On the most recent episode of 90 Day Fiance: Before The 90 Days, Ben and Mahogany parted ways.

Mahogany accused Ben of not being who she thought that he was when they were chatting.

Even with all of the condemnation aimed at Ben, some fans are astounded that she’d say that.

A lot of people are still processing the stark contrast between Mahogany and her borderline-catfishing photos.

On Season 5, Episode 14 of 90 Day Fiance: Before The 90 Days, Mahogany Roca confronted Ben Rathbun.

He had resented her questions about his past. He had sent her long, unsettling texts.

Then, huffy that she hadn’t responded, he ghosted her for breakfast, embarrassing her in front of her parents.

Ben’s shady past, his boundary-crossing behavior … this was not the man whom Mahogany had enjoyed chatting with.

Maybe that was all of it.

Or maybe she needed an excuse because a guy 30 years her senior had flown down to meet her after three months of chatting.

Whatever it was, Mahogany told him that he was “different.”

She didn’t want to be there, so she got up and left.

Fair is fair … but is Mahogany really the person to call someone out for being different in person than they were online?

After all, the view that Ben saw of Mahogany was … not exactly true to life.

Airbrushing, an array of filters, and other photo editing was used until every photo was unrecognizable.

Looking at Mahogany’s pics and her real face was like night and day.

It’s not just that her photos did not look like the real Mahogany.

Her photos did not look recognizably human; anyone could tell at a glance that the pics were heavily doctored.

Only Ben, it seemed, was unable — or unwilling — to see that the pics of his beloved better resembled a stylized drawing than a human being.

As a result, some fans have accused Mahogany of being what many thought all along:

Is Mahogany a catfish?

Well … not really, but we’re admittedly operating from a pretty strict definition of “catfish.”

Mahogany did not use photos of someone else when communicating with Ben. She just butchered her own pics.

She used her own name and, as far as we can tell, her real social media account.

Aside from the fact that she apparently got $1,000 out of him, she’s not checking a lot of boxes for a catfish.

Mahogany was, however, plainly dishonest with Ben.

Perhaps her biggest lie was about her age — only a 22-year-old would be young enough to think that claiming to be 24 is worth the risk.

Then, in person, she showed him an obviously fake apartment that Ben later defended, apparently having bought her explanations.

We should stress that Mahogany wasn’t just sending her unsettling anime waifu filtered photos to Ben.

These seem to just be how she presents herself to the world online.

Outside of cultivating a romantic relationship, that’s perfectly okay — no one owes their authentic face to strangers. People are allowed to simply exist.

But what possible future could two fakers have together?

Ben wasn’t who she thought. Mahogany wasn’t who he thought.

Are they really just a pair of fraudsters determined to get famous and use each other in the process?

If that were true, we would say that they are a perfect match.

However, contrary to Ben’s claims, 90 Day Fiance doesn’t cast actors to play fictional, scripted roles on the show.

(If they did, it would be huge news, and we would excitedly report on it)

Instead, people who are not being well-received by viewers sometimes claim that they got a “bad edit” or that the show is “scripted.”

Throwing the show under the bus never works.

And while bad edits are a very real thing, especially in this franchise, 90 Day Fiance does not have scripts.

What’s really weird is that, even after they both basically called each other fakes, it looks like they’re ready to kiss on the next episode.

Keep in mind, this is after Mahogany ghosted Ben (narrowly avoiding “mandatory alone time” for two hours in the car).

Maybe they’re both scheming for fame separately. Or maybe they just can’t quit each other. They’re both so, so weird.

And, as we previously reported, they are still together in some fashion many months later.

Just weeks ago, the two were photographed at a mall in Lima, Peru.

Who goes to malls in 2022? The answer is 50-something men and their 23-year-old girlfriends, apparently.

On last weekend’s episode of 90 Day Fiance: Before The 90 Days, Ben skipped out on lunch with Mahogany.

Why? Because she hadn’t responded to his barrage of over-the-top texts, and because she had questioned his past.

