Caitlyn Jenner made her debut on The Kardashians on Thursday, as the family said goodbye to their home of 15 years.
Called El Dorado Meadow, the house is where Caitlyn lived during her marriage to Kris Jenner and where their daughters, Kendall and Kylie Jenner, spent their high school years.
While Kris and Caitlyn haven’t had much contact following their divorce in 2014, after 22 years of marriage, Kris said she thought Caitlyn should be there. She announced that to the family, as they were all about to sit down to a nice dinner.
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Caitlyn, who transitioned in 2015, was part of the cast of the family’s earlier reality shows, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, but she had steered clear of the Hulu series they’ve done since 2022.
“There she is,” Kris announced as Caitlyn walked in wearing jeans, having only received a call about an hour before. While Caitlyn had been busy “eating dinner and watching Fox News,” she had come right over after Kris asked if she wanted to be with her kids.
There was a lot of nervous smiling. And Caitlyn didn’t help smooth things over when she dramatically joked that she had purchased the home Kris is leaving behind — “I bought it! Yes, I’m gonna keep it in the family. I bought the house. It’s mine now” — and no one could tell if she was serious. She quickly confessed that she “couldn’t afford” it anymore.
Everyone was surprised to see her there.
“I definitely wasn’t expecting my dad to be here,” Kendall said, “just knowing the relationship that my mom has with my dad; not that it’s bad, it’s just distant. I think my mom’s had a hard time inviting my dad to some of our family gatherings in the past, so it makes me happy that Kylie and I didn’t have to ask for my dad to be invited and that my mom just thought it was a good idea regardless.”
In another aside, Kylie said, “I don’t know if my parents will ever be best friends again, but this is definitely a great first step.”
Of course, the Kardashian kids — whose father is the late Robert Kardashian — Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, and Rob were there too, as were plenty of children.
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Khloé praised her mom for her selfless gesture.
“Mom, that was really big of you, and I’m shocked you did that,” she told her when the two had a moment, “but that was very nice.”
Kris said that inviting Caitlyn over “felt like the right thing to do.”
Khloé explained to the audience, “For my mom to invite Caitlyn over here, when I know how hard that is for her. This was someone she was married to for 25 years, and I remember being in that back room with all of my siblings, watching the Diane Sawyer interview.”
When Sawyer interviewed Caitlyn in 2015, just after the former Bruce Jenner announced she was a trans woman, the retired Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete said that, “for all intents and purposes, I am a woman.” She also explained that she hadn’t always been fair to the women she’d been married to.
Despite all the potential for drama, the night was filled with dinner, hugs, a lot of memories, and minimal tears.
New episodes of The Kardashians are available Thursdays on Hulu.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly