Love Island’s Perfect Storm

I moved to the U.K. six years ago, and the first thing I fell in love with about my adopted country was Love Island, a trashy and somewhat cruel reality show where singles spend two months living in a villa, and if they aren’t in a couple, they could be sent home at any minute. It became a cultural phenomenon while the queen was still alive, taking hold of the national conversation and catapulting its young hotties to stardom, with some getting their own reality shows, newsmagazine shows, and more Boohoo sponsorships than you can shake a $10.99 dress at. But just as I renewed my U.K. visa for another five years, I was compelled to return to my native shores this summer for one very good reason: Love Island USA is finally better than its British counterpart.

Any reality franchise as big as Love Island is in the U.K. is going to be exported all over the world, so in 2019 CBS picked it up in the U.S. and, in a crazy maneuver, aired it every weeknight, similar to the U.K.’s seven-night-a-week schedule. (Every English show is either six episodes or 600 episodes, and there is no middle ground.) While I sampled Love Island USA several times, it didn’t have the zip that the Brits brought to it. The first season was in Fiji, but it rained almost the entire time, and it’s not as much fun watching flirty 20-somethings when they’re huddled inside their hoodies rather than basking in bikinis. The second season was filmed during the pandemic on the roof of a Vegas hotel, which made it visually vertiginous, but the couples never clicked. After another unsuccessful season, it went back on the market, and Peacock coupled up with the show in what was described as a “competitive” situation.

Once the show arrived at Peacock, it wasn’t an overnight success. The fourth and fifth seasons aired with barely a whimper; the show’s most-talked-about moment was when season five’s Carsten “Bergalicious” Bergersen was cast on season two of Peacock’s breakout reality hit The Traitors. It took Peacock three seasons to make it really click, with this season doubling the ratings from last year and becoming one of the most-streamed shows of the summer.

So, what did Peacock do differently for season six? Right away, there were some obvious surface improvements: They set up a whole new villa in Fiji and hired Vanderpump Rules standout Ariana Madix as the new host. She’s doing great in what is usually a thankless job, her combination of sexy outfits, banter with the Islanders, and just the right amount of side-eye making her perhaps the best Love Island host since the late, great Caroline Flack. When one of the boys, Aaron, told his partner, Kaylor, that he would talk to her later about a contentious recoupling, Ariana shot right back, “I have all the time in the world” and put him on the spot. In that one moment, she earned her next season and proved that, above all else, she’s a fan of the show.

But we don’t tune in for the host. Like any great reality show, the foundation of Love Island lies in its casting. This season we have the return of season five’s Rob, a professional snake catcher (no lie) and one-man meme machine who hid in the pool because it was the one place he could get away from the cameras. His on-again-off-again girlfriend Leah is the perfect combination of delusional and confrontational that makes her excellent at reality TV. And my personal favorite, JaNa (pronounced juh-nay), a whispering baby angel who can’t quite seem to find love, is smart, funny, and well traveled, and approaches each new dude she meets with awe-inspiring hope despite countless rejections. This season’s deep bench of great characters has provided plenty of drama, not just among those looking to couple up but also among the same-sex friendships in the villa. Usually, the girls and guys become unquestioning support systems along gender lines, but this season Rob has butted heads with usually even-keeled Kendall, and Leah and Liv almost came to blows after Leah was caught bending the truth.

But it’s not enough to just cast hot and interesting people. They need to feel free to be themselves onscreen, and, boy, is this gang not afraid. Serena has cussed out her will-they-won’t-they partner, Kordell, on more than one occasion (usually deservedly). All the guys decided to play the game when they were sent to Casa Amor, the show’s signature twist where the men and women are separated and meet with a whole new batch of sexy singles to try to tempt them out of their couples. There have also been several couples taking advantage of the Hideaway, the only solo bed in the villa where things usually go all the way.

Everyone on Love Island USA is acting like no one is watching, and that might be the secret to this season’s success. The first few seasons of Love Island in the U.K., before everyone caught on to it, was full of fighting, insane twists, and enough shagging to make Austin Powers blush. There was even one famous night on season two when everyone got it on at the same time in the group bedroom. But now that people go on Love Island to kick-start their influencing careers, nothing like that happens anymore. Do you think Molly-Mae Hague would have 8 million Instagram followers if she was sleeping with a bunch of dudes and getting in fights? Well, she probably would, but she wouldn’t have the lucrative corporate sponsorships that make accruing that many followers worth it.

That was my problem with the latest season of U.K. Love Island, which streams in the U.S. on Hulu. (I know, it’s complicated.) Everyone was playing it so safe. They were having the same boring conversations about “What is your type?” “When was your last relationship?” “What’s your favorite color?” Even Joey Essex, a veteran reality-TV villain brought in to spice things up, was hesitant to pick a girl to act out his favorite sex position for a challenge. You could see the gears working behind his eyes, trying to figure out how not to piss off any of the ladies but also not embarrass his grandmother, who was watching at home. The show even brought in Joey’s ex to try to make things spicy, but it never caught fire. Everyone was afraid to make waves, afraid of being unlikable, afraid to get into a triangle, afraid to play the game. And the types, oh man, they’re all the same: carbon-copy fame-seekers. (Most fans agreed with me.) Not that I mind going on a reality show to get famous — why else would someone submit to the emotional torture and/or public humiliation? — but now that everyone has their eye on those sweet, sweet followers, they’re hedging their bets.

A by-product of that fame calculus is that wannabe Islanders figured out the longer they stay on the show, the better chance for success after it, leading many to form couples at the start and stay in them no matter what so they could never be sent home, which makes a show about ever-changing couples stagnant and stale. That certainly wasn’t the case in the U.S., with triangles aplenty and lots of Islanders trying out multiple partners before settling on the right one; there are only two couples that started from the very beginning, and they’ve both been so tumultuous that they never got stale. Liv, despite so much dating, never even found someone she liked; if she were in the U.K., she would have just settled with the third dude she met just to make it to the end.

This season of Love Island USA is a perfect storm of reality-TV notoriety. It still had a low enough profile that contestants could go on it without worrying too much about their reputations, not expecting to get more from it than a free summer in paradise flirting with a bunch of hotties. That has made for the show’s best season ever, but also makes me worry that now that it’s become a thing, the same pattern is going to play out in the U.S. as in the show’s home country. People might start wanting to go on the show for all the wrong reasons, as they say on The Bachelor, and start behaving like good Christian boys and girls because they’re afraid that getting lippy with a cheating boyfriend or getting their lips on an amorous one is going to ruin their future career prospects. Cultural critics may begin to push back against some of the more dubious challenges that U.K Love Island has gotten rid of, namely one where Islanders are forced to read mean tweets the public has posted about them. (At least in the good old U. S. of A. they also read some nice tweets to balance them out.) And as the ratings go up, the sponsors will start pouring in, but Kraft might not want anything too controversial or sexual happening on a show where they’re trying to sell mac ’n’ cheeze (not that any of the preternaturally ripped Islanders would touch the stuff). Love Island’s rising profile has made for an exciting and discussable season, but it also raises the possibility that production will feel the need to smooth away some of the rougher edges that make for good drama.

It’s too soon to say if any of that will actually happen, though, so let’s enjoy what we have while we can — which is only a few more days, since the finale is July 21. Let’s not worry if our love will continue “on the outside.” Let’s focus on this intense connection we have right now with this show. It can be more powerful than you think. After all, it’s what finally brought me home.