In this sneak peek of Sunday’s episode, Mahogany is able to confront Ben face-to-face about all of the things that he didn’t tell her.

Turning viewers’ early-season assumptions on their heads, she tells him that he’s not the man he was when they were chatting … and walks away.

“I just want to know if we have a chance here,” Ben expresses to Mahogany as this sneak peek for Season 5, Episode 14 begins.

He then cites “the love that we had on chat.”

What, he wonders, happened to that spark that they seemed to share?

“I don’t know,” Mahogany admits. “I’m really confused, you know?”

Shaking her head, she tells him: “I think you are not the Benjamin in the chat.”

Mahogany adds: “You are different.”

She even gets specific about things that he did not share with her that, really, he should have if he wanted to get this serious, this quickly.

“You didn’t tell me that you don’t get along with your ex-wife,” Mahogany notes.

“You didn’t tell me many things,” she adds.

“And now I know them” Mahogany explains, “so I think that’s different.”

At that point, Ben just replies with “okay.”

Mahogany then explains to him what drove her to meet with him — because this is not a date.

“Look,” she says, “I just came to leave you my father’s letter.”

Mahogany is delivering it “because he couldn’t make it today.”

Getting blunt, she tells him: “I really didn’t want to come.”

Ben takes a moment to process that.

“I don’t want to stay here,” Mahogany emphasizes as gently as someone possibly can.

“You want to go?” he asks quietly.

With his blessing, Mahogany stands up and walks away from the table, leaving Ben sitting alone.

That is intense.

But it’s also not the end of their story, now is it?

Last month, Ben and Mahogany were spotted together at a mall in Lima, Peru.

We know that 90 Day Fiance: Before The 90 Days recorded most of Season 5 during 2021, and often airs about 8 months (on average) after filming.

It’s unclear if Ben and Mahogany were filming again for another season, or if this was a strictly personal trip.

It’s hard to say what to think about this preview, especially without seeing how the season — or even the episode — ends.

Obviously, it’s totally reasonable for a 22-year-old to ditch the more-than-twice-her-age man she met online three months ago.

She doesn’t need an excuse or an explanation, but the barrage of texts that he sent her the night before make a split more than understandable.

At the same time, some wonder if Mahogany was deliberately flirting or even softly catfishing online.

She might have never expected that any man she spoke to would be foolish enough to fly out to meet her like this.

Of course, she would have had to sign on to appear on camera herself, so … not all of this is a big surprise.

Ben and Mahogany could both be scammers trying to use each other for their careers — Ben’s DILF modeling and Mahogany’s acting aspirations.

Additionally, recent revelations about Ben’s debts could indicate that he desperately needed the cash that fame could bring.

(90 Day Fiance paychecks are infamously small, but the cast can make decent money on Cameo and similar sites by getting fans to pay them directly)

Ben has tried more than once to imply that his story is inauthentic, but … since he so often looks like a fool and a creep on the show, it’s hard to take him at his word.

“I got a bad edit” is an infamous defense for people who are disliked by viewers, even though it is sometimes the honest truth.

As for Ben and Mahogany … it looks like Mahogany’s decision to walk away was not a permanent one. What makes her give him another chance?

In the aftermath of seeing her very fake-looking home, Ben Rathbun was friendzoned by Mahogany Roca.

In a new interview, Ben is trying to do damage control for himself and for the recently-turned-23-year-old.

His apparent purpose was to defend Mahogany and himself from the criticisms of viewers.

Honestly? In this interview, Ben comes across looking worse than anything that we’ve seen on the show.

Entertainment Tonight‘s Melicia Johnson speaks to all sorts of famous lunatics while managing a polite smile.

Recently, she spoke to Ben Rathbun, and managed to keep her composure even when he said extremely creepy things.

But before he delved into all of the ways in which the cult has not left him even though he left it, he defended Mahogany.

Mahogany’s photos were laughably fake … but, in Ben’s mind, this wasn’t as dishonest as viewers seem to think.

“In my opinion, there’s two different kinds of people that do social media,” Ben opined.

