Love Island USA reflects the reality of dating back to us

Last night was the Season 7 finale of Love Island USA. The show captured a huge audience of viewers around the world and stirred up heated online conversations not just about the contestants, but also about the reality of dating in 2025.

Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud sits down with Etalk senior correspondent Lainey Lui, comedian Marlon Palmer and CBC producer Amelia Eqbal to recap the recent season of Love Island USA and why it's become such a huge hit.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Amelia, there is something about the show that is not about hyperfemininity and hypermasculinity, but maybe about a particularly winning version of femininity. When you think about this show, what is the version of femininity that this show is trying to centre?

Amelia: Oh God, that's such a hard question. But I think that there are some themes that we see that really get people far. So number one, I think you need to know your worth very much so, but you can't take yourself too seriously. You need to have a really good sense of humour. You need to be sexy, but there are bounds to the amount of sexuality you can show. 

And there's this thing where you have to be a girl's girl. This has really come up this season, in particular. But the femininity that really gets you far is someone who is loyal, but still looking out for herself; who is sexy, but not overly sexual, as we saw with Huda and the reaction she got during the heart rate challenge. And just women who are really there to toe the line between being there for themselves and being there for "friendship island" as much as "love island."

Elamin: Lainey, how are you thinking about the ways that the show maybe encouraged fans to invest themselves into the contestants' lives and how do you begin to pull that back? 

Cierra, for example, who made it pretty far along the way, and then she was kicked off a week ago off the island because she did use an anti-Asian slur [in old social media posts]. She's now trying to apologize, but also trying to say, "Hey, the amount of hate that I'm receiving is quite overwhelming." You saw Love Island post on their social media pages being like, "Please don't harass our contestants." 

Lainey: Last season, we saw the fans, the chatter online really became an asset for the show. 

Unfortunately, I don't know that it was as much of an asset this season, even though the chatter was even stronger, because it became fan wars, from what I saw at least. I am an East Asian person, the slur that Cierra used was against my people. And as offensive as I find those slurs to be, I can also hold space for the fact that I don't think that many of the people calling her out were motivated by allyship for the East Asian community, but more motivated by advancing their favourite. That is what a fan war is called. So when you have a show that's supposed to be about love and you're asking the audience to root for the couple you think has the best connection, but it turns into "I'm here, voting for my fave, I'm not here necessarily voting for love," then I think the energy and the spirit of the show has been compromised. 

Elamin: Marlon, I want to talk about what makes Love Island different from other reality shows. You've been watching this show since 2016. You were at one of the thousands of watch parties that were happening live last night. Tell me a little bit about what it is about that show that grabs your attention. 

Marlon: I felt so alone in Canada watching this show in the U.K. before there was Love Island USA. And I think going to that watch party really brought it all together for me. It is women's sports. That's what it looks like to me. Women are in there cheering for certain lines, cheering for certain acts of service, cheering for words of affirmation, and then booing when the guys aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. 

I think that's why a lot of guys gravitate towards it as well, because watching it with women, you can learn [about] women. A lot of conversations pop up from this show, and I think it serves as a microcosm to the dating world in real life. A lot of people who are just like, "OK, that didn't work out, moving on." And it's like, "Wait, were you not just in a relationship?" Like, Iris has just gone from one emotion and one guy to the next without missing a beat. Hannah, we had that war cry moment where she's crying with the picture and then the next day she's doing things in bed. So I think it just serves as a microcosm to what dating life is like in the real world. And it offers up some great conversation.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jess Low.