THE DOWNFALL OF LOVE ISLAND, AND WHY IT’S ‘NOT GIVING’ THIS YEAR

We’re all guilty of loving a bit of trashy TV. But at what point does it go from entertainingly bad to a full-on hard watch? Love Island: All Stars season 3 has recently started… and I’ve got some concerns.

The ‘The Slow Burner’ Issue

The nature of the show is an intense, heated environment where rationality and sense go out the window, leaving hormones to rule the villa. However, this season I have noticed that the pressure has been cranked up a notch. Day-long relationships act as though they are months in the making, people consider themselves ‘open’ but still act closed off, and Whitney Adebayo is accused of being a ‘gameplayer’ for not ‘moving mad’ like everyone else. Perhaps, Whitney is a ‘slow burner’…or maybe she’s just not that into the small, undiverse selection of men that she is being forced to couple up with in order to secure her place on TV. Meanwhile, Scott van-der-Sluis and Leanne Amaning have taken the opposite approach to Whitney, appearing extremely closed off after their first date, forcing us to question the authenticity on the other end of the spectrum. There are no clear rules for the pace at which a relationship should progress, both inside and outside of the villa, but the format of the show causes us to question who is acting strategically. We’ve seen Belle Hassan crack under the pressure of choosing between Shaq Muhammad and Sean Stone, a decision which (in the real world) wouldn’t have had to be made after a week of casual dating. Is this forced and pressurised environment really one that we want to project onto younger people? Encouraging us to lower our standards, take shit that we shouldn’t and rush into things despite clear red flags? Being a slow burner is not a negative thing. In fact, let’s rephrase. You’re not a slow burner; you’re just taking time to invest in your future.

Is Age Really Just a Number?

All Stars is unique in the sense that it contains contestants from season 1 through 12, and with that comes a variety of ages and experiences amongst contestants. Immediately, Millie Court ruled Ciaran Davies off because of his age and 22-year-old Tommy Bradley was shown having a heart-to-heart with Samie Elishi about feeling unwanted and undesirable to the girls because he is younger. Now this is probably a societal issue at hand, the fact that women want older men and men want younger women; however, considering Millie referred to Charlie Frederick as being an ‘18-year-old in a 31-year-old body’, it is clear that age and maturity are not necessarily in correlation. TikTok especially has been going in on the contestants, not necessarily for their actions but for their language. We hear a lot of Love Island jargon, but this season has really taken the cake. In case you were lucky enough to forget them, let me remind you with some examples;

• ‘I’ve got a text’
• ‘Early days’
• ‘Charge it / Charge it to the game’ (a personal favourite of Whitney’s)
• ‘It’s giving’ (my favourite example of this being Belle’s ‘it’s giving it’s hot outside today’)
• ‘Its Gucci / It’s Gucci Prada’
• ‘Lipsing’
• ‘Type shit’
• ‘No good’

While that was a hard read, I am sure, what makes it an even tougher pill to swallow is the fact that it is the language used by people over the age of 30. At what point do we grow into humans who can simply say, ‘It’s hot outside?’ It’s giving Love Island is trying to stay trendy and young, but failing dramatically. More dramatically than Curtis Pritchard’s acting in Hollyoaks.

Nobody Wants a Nice Guy!

In what world does a man start a fight randomly with someone whom they have never met, come for their personality and judge them purely from clips they have seen online, and somehow still seem attractive to women? The Love Island World. Scott entered the villa charged with unwarranted rage towards Sean, and yet none of the girls were deterred by his blatant aggression. In fact, some of them seemed to enjoy it. Love Island has shown time and time again that nice guys do, in fact, come last, and this is not a message that we should still be bringing into 2026. They’re extremely aware of red flags (all they bloody do is talk about them), yet none of the girls seem to stand on business and notice them in the men they choose. Notably, Millie’s generational dumping of her villa partner, Charlie, was an exception – she really said see it, say it, sort it and then he was back on a plane to rainy England. I think Jack Keating has come across as one of the best guys this season. He is respectful and considerate, even when Whitney has been blunt with him. Yet why is he still single? In a similar vein, Tommy has been shown to be a decent guy, even getting upset over the lack of people interested in him in the villa. But how is Belle deliberating between two guys whom she has already given a chance to? There is a serious underlying problem here that exceeds Love Island. Women’s sense of attraction towards men often stems from competence, confidence and assertiveness; qualities which are good but in excess can be detrimental. Men like Jack and Tommy, however, who are quietly confident in themselves compared to the alpha-male personalities of say Scott and Ciaran, are immediately friend-zoned by the girls who are less intrigued by their personalities because they seem like less of a challenge to the girls. We’re all guilty of it. We knew who we were from a very young age, by which man we chose when playing Episode. But being aware of it is the first step to changing our mentalities. There’s no such thing as ‘too nice’, but Love Island proves that there is such a thing as being a dick. 

Can You Really Be Genuine on Love Island?

The premise of the show may be to find love, but inevitably, it is a competition on reality TV. With games that expose who ‘the public’s favourite and least favourite are’ there is always a level of competition in the game, be it to gain publicity for the right or wrong reasons. We’ve all heard or even said that someone ‘makes good tv’ before, and it’s important to recognise that the person being talked about is probably perfectly aware of this. All publicity is good publicity, so they say. Hence, why even the contestants who appear to have the worst morals tend to go far and gain followers. Do we support what they did and how they acted? Probably not? But are we all suckers for a bit of drama? Invariably yes. While a Boohoo man sponsorship may not be the aim of the ‘all stars’ these days, it is definitely a second… or third (I’m looking at you, Curtis) shot at fame. Finding love appears to be an afterthought now; it is the opportunity to gain the public’s attention again that seems to be the most appealing factor. And a paid holiday for 6 weeks probably helps incentivise too. There’s a sort of weirdness to a cast of people claiming that they are ready to settle down and have kids, yet playing raunchy games of ‘never have I ever’ on public television. Nobody’s intentions on the show are clear, except the unanimous shot at fame and to prove that their fashion sense has improved since last time.

Every night at 9pm I find myself wondering when I will finally learn that I don’t get the same satisfaction from Love Island that I used to, yet I tune in day in and day out, hoping that the show will surprise me. I get more enjoyment looking at viewers’ reactions than I do actually watching the show these days. Watching adults sneak onto a terrace together doesn’t have the same appeal that it used to. Maybe I’ve gotten boring. Or more likely, Love Island has.

Editor: Lara Machin

• dating show
• love island
• reality tv
• tv