Goodbye to a great villain: Monica Garcia reportedly out at ‘The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’

According to Variety magazine, more than 2 million people watched the finale of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” over three days, making it the most-watched episode of the show since its premiere in 2020.

The Season 4 finale, which aired on Jan. 2, has been lauded as one of Bravo's most riveting and shocking finales in its history.

“RECEIPTS. PROOF. TIMELINE. SCREENSHOTS.” The words said by Heather Gay on the finale have become a meme and a tagline for merch. California congressman Robert Garcia quoted Gay in a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability meeting. “Receipts, proof, timeline, screenshots,” set to the tune of “Cell Block Tango,” has become a dance trend on TikTok.

And it’s all thanks almost entirely to Monica Garcia, who People.com just reported will not be returning in season 5.

Yes, Gay did the detective work, planned the reveal and executed the final confrontation on the finale, but none of it would have been possible without Garcia.

What happened in Season 4 of ‘RHOSLC’?

The season started in a bit of an existential crisis. The cast had lost its most notorious member, Jen Shah, and much of the previous seasons had been spent on her arrest, the crimes with which she was charged and preparation for her trial. After Shah’s sentencing, viewers wondered what storylines were left for Gay, Lisa Barlow, Meredith Marks, Whitney Rose and Angie Katsanevas, who was promoted from friend-of to full-time cast member.

As the season started, it became clear they had very little to go on. Whitney and Meredith argued over a quote Whitney offered about Meredith’s bathing habits for a significant chunk of the first episode of Season 4. Production even brought back Mary Cosby, who left the show after Season 2, to try and add some pizzazz. But Mary, iconically, refused to participate in many of the filmed activities the women did together and all but disappeared in the back half of the season.

The only thing that was really working and getting eyes on the screen in Season 4 was rookie Monica Garcia and her chaotic behavior and shocking honesty. She’d frequently fight with her castmates on camera, and sometimes with her equally chaotic mom. She was forthcoming about her relationship with Jen Shah, with whom she worked as an assistant, and about her infidelity to her ex-husband during their marriage. She would proclaim often that she “owned” everything that she needed to own — her hurtful statements, her misdeeds, her financial problems and her volatility. And indeed, she would apologize often, and seemed, for the most part, like an open book. This is in part what made the Season 4 finale so shocking. (Spoilers ahead.)

Related

• Ride or die rules the day on the finale of the 4th season of ‘The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’

• What to expect on ‘The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’ Season 4

How does ‘RHOSLC’ Season 4 end?

The season ended with Heather revealing that Monica was the mastermind behind Reality Von(Tea)se, an Instagram account whose original purpose, Monica claims, was to take down Jen Shah, but, as Heather explains in a confessional, “quickly expanded to troll all of us: me, Whitney, Meredith, Lisa.” Heather adds, “These were character assassinations.”

When Heather tells Monica she knows she’s behind Reality Von(Tea)se, she tells her she has “Receipts! Proof! Timeline! Screenshots!” — everything to prove that Monica is a bully and a troll, and that she does not deserve to be anywhere near any of them for the way she’s treated them. “I know you’re Reality Von(Tea)se,” Heather tells Monica, and Monica responds, “That’s not true entirely.”

It’s partially true, however, she admits. In her confessional, Monica explains that the account was never just one person. There were several others involved, and while their mission was to reveal the unseemly actions of Jen Shah, “The other women were just collateral damage,” she says.

The producers claim they were unaware that Monica was a part of Reality Von(Tea)se. In the first hour of the three-part reunion, Monica says she was hired after sending an email to the production team telling them she should be on the show. That email said nothing about the troll account Monica was helping run.

If it’s true that production was not aware of Monica’s online activity, they certainly did not do as much research as they should have. But I suspect they had at least a few hints. Regardless, it was a brilliant casting move to hire Monica, and one that continues to pay out dividends.

Is Monica Garcia a villain?

Reality television needs villains. But they need to be the right kind of villain. More specifically, they need to be a villain within the show and within the show only. Which is exactly the kind of villain Monica turned out to be.

“The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” became much less fun to watch when it was revealed that Jen Shah had engaged in criminal activity and that there were victims of her crimes. It gave the viewer a feeling of complicity for perhaps having enabled Shah’s bad behavior, and no one wants to wrestle with a moral dilemma while watching a “Housewives” franchise. We just want to be entertained.

The limits of wrongdoing committed by Bravolebrities should be the limits of the show, with absolutely zero stakes in the real world.

Monica wronged only her castmates and in a way that ultimately benefitted them by improving the show. Her wrongdoing gave the other women an opportunity to shine on the show and vaulted them into a new stratosphere of fame.

Whether it was intentional or not, Monica filled the villain void that Jen Shah left behind.

She was the villain that the show, its stars and the viewers needed.

Today, People.com reported that Garcia will not be returning for season 5. I assume it’s because the other women said they would never again film with her.

I worry that without her, we’ll be back to listening to fights about bathtubs, putting the series’ future on shaky ground.

You don’t have to like Monica, but you have to respect what she’s done for the franchise.