Who won 'Love Island USA'? All the highs and lows of Season 7, from 'mamacita' to Cierra Ortega's exit
After six weeks of searching for love, Amaya Espinal and Bryan Arenales were announced as the winning couple of Love Island USA on Sunday night. Arenales picked the $100,000 cash envelope but chose to split it evenly with Espinal.
Nic Vansteenberghe and Olandria Carthen placed second, while Iris Kendall and Pepe Garcia-Gonzalez and Huda Mustafa and Chris Seeley were finalists too, based on viewers' votes. While none of them received cash prizes, they have hopefully found genuine love with each other or, at the very least, will gain more followers across their social platforms and profit from future brand deals.
The entire cast of this season will soon film a reunion together in New York, which will air on Peacock on Aug. 25.
This past season of Love Island USA seems to have drawn more attention than the first few seasons of this American version of the show, an adaptation of the popular U.K. series that's aired since 2015. Within the first week after its June 3 premiere, Season 7 had already become the second-most-watched streaming show across all platforms, with more than 1.2 billion minutes viewed across the nine episodes available at that point, according to streaming data and insight company Luminate.
The season was also Peacock's most-watched series on mobile devices, NBC Universal reported, with nearly 30% of viewers tuning in on their phones or tablets. Audience votes also set new records for the platform, with over 1 million people casting their votes on who should get voted off in six minutes after the July 8 episode.
But before we leave the villa, let's revisit some of the highs and lows of this past season.
Peacock reported that 39% of viewers this season were new to the series, and some Love Island fans have a theory as to why the show exploded this summer.
Two Love Island fans told Yahoo they think the success of the previous season contributed to the massive popularity the show experienced this summer. Season 6 — which was the first to be hosted by former Vanderpump Rules star Ariana Madix — skyrocketed past all earlier seasons of the franchise in terms of weekly viewership, according to data from Luminate.
'I truly felt like it exploded last year,' Naomi, who has been a fan since Season 5, tells Yahoo. 'However, this season is the first time I've seen this type of fan interaction.'
A subreddit dedicated to the series, which was created in 2019 and has become a hotspot for episode discussions, reported that 150,000 new members joined in June. (On July 2 alone, despite there not being a new episode, there were over 90,000 comments in the subreddit.) Some bars in New York and L.A. have started hosting viewing nights where they play the newest episode live for groups of fans.
'The fandom has definitely grown,' fan Terrell Coates tells Yahoo. Coates has watched the last three seasons live. 'I've seen more social media presence for the show, local bars and sporting venues hosting watch parties, and this cast is particularly young (maybe too young), giving it that extra boost with Gen Z audiences.'
Love Island narrator Iain Stirling had to inform viewers twice this season that some contestants had to leave the villa for 'personal' reasons.
Most recently, it was Cierra Ortega, who departed the show one week before the season finale amid backlash over resurfaced social media posts from 2015 and 2023 in which she allegedly used a racial slur.
Earlier in the season, cast member Yulissa Escobar, 27, was also asked to leave after just two episodes, after fans found videos of her using racial slurs in several podcast appearances.
The Season 7 cast delivered bizarre conversations, relatable one-liners and funny facial expressions that inspired plenty of memes on social media.
While getting to know contestant Nic Vansteenberghe in Episode 9, Huda Mustafa shared that she's a single mom. Vansteenberghe didn't seem to take the information that seriously at first, which sparked an unusual first date conversation.
Mustafa: "I'm a mommy."
Vansteenberghe: "Mommy?"
Mustafa: "I'm a mom."
Vansteenberghe: "Mamacita!"
Mustafa: "No, I'm a mommy."
Vansteenberghe: "A mom of what? Like a dog?"
Mustafa: "I have a daughter."
Vansteenberghe: "Like in real life?"
Mustafa: "Yeah."
Vansteenberghe: "Like a daughter, like a real baby?"
Mustafa: "Yeah, like a human child."
The exchange was quickly circulated on TikTok, with users jokingly mimicking Vansteenberghe's confusion as a response to the news that someone in their life is about to be a mother.
Mustafa unintentionally inspired another meme in the 12th episode of Love Island. This time, Mustafa and Jeremiah Brown were broken up after viewers voted for Brown to pair up with new cast member, Iris Kendall. Mustafa's friend Amaya Espinal couldn't help but cry over the situation.
As she sniffled on behalf of her friend's forced breakup, Espinal's partner at the time, Ace Greene, shot her a side-eye look that instantly became a hilarious reaction meme.
In the 13th episode, Mustafa, who was still looking for love at that point, learned about her crush Jeremiah Brown's date with newcomer Iris Kendall after they were paired together in the previous episode.
Mustafa and Kendall sat together, and Kendall said the date with Brown was 'just, like, sitting down on, like, the beach.'
Crushed, Mustafa responds, 'My dream date. Cute. And he knows that.'
The soundbite of her response inspired people to create lip dub memes, like this one in which a TikToker pretends it is her dog's reaction to learning that her owner went for a walk around the park and enjoyed the weather without her.
All episodes of Love Island USA Season 7, and previous seasons of the franchise, are available to stream on Peacock.
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