LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Love Island USA” culminated a tumultuous summer full of explosive breakups and shock exits Sunday.
A public vote (spoilers ahead) crowned Amaya Espinal and Bryan Arenales as the winning couple of its seventh season.
The season finale of the Peacock reality series followed a chart-topping run since the season premiered on June 3. The show brings young singles together in a remote villa in Fiji to explore connections with the ultimate goal of finding love.
Each contestant in the winning couple randomly picked from two envelopes, one which contained the $100,000 prize and the other nothing. Arenales got the full prize, and chose to split it evenly with Espinal.
Olandria Carthen and Nicolas Vansteenberghe were the runners-up, and Huda Mustafa and Chris Seeley came in third place. Iris Kendall and Jose “Pepe” Garcia-Gonzalez placed fourth.
The show’s host, Ariana Madix, also announced that the entire cast of Season 7 will come together again for a New York reunion, which will be released on Peacock on Aug. 25, she said.
The show, an American spinoff to the UK series, has shaken up reality TV, becoming Peacock’s most watched entertainment series on mobile devices, according to NBC Universal.
It became a breakout success and captured mainstream attention last summer, and this season grew into a true cultural phenomenon.
“Love Island: Beyond the Villa,” a new series spinoff, premiered Sunday and follows Season 6’s main cast as they navigate relationships, life and newfound social media fame in Los Angeles.
This season has also been under fire as two contestants – Cierra Ortega and Yulissa Escobar – left the villa following resurfaced posts in which they used racial slurs.
Ortega, who was half of one of the season’s strongest couples, left the villa just a week before the popular reality show’s finale after old posts resurfaced that contained a slur against Asian people. She apologized for the resurfaced posts in a nearly five minute TikTok video Wednesday.
Friday’s episode saw the elimination of Ace Greene and Chelley Bissainthe, setting the stage for the finale. Green and Bissainthe were the only couple to maintain a relationship throughout most of the show.
The four couples each went on final dates during the last episode before the winners were crowned.
Espinal and Arenales were given a photo book with pictures of each other throughout their lives, culminating with photos from their relationship during the show. The two bonded over family traditions.
“With you, I don’t ever cry out of sadness. Every time I feel like a heightened emotion with you, it’s always just like happy tears,” Espinal said.
The date ended with Espinal and Arenales taking a picture, a final memory from their time on “Love Island USA.”
“I feel like I’m a Dominican Cinderella when I’m with you, and I finally found my perfect glass slipper,” Espinal said during their date.
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