‘Love Island Games’ Is the Spin-Off No One Asked For

By Emma Chance | TV | October 5, 2023 |

By Emma Chance | TV | October 5, 2023 |

I have a confession: I gave up on Love Island a few seasons ago. I tried the first season of the American version but even that I couldn’t get through. Somehow the world’s most vapid show continues to get even more vapid with each passing year, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe I could get through it if there weren’t 100 episodes per season, but, alas.

It seems the franchise is going through what The Bachelor and Love Is Blind are also experiencing, which is to say, people are getting bored of the old formula, and the casting is breaking down. The contestants are so transparently aspiring professional reality show participants who are quite literally there for the wrong reasons, and they aren’t even good at hiding it. “What can be done?” I imagine hand-wringing producers screaming at each other across sterile conference rooms. Suddenly, a man who everyone swears has never been there before and who looks suspiciously like Jeff Probst turns around in his swivel chair and says, “I know what to do … Send them to Fiji!”

Yes, the new Love Island spin-off, Love Island Games, will see fan favorites from across the various franchise countries competing in couple and team challenges on the sandy beaches of Fiji, because at this point Fiji’s entire economy relies on the filming of reality competition shows. I’m picturing Jeff and his Survivor hopefuls on one island, waving to the naked hot people on the other island across the way. They’ll be neighbors!

They couldn’t just send the naked hot people to an island and do everything the same as they did before because that would just be Bachelor in Paradise. But don’t worry! Everyone knows the best part of Love Island is the challenges, anyway. You know, when they spit stuff in each other’s mouths and do sexy dances in costumes? Obviously, you save the franchise by doing whole episodes of nothing but that.

“There are some little tweaks to that format—it’s going to feel like Love Island—but the things that we’ve changed and moved around, I’m really, really, excited about because it’s going to make it feel like a slightly different show,” said executive producer Simon Thomas. Gosh, I wonder what those changes could be. Hidden immunity idols? Or maybe he just means they’ll be living in huts instead of a luxury villa.

Maya Jama, who is perfectly fine but lacks the Jeff Probst panache, will be hosting. The games will premiere on November 1st on Peacock “with new episodes dropping six days a week.” Six days a week?! They’ve learned nothing.