Love Island USA‘s narrator Iain Stirling found a way to joke about the show losing multiple Islanders after they had to be removed from the villa.
The Thursday, July 2, episode showed Melanie Moreno planning to sleep in Soul Ties — until she saw the villa’s famous owl. Melanie moved to another place for the night while the owl settled in.
The next morning, Iain addressed the owl’s absence. “For personal reasons, the owl has left the village,” he quipped.
The Love Island franchise began in the U.K. in 2002 before expanding worldwide with various spinoffs, including Love Island USA on Peacock. Each season, a different group of single Islanders are challenged to pair off in order to stay in the show’s luxury villa for a chance at the $100,000 prize.
Season 8 has had its fair share of drama — both while filming in Fiji and off screen. Earlier this season, Vasana Montgomery was cut from the show after resurfaced social media posts showed her using a slur.
Casa Amor bombshell Alannah Keyser also got pulled from the season after facing backlash for a resurfaced video that allegedly showed her using a racial slur. She broke her silence on the scandal on Saturday, June 27.
“Hi everyone, I’m coming on here to address some things that have been circulated online. I do want to begin by addressing the video of me singing along to a Roddy Ricch song that contains a racial slur. I’m sorry to whoever has seen that video and has been offended by it. That was never my intention,” Alannah said on TikTok. “The video is from six years ago and that word is just not in my vocabulary anymore.”
She continued, “I’d also like to address the screenshots that have been going around online that have been falsified. What has been shared does not reflect the truth and it has never been in my character to discriminate against anybody’s skin color. I do want to say directly that I do not support racism or discrimination of any kind and I never have.”
Similar issues arose during season 7, with Yulissa Escobar leaving days into the experience last year after clips of her using racial slurs on a podcast circulated online.
Season 7’s Cierra Ortega also faced backlash for using a slur in her own resurfaced social media post. She was pulled from the villa and later issued an apology for her past behavior.
New episodes of Love Island USA are released six days a week — except for Wednesdays — on Peacock.
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