We used to watch Love Island for the glorious, unapologetic trash that it was: a human zoo with neon lights and troughs of pinot grigio, housing the beautiful and brainless, desperately competing for a fast-fashion brand deal and a few hundred thousand Instagram followers. It was a low-stakes, low-IQ evening escape—and for a while there, nobody took it too seriously.
Ten years ago, the most dramatic denouncement to take place in the Love Island universe was Miss Great Britain getting stripped of her beauty queen crown after having sex in the show’s Hideaway—which is separate from the main villa—with a scaffolder named Alex. The pageant organizers stated that public shagging went against their requirements for a “positive role model,” and that was that.
But in the decade since, the colosseum has opened its gates, and the spectators have decided that they no longer wish to watch beautiful people kiss and couple up. They want to watch them bleed. The latest season of Love Island USA—which will air on Peacock six days a week for the next month or so—hadn’t even begun when they claimed their first scalp.
