“Love Island” Season 7: A Messy, Magnetic Reality Show

By Charlie Cruz     9/2/25 8:58pm

Rating: 3/5

It was my first time watching “Love Island,” and I get it now. There's a cycle to this show: you swear you won't get sucked in, you dismiss it as background noise, and then, one week later, you're canceling plans just to hear a group of twenty-somethings debate the meaning of the word "exploring." The truth is, “Love Island” has plenty of flaws. It’s too long, too produced and too ridiculous, but I'll be the first to admit it: I'm already planning to watch next season.

At its core, the show is simple. A group of singles, "Islanders," are dropped into a villa, cut off from the outside world and told to couple up or risk being dumped. They flirt, fight, cry and occasionally find something resembling love, all while the audience votes to keep the drama alive. Season 7 brought in a fresh crop of personalities: Huda, the fiery single mom who quickly became the lightning rod of the season; Jeremiah, her too-nice partner who folded in every fight; Ace, a TikTok dancer whose rigid boundaries became his own storyline; Amaya, the emotional fan favorite; and a rotating cast of bombshells, besties and opportunists trying to survive six weeks in the Fiji sun. On paper, it was promising. In practice, this season revealed the limits of the formula.

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Love Island sells itself as a dating show (where you coincidentally get 100k if you win), but the romances are rarely the draw. Instead, it's the way personalities clash under pressure, how every minor slight snowballs into a referendum on loyalty. Season 7 asked a more uncomfortable question: what happens when that chaos stops being fun and starts feeling cruel? The surprising answer is that you watch anyway.

Nowhere was this clearer than with Huda. Her relationship with Jeremiah became the season's gravitational center, their fights over pancakes and "exploring" spiraling into hours of villa drama. Jeremiah's passivity only sharpened Huda's intensity, and together they made each other worse. Watching them was a study in contradictions: toxic, repetitive and often unfair, yet the exact kind of spectacle that keeps “Love Island” trending on Twitter at midnight.

And then there's the power of the outside world. Unlike most reality dating shows, Love Island is parasocial in real time. The audience votes, the Islanders react and suddenly the villa feels less like a closed system and more like a two-way mirror. Season 7 leaned into that, splitting couples and forcing Islanders to reckon with the fact that America doesn't always see them as they see themselves. That's part of the appeal: You're not just watching the drama, but complicit in it.

Not everything was toxic. Some moments were pure camp, the nonsense that makes the grind of six nights a week worthwhile. Megan Thee Stallion showing up to host a challenge while Islanders screamed in disbelief was one of the rare times the show felt genuinely celebratory. And then there are the memes: "Mamacita," "Eat that kitty" and "I never said I was perfect." “Love Island” is a show that knows its best legacy might not be lasting love but internet shorthand.

Still, Season 7 wasn't without ugliness. Two Islanders were ejected after racist posts from their pasts resurfaced, stark reminders of the casting team's sloppy vetting and the way fandom outrage can redefine a season overnight. To its credit, production acted swiftly, but the damage was already done — proof that when your cast comprises aspiring influencers, the digital footprint follows close behind.

And yet, for all the overproduction, formula and cruelty, I never stopped watching. That's the contradiction: “Love Island” can be shallow and frustrating, but it's also entertaining in a way few shows are. It's modern brain rot, yes, but it's my brain rot — and I'll happily tune in again next summer to watch another batch of Islanders debate whether "exploring" means cheating, or whether undercooked pancakes count as a betrayal.

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