Intro for August 26, 2025

Dear Gossips,   

The Love Island USA season seven reunion episode was a flop. For multiple reasons, starting with production decisions that simply didn’t work. That set was too big, too spread out, with Ariana Madix and Andy Cohen sitting in the middle and islanders placed on either side of them, spaced so far apart – there was no intimacy, no sense of closeness. And that’s part of the reason why, from the jump, the show felt so awkward, low energy, and that weird vibe carried throughout most of the two hours as they experimented with seating combinations, bringing some people out of the green room, where they had a camera to monitor live-watching on the islanders who were shunted there, and then sending them back in at random times. Which then left gaps in the seating chart on set. 

It also felt like they were trying to force in all the montages at the worst times. Like of course the playbacks were necessary to advance certain conversations but the way they were inserted into the conversation interrupted any flow that had been accumulating. I work in television and I’ve been part of shows like this so I’m not saying it’s easy, it’s not easy at all editing together a reunion show and trying to satisfy all the questions that the audience wants answers to and make everyone there feel involved. But that might also have been the problem: trying to do too much. The last half hour was probably the most entertaining and true to the show and the season but the 90 minutes spent getting there was a waste. And it’s also an issue when more than half the people watching already know that two of the couples there are no longer together, freshly. Iris and Pepe are done and so are Amaya and Bryan, the winning couple. His “lapse in judgement” explanation didn’t track even when they were filming and it definitely doesn’t track now. How is pouring shots a “lapse in judgment”??? 

That’s not to say there weren’t highlights though. Huda refusing to answer questions about Louis Russell because Netflix is allegedly prohibiting her from speaking on their relationship and Andy Cohen’s response to it was hilarious. He is so f-cking over her, and also a petty bitch with the “tell Netflix this was the number one streaming show of the summer” was a high point for me.

Also, Jeremiah studied. He very obviously did some homework before coming to the reunion because he was not communicating this effectively when he was in the villa. I respect it. I respect it a lot more than the people who showed up and still couldn't make solid arguments. You’ve had over a month! 

Notice how many of them referred to their “teams”? Amaya for sure. Huda too. Several of them have left the island and are now signed to agencies and managers, pushing for post-show relevance. Apart from Nicolandria, though, can this season’s cast match the post-show success of last season’s cast? 

The most satisfying moment for me personally, though, had nothing to do with the cast members, really, and everything to do with social media. It came near the end of the reunion and it felt a little personal on the part of production – one of the few choices I could get behind. They were responding to an internet theory that during one of Olandria’s confessionals, when shouting could be heard in the background, it was Cierra screaming and protesting being dumped from the island. Turns out it was actually Huda and Iris messing around in the shower and singing Selena Gomez’s “Who Says”. It’s a lesson that likely no one will learn from. 

Yours in gossip, 

Lainey