The Bachelor's Season 8 Is All About Old Romantic Flames

ABC announced Arie Luyendyk Jr, as the new Bachelor, on Thursday. The announcement came as a surprise for fans who haven’t seen Luyendyk Jr. in a Bachelor related show in years.

The Bachelor season 8 comes after quite a rocky shake up for Bachelor Nation, with the last production of Bachelor in Paradise dealing with sexual assault charges.

The race for Arie’s heart is on

Fans were thrown a curveball after ABC announced race car driver Arie Luyendyk Jr. as its next ‘Bachelor.’ For the past few weeks, many viewers guessed that the new ‘Bachelor’ would be Peter Kraus, who was the runner-up on the most season of the ‘Bachelorette‘ with Rachel Lindsay.

Luyendyk was revealed as the leading man for the reality competition on ‘Good Morning America‘ on Thursday. He says he’s going into the experience with “an open mind, open heart.” The 35-year-old says his experience making quick decisions on the race track will help him on the show.

Luyendyk was the runner-up on the eighth season of ‘The Bachelorette’ in 2012, failing to win the heart of Emily Maynard. He has competed in the IndyCar, Indy Lights and other racing series. His father is two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Arie Luyendyk.

Bachelor Nation, start your engines! We are proud to announce the next Bachelor will be….@ariejr! 🌹🏁🌹 pic.twitter.com/PTCKToIIrM

— The Bachelor (@BachelorABC) September 7, 2017

Complicated journey to become the Bachelor

Arie was just introduced to fans on season eight of ‘The Bachelorette’, which starred fan-favorite single mother Emily Maynard.

Following his elimination, Arie was in the running to be the Bachelor for season 17. His competition for the gig were fellow season eight competitor Sean Lowe, and Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte.

As we all know, Sean was selected and ended up marrying Catherine Giudici, with the couple welcoming their first child in July 2016. As for Arie, here’s where his story gets a little complicated.

After not landing the ‘Bachelor‘ gig, Arie was then spotted with Courtney Robertson…just one week after calling it quits with Ben Flajnik, the season 16 ‘Bachelor’ star. The pair only dated for a brief time, but the relationship caused quite the stir in Bachelor Nation.

Then, in early 2013, Arie began dating Selma Alameri…a contestant from Sean Lowe’s season. The relationship fizzled out just as fast as his romance with Courtney.

Back in 2014, he was once again considered to become the new Bachelor, which he lost to Chris Soules. He broke the news via Twitter in a kind of disappointed Tweet saying he was moving forward. But moving forward meant returning to the franchise three years later, beating out frontrunner Peter Kraus to land the coveted title of the Bachelor, five years after he was first considered.

Arie did address being passed over twice before for the gig, admitting, “I was a little skeptical because we’d been in talks for a few years about doing it, so I kind of just went in with an open mind and an open heart.”