Love Island review 2021: The Faye and Teddy stitch-up is worthy of an Ofcom complaint

Last night’s episode featured more Casa Amor drama, recouplings and a classic ‘Love Island’ cliffhanger. Maybe this season’s starting to get its hooks into us after all...

Casa Amor is a means to an end. While it’s true that we all look forward to seeing the boys and girls separated and quote-unquote tested by new hotties, what we’re really looking forward to is watching the inevitable fallout. Yesterday gave us the long-awaited recoupling – or part of it anyway. But more on that later; the first three-quarters of the episode were business as usual.

The action in the main villa has thankfully picked up post-postcard arrival. After learning that Tyler has forgotten all about her, Kaz – by now, a champion in brushing off rejection – spent about 10 minutes mourning the relationship before getting to know new boy Matthew, who genuinely does seem quite nice. Fingers crossed, this time sticks. If anyone deserves happiness in that villa, it’s surely Kaz.

Other new connections are less welcome. Watching Faye flirt with Sam under the false impression that Teddy is cheating on her in Casa Amor is nothing short of infuriating – a sign that I am perhaps more invested in this season of Love Island than previously thought. When Teddy sleeps outside on the daybeds with Jake for the third night running and the producers have the cheek to follow it up with a scene of Faye and Sam cuddling in bed together, I almost emailed Ofcom.

Over in Casa Amor, Liam continued on his righteous path of “not disrespecting Millie” for about two minutes before inevitably locking lips with Lillie. By the time they did kiss, it was a relief. The only thing more cringe than Love Island’s penchant for close-up kiss cams was watching these two talk endlessly about how much they wanted to snog each other.

On the other side of the island (or next door?), the girls are reassuring Millie: “I believe in what you and Liam have, and that’s not going to be broken.” Welp. While Liam is still going on and on about having his head “scrambled” (boy speak for “turned”) by the whole Millie/Lillie question, by this point he’s sealed the deal, either way. There’s simply no going back now. The only thing worse than what he’s done in Casa Amor would be if he went back to Millie and told her that he simply had to make-out with Lillie as “a test”.

It was only in the last 10 minutes that we actually saw the recoupling – including a rare sighting of this year’s host Laura Whitmore who presided over the very dramatic proceedings. First up was Hugo and Chloe, who unsurprisingly chose to couple up with newbies Amy and Dale. Next was Abigail, who takes home the prize for Love Island’s most deluded contestant after somehow thinking that Toby – her partner of less than four days – would be faithful to her. This is the same man who has already had three partners on the series. No one watching at home was shocked to see Toby walk in looking like a 12-year-old boy about to be told off by his mum with Mary stood by his side. As the saying goes: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me four times, shame on Abigail.

Next came… just kidding. Obviously this being Love Island, instead of making the sensible decision to air an extended episode, we were left with a curt cliffhanger to ensure tonight’s ratings. And, of course, we’ll play ball. See you tonight!