Lacey left Love After Lockup to focus on her family, but it seems like the drama in her personal life has continued even after the cameras stopped rolling.
Holding the title of one of Love After Lockup’s messiest cast members is certainly not an easy feat, but it is a reputation that Lacey Watson has maintained since her first appearance on the show all the way back in 2019.
Of course, Lacey did not conjure up all this Love After Lockup drama by herself. Her constant back-and-forths with John Slater and Shane Whitlow have been keeping us entertained for many seasons.
Why Lacey did not return to Love After Lockup season 4
Lacey’s storyline on the Love After Lockup franchise has been so entertaining, in fact, that her absence was immediately noted when she did not re-join the cast for season four.
Fortunately, while we have seen Love After Lockup stars leave the show for numerous reasons ranging from incarceration to inappropriate behavior on set, Lacey seems to have left the show on good terms.
Lacey took to Instagram on March 8, 2022, to clarify why she decided to part ways with this popular franchise.
According to Lacey, she decided to take a break from filming because she wanted to focus on her “beautiful babies and being the best mom [she] can possibly be,” after welcoming a new baby girl named Summer Rayne in March of 2021.
Lacey’s run on Love After Lockup
If you want to re-watch what went down between Lacey, Shane and John in Love After Lockup’s second and third seasons before we jump into everything that has happened since Lacey left the show, get the popcorn ready.
Though Lacey is still so closely associated with the Love After Lockup franchise to this day, she was actually only featured in two seasons, as follows:
| Show | Episodes | Initial air dates |
| Love After Lockup: Season 2, Part 3 | Episode 15 to 23 | June 14, 2019, to August 9, 2019 |
| Life After Lockup: Season 2, Part 4 | Episode 40 to 51 | January 3, 2020, to March 20, 2020 |
| Life After Lockup: Season 3, Part 2 | Episode 9 to 12 | September 11, 2020, to October 2, 2020 |
| Life After Lockup: Season 3, Part 4 | Episode 19 to 34 | November 20, 2020, to March 12, 2021 |
| Life After Lockup: Season 3, Part 6 | Episode 45 to 60 | August 27, 2021, to December 17, 2021 |
Is there trouble in paradise (again)?
If you thought that it was difficult to keep the Lacey-Shane-John love-triangle straight when they were all on a television show, be warned – it has only gotten more complicated now that they can only share parts of the story on their social media platforms.
For those who missed the highlights over the last three years, Lacey and Shane got divorced shortly after season three of Life After Lockup finished airing.
And, as you may have guessed, it did not take long for the on-again, off-again Lacey and John to rekindle their relationship once Lacey’s marriage to Shane ended.
However, both Lacey and John have seemingly now removed just about every trace of each other (except for a few of John’s old Instagram stories) from their social media platforms.
And while John seems to be wearing a wedding band in his most recent Instagram photo (from December 2023) – we suspect that this lack of recent lovey-dovey content means that there may be some kind of trouble in their relationship.
Who is Summer Rayne’s real father?
Amidst all of the questions about what happened between Lacey, Shane and John after the Love After Lockup cameras stopped rolling in 2021, a few new questions have now emerged about one of the children who inspired Lacey to leave the show.
Lacey alleged in a now-deleted Instagram post that Shane was not Summer Rayne’s biological father. Shane, on the other hand, has not responded to these allegations publicly.
However, if this recent Instagram post (which also confirms that Shane is once again a free man) is anything to go by, Shane may be preparing to drop a Love After Lockup gossip-bomb very soon.
Will Lacey ever return to the Love After Lockup franchise?
With so much still going on behind the scenes, there is no denying that Lacey’s life seems well-primed for a return to reality television.
And while she has not yet announced any official plans to return to the Love After Lockup franchise, she did initially mention that she did not know whether her absence would be permanent.
Lacey also recently responded “you never know baybee” to a comment asking her to return to the show, so a reality television comeback is seemingly not entirely out of the question.
