Midwest credentials. His parents were flying down for Easter. He was taking his grandpa (the grandpa who taught him golf) to play Desert Mountain on Easter Sunday. Family dinner at Mastro's. Church. He was explicit about being raised Christian. He was explicit about being go-with-the-flow on kids and timing. No wobble. No miss. No aggressive pitch.

On paper, no single moment as large as Devon's empire line. But also zero unforced errors. This is a man who knew what he walked in with.

Elimination: She Asked for an Empire, She Meant Safety

Before eliminations, each man got one minute to plead his case. Mitch went first and delivered what Jack immediately, correctly, and lovingly labeled "a romantic Ted talk." He told Mya she seemed spontaneous, adventurous, that she seemed like she wanted to take things slow when it comes to finding a husband, and that he'd love a second date but it's her call. Clean. Earnest. Mitch.

Devon went second and reloaded his finisher. He said ten-minute dates don't go deep enough, that from an entrepreneurial perspective he and Mya would get each other, that stuff gets hard in business and they speak the same language. And then he closed with the empire-vs-picket-fence line again. Cool as a cucumber. A man who knows what he's selling.

Chace went third and was simply Chace. Quote: "I'm going to bring that golden retriever energy. Always going to show up for you. Happy to be there. Build something together. Takes a little time, I've got that shy guy energy, so it comes off slow. Grow with it."

Then Mya asked each of them to plan a perfect date. Chace pitched gym, coffee, brunch cocktails, and then realized halfway through that he'd planned a whole day and this was meant to be a first date, and recovered with "...Starbucks." Devon said Rome. Like the city. He'd fly her to Italy with his friend Wolf. He'd pay. Mitch kept it Arizona-casual: tennis, lunch, go-with-the-flow. Mya's verdict on best date: "Rome. Rome. Rome. Unfortunately." Caveat: "but then he got in a deep conversation with you and I kind of fucking got lost."

And then she sent Devon home.

Devon eliminated. Mya's reason, direct quote: "I do feel like you're one that would cheat on me." Jack clocked it instantly: "did he just come off as, like, too much of a bad boy? Like there's no security in that relationship." Mya nodded. Then she delivered the whole thesis: "That was the best date, but also his biggest downfall. Are you just trying to flex on me all the time?"

That is the verdict on the entire episode. Devon was so good at first-date game that first-date game itself became the red flag. The rose in his shirt, the parents recon, the Jack Sparrow impression, the Rome offer, the empire line. Beat for beat, the best dating performance of Season 1. And it landed him in the "untrustworthy" column instead of the "husband" column. Too polished read as too rehearsed read as too transactional read as he's done this before and he'll do it again.

Down to Chace and Mitch. Jack asked who's meeting the parents. Both sets of parents were in the Boondocks audience, which nobody at the casting table had planned and nobody on the stage had earned. Mya: "I feel like it's only right if our parents met."

Winner: Chace. ("I'm going with cheese," which is what she said. Romance.) Their second date is locked in: coffee at The Moon Room in Tempe. Chace initially pitched Lifetime Fitness as the date. Mya shut that down immediately. The final image of Season 1 Scottsdale is two people from small Midwest-adjacent towns agreeing that a niche coffee shop grand opening is a better first-date plan than a gym.

The Verdict

Mya said she wanted an empire. She picked the kindness guy. Devon brought Rome, a warm mimosa, the line of the afternoon, and a rose kept body-warm for an hour, and was simply too polished to survive a vibe check from a woman whose stated ick is men who try too hard. Mitch brought Midwest receipts, a decathlon resume, and the single best shade of Season 1 (the green flag Devon got for free), and was genuinely the tightest no-wobble date of the day. Chace won because he let Mya run the room, didn't sell her anything, and happened to have a hunting dad and a walkable apartment. Season 1 Scottsdale closes on a warm mimosa, a Catan tournament that will definitely happen, and a golden retriever who wouldn't let his queen go to Lifetime Fitness on a first date. Season 2 returns to Boondocks in November. Lock it in.