After a summer of exploring connections, heads turning over beautiful bombshells, and a whole lot of texts, Love Island USA Season 6 is officially over.
I have to admit, prior to this summer, I hadn’t watched a full season of the American-based reality dating show. Of course, I’ve been a longtime fan of the OG Love Island based in the United Kingdom, but Love Island USA finally got it right this time and drew in record-breaking streaming numbers week after week all season long.
Unfortunately for fans like myself, the season came to an end on Aug. 19 with the reunion episode. ICYMI, the reunion was hosted by none other than reality star icon Ariana Madix. Most of the islanders came together to rehash some of Season 6’s most entertaining and controversial moments on and off-screen. From Kaylor Martin *finally* confronting Aaron Evans for his “disgusting” behavior on the show to Serena Page and Kordell Beckham confirming they’re dating, the reunion episode was full of ups-and-downs.
However, I’d say the most shocking moment of the night was when the show played the fully raw, unedited footage from Andrea Carmona’s elimination. Fans begged the Love Island gods (aka the producers) to release this clip after the islanders talked about it all summer. However, now that the show’s given viewers what they’ve been asking for, everyone was disappointed with what they saw.
From the first night of Love Island USA Season 6, Leah Kateb and Rob Rausch had an instant connection. They became one of the first OG couples of Season 6 but quickly experienced conflict when the first bombshell, Olivia “Liv” Walker, entered the villa and stole Rob from Leah. Liv and Rob’s connection turned out to be merely platonic and he eventually recoupled with Leah. Unfortunately, though, Leah and Rob’s relationship changed for good when Andrea joined the cast as another bombshell.
He admitted it would be hard to “turn his head,” but after a dramatic conversation with Leah that ended with Rob on the floor crying and jumping into the pool to escape from cameras, he chose to pursue Andrea, who he later recoupled with. Leah was admittedly hurt from the turmoil she’d been through during the first few weeks of her Love Island experience, though she persisted and continued to get to know other people.
Trouble came knocking on Leah’s door once more when a shocking fan vote and elimination forced eight islanders to dump one boy and one girl from the island. “The public” voted for their favorite couples and Leah, Serena, Kaylor, and Liv were the women who escaped the bottom three couples and they had to choose to eliminate either Andrea, JaNa, or Nicole from the show.
They ended up eliminating Andrea, a decision which lit the villa up in flames. Some islanders accused Leah of orchestrating Andrea’s elimination as a way to get Rob back. After having a personal chat with Leah where she admitted to “taking the backseat” in choosing Andrea, Rob pulled Liv and Kaylor aside for a chat where they disputed Leah’s claims.
From that moment on, the islanders fought about Leah’s role in Andrea’s elimination for the rest of the season. After agreeing to disagree, they had to rehash the moment once more during the infamous Movie Night that left the waters even more muddled on what really went down during their deliberation. All season long, fans called for the Love Island USA production team to release the fully unedited footage from Andrea’s dumping, and they did just that at the reunion.
The 10-minute long clip showed that Leah did not push for Andrea to go home but rather argued that Andrea had joined the show with mal intentions, citing her talking about the potential brand deals she’d get in the future from her appearance on the show. Instead of fighting for Andrea to be dumped, Leah fought in support of Nicole to stay because she was testing the waters and getting to know all the new islanders. Liv and Kaylor apologized to Leah during the reunion and they finally settled the season-long dispute, but to dismay from fans.
After giving the viewers what they wanted (a la the unedited footage from Andrea’s elimination), fans are now saying the clip took up too much time of the reunion and made the episode boring. The official Love Island USA TikTok page shared a teaser clip of the footage, and the comments on that video are profoundly negative.
One of the top comments left by user @devinmcd_ critiqued the episode for giving fans “absolutely nothing,” with over 40,000 users backing this claim by liking the comment. User @_.xlinaax_wrote that the inclusion of Andrea’s elimination was “too longggg” and took away time from the show.
Despite much backlash, user @cmaries1419 called out exactly what I was thinking with her comment that read, “We asked for the fire pit scene for weeks and we got it. Now it’s ‘too long.’”
Fans begged Love Island USA to release that footage or at least play it during Movie Night to get to the bottom of what really happened. For once, the show’s production team took what the viewers had asked, delivered just that, and are now reaping the consequences.
This is a lesson for the fans and the behind the scenes crew working on the show — sometimes it’s better to let the professionals do their job, because the audience will always find a way to complain in the end. Personally, I’m more than flattered that Love Island USA shared the footage from Andrea’s elimination, but I fear the show won’t be taking any advice from fans in the future with this amount of backlash.