The fifth season of Love Island USA has crowned its new romantic champions
After surviving the season and winning the vote, Hannah and Marco have won season 5 of Love Island USA
It’s occasionally a million degrees outside, but we are still ostensibly moving toward the end of summer, and that means exactly one thing: Another season of oddly complicated dating show/reality competition Love Island has come to an end on Peacock. This was technically the fifth season of the American version of the show, which ran for a few years on CBS before moving to Peacock and picking up Sarah Hyland as the host, and while everyone is obviously still on board with the thrill of watching 30 or so random people lumped together and forced to “fall in love” for a chance to win $100,000, this season was arguably a little more boring than most—possibly due to the tiring romance of Carmen Kocourek and Kenzo Nudo, who were so obviously in love and with zero drama that it didn’t exactly make for good TV (they came in fourth place).
For those who don’t follow Love Island, the basic concept is that a few dozen people live together in a secluded place, generally an island, and in order to survive each week they have to couple up with another person—either because they want to stay in the game or because they “actually” “like” the other person. There are challenges and prizes and a few different ways to get “dumped” from the show over the course of the summer, ultimately leading to the final week where the public (that’s us) gets to vote on which remaining couple should win. That winning couple gets $100,000 to start their lives together, or to just pay off some student loans and then never see their partner again (it’s their money, they get to choose what to do with it).
This year’s winners were Hannah Wright and Marco Donatelli, a somewhat controversial choice if the Love Island USA hashtag is anything to go by, but in a competition as subjective as this, there’s no way everyone is going to be happy with any ending. Everyone seems to agree that Hannah and Marco genuinely like each other at least, so that’s nice. But it’s based on voting anyway, so that’s just how democracy works sometimes. The second place couple was Kassandra Castillo and Leonardo Dionicio, with Carsten Bergersen and Taylor Smith in third.
If this all hasn’t been enough Love Island for you, the American, Australian, and British versions will have a crossover in November called Love Island Games featuring former contestants from the other versions of the show.