“One is someone that wants to show what’s going on in their lives every single day,” he began.

“And,” Ben described, “they want to be real and authentic and show everyone who they are.”

He admitted: “When I see Mahogany’s page, it’s not like that at all.”

“She posts maybe once every two or three months and it’s just for fun, it’s more for art,” Ben claimed.

“Like, if you look at her page, it’s just a bunch of pictures of selfies that look really well done,” Ben argued.

“And,” he continued. “some are like from two or three years ago. She doesn’t, you know, update.”

Ben explained: “So, in my opinion, she’s not really trying to deceive anyone, she’s having a fun time.”

“We’ve all kind of done Snapchat filters and had a good time with it — she just posted it,” Ben rationalized.

“She never thought the entire world would be looking at that and judging her for it,” he continued.

Ben characterized: “You know, she was just having fun. So I don’t have any problem with it … it’s fine, it doesn’t really matter.”

Ben insisted that Mahogany “wasn’t being deceptive at all” when she altered her photos, even if Ben seemed clueless about how doctored they were.

“To me it was much more of a spiritual connection,” he added.

As for Mahogany’s age, he justified that because she “didn’t keep reiterating the lie.”

“It was a one-time lie,” Ben stated.

“Something that I would tell my kids, if you meet a strange, older man online,” he suggested.

Ben would advise them: “Don’t tell him your social security number, don’t tell him your address, don’t tell him your age.”

“If you do tell them your age, change it up because you don’t know if they’re going to be a stalker or a crazy person,” Ben sagely advised.

“So, not a problem with me at all,” he claimed.

“So the age thing to me is us not pursuing the truth together and me like, not following up well,” Ben said. “I just did a lot of assuming.”

As for Mahogany being 22 and not 24, Ben said that “that’s not that big a deal to me as for the age of my kids because I don’t look at it that way.”

He added: “She’s a completely separate adult and it doesn’t matter to me if my kids are that age.”

“It’s just something that caught me off guard,” Ben said. “I had to think about it for a minute.”

“But this has become so much more than age, so much more than, you know, our differences,” Ben said, like so many other men in their fifties before him.

“The things we’ve been really focusing on are our commonalities,” he characterized. “And so far those outweigh our differences.”

Ben praised: “And she is so mature and wise and intelligent, that I haven’t really felt that difference.”

Ben went even further, insisting that he’d be okay “letting” his own 22-year-old daughter date a 50-year-old man.

Unfortunately, he went about this in the creepiest way possible.

Ben’s explanation had huge “you can leave the cult but the cult won’t leave you” energy that viewers found off-putting at best.

“There’s no one in this world that loves Mahogany more than her dad,” Ben announced.

“And so all of the viewers out there that are so concerned for her and think that I’m a predator coming after a young girl,” he acknowledged.

Ben asked these viewers to “trust me when I say the dad cares more about the situation than anyone from the outside.”

“So, if he sees that I am very, very healthy — which is, I find myself the exception and I’m sure that’s probably rationalizing what I’m doing so I’ll give you that,” Ben said.

“But I am incredibly healthy,” he insisted. “I take care of my body and it’s a huge priority and I want to live for a very long time and I want to live in the best health that I can.”

Is Ben suggesting that a massive age gap is okay because he has abs, but would not be okay if he weren’t a fitness model? That’s … weird.

It got weirder, however, as Ben described fathers as the “first protector” of their daughters.

In his mind, his relationship with Mahogany hinged entirely upon the approval of her dad, even though she’s an adult woman and not her dad’s property.

Ben suggested that it would be the same for a man wanting to date his daughter, which critics quickly noted sounded like something out of the Duggar cult.

Ben also claimed that Mahogany’s obviously fake house was a place that she had stayed for a few months.

It’s unclear if Ben thinks that he is covering for Mahogany or if these are things that he has come to believe since last season filmed.

Melicia clearly wasn’t buying it and neither is anyone else, but we suppose that it hardly matters if Ben is fooled. And Ben seems to always be fooled.