Love Island Games Turned My Head 180 Degrees

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo: Mark Taylor/Peacock/ITV

Love Island didn’t need a format overhaul: Part of the reason it’s so easy to spend a summer ingesting episodes like daily vitamins is the complete lack of action. Sure, a production assistant occasionally constructs a cardboard set or themed obstacle course for the contestants to navigate, but these challenges are mostly about setting up sexy shots for the editor to slo-mo and reverse. Ultimately, Love Island is all about gorgeous normies slowly dehydrating and rehydrating themselves until the British public decides who got tanned enough to represent them in fast-fashion advertisements for the rest of the year. It’s a reliable formula that has since been reproduced in nations all over the world. But then someone at Peacock wondered, What if Love Island was sick and twisted?

Love Island Games, the All Stars-ification of the British dating show, revealed a novel twist on the original concept: Now, couples have to compete to stay together and win their $100,000 prize. Classic contests have gameplay consequences as opposed to interpersonal ones; bangers like the Heart Rate challenge and Snog, Marry, Pie get unisex twists that not only allow for gay shit — word to bisexual reality-TV groundbreaker Kyra Green — but spread petty drama in inventive ways, like Girls-girl Liberty Poole and Aussie Jess Losurdo trading pies over a fight they had already squashed. And there are newer, bigger challenges that stretch the possibilities for outdoor sets to include … several slides. (It’s important to have room for improvement.) Whichever pair wins each challenge becomes the “Power Couple,” an actually appropriate use of that phrase in the year 2023, and gains an advantage that usually comes as a double-edged sword, e.g., they can choose who to put up for elimination in a “Duel,” or, in one case, rearrange the couplings however they wish.

Games draws on five iterations of the franchise, including Germany, France, and Australia. Dipping back into the cast pool means these people have history — personally, I wouldn’t be as calm as Cely Vazquez when her ex Johnny Middlebrooks kissed her while she was blindfolded after he showed up as a bombshell (the first sign he wasn’t there for the right reasons). That’s only the beginning of the drama for the Americans, who come in as a tight-knit family and end in civil war. Because Games requires couples not to just fight each other for spots but to eliminate each other, too — with plenty of hard feelings. While the original show yielded some decision-making power to the voting public, in Games, it all comes down to the contestants themselves. “Yeah, it’s a game, but I’m taking this very personal, bro,” Ray said upon his elimination in episode 18. Friendly stuff like sharing clothes was seen as a marker of allegiance that ultimately booted him and his fellow U.S. partner Imani out of the competition. “You fucked me in my own wardrobe,” Courtney Boerner told her. When outfit repetition is a cardinal sin of the High Villa and you’re only allowed one suitcase, the stakes are higher than ever before.

Luckily, Love Island Games ends right at the sweet spot, before acrylics go missing and the clip-ins clip-out, though that does mean no Casa Amor to make things even more complicated. Instead, whatever gossip spread among the eliminated contestants in the local Fiji hotel amped things up at the finale, where several ex-islanders accused the inevitable winners of faking their relationship for the money. (Not the time, but when will a reality TV exec hear my plea for a show-within-a-show filmed with the losers?) For the first time in the show’s history, the semifinal firepit allowed former contestants to watch the show, then return to air out grievances as they voted on the finalists. Most of them took the opportunity to openly laugh at Jack Fowler, whom they left the villa calling a friend and came back to call a snake. Love Island Games managed more drama in a fraction of the episodes. It’s got rewatch potential we haven’t seen since season four. The “Do Bits” Society knows what I’m on about.