A night promised to answer America’s burning questions left many with confusion and sandy clothes following Love Island USA’s season 7 reunion. The nearly two hour special premiered on Peacock on Monday and brought almost everyone from the villa back to television screens once more.
Despite the noise made online prior to the reunion pertaining to rumors about breakups or who wasn’t invited, after watching the show, the internet couldn’t help but point out the elephant in the room. Co-hosts Ariana Madix and Andy Cohen led the cast in conversation that veered into comments made online by third runner-up Huda Mustafa about experiencing bullying by other contestants within the villa. Mustafa brought up during the reunion that she didn’t realize that she was being mistreated until after leaving the island and rewatching clips of the show. She also mentioned that islander Chelley Bissanthe was one of the ‘bullies’ in the videos’ content.
Chelley acknowledged the situation and how the videos were painted as a ‘mean girl situation’, and apologized. Moments later, Huda expressed that in the villa she felt that she could ‘no longer lean on’ second runner-up Olandria Carthen. Olandria took the opportunity to question her relationship with Huda upon leaving the villa when she saw she and Chelley were receiving a significant amount of hate from social media. Since most of the comments were coming from Huda’s fanbase, Olandria asked if she could address it by making a post which she ended up not doing.
Before the next ad break, Olandria brought up how it should have been important for Huda to want to prioritize calling out racism, and Huda responds by acknowledging her own racial encounters since leaving the show.
The internet did not take too kindly to this. TikTok creator @ej__1728 said that when it came to speaking about racism no one seemed to want to speak up. Not even the hosts.
Khariss Bender, a senior broadcast journalism student at Howard University, noticed a disconnect between the special’s hype and the islanders despite enjoying the episode herself.
“At a certain point it felt as though they were going in circles and I could feel the lack of energy through the screen,” Bender said. “I think most of them are just exhausted with it all.”
Other viewers took the chance to point to the producers in their handling of the discussion surrounding racism during the reunion and season 7. Journalist Makenna Underwood believes this energy needs to also be applied beyond the villa in future seasons.
“I think moving forward, producers really need to do a better job at addressing racism,” Underwood said. “No matter how old you are, racism is bad and standing up for it is good.”
The Love Island USA team has not directly commented on this situation or their stance, but posted a response on June 24 to their X and Instagram accounts saying, “We appreciate the fans, the passion for the series, and the amazing group of Islanders who are sharing their summer with us. Please just remember they’re real people – so let’s be kind and spread love!”