They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, but for some of these “Love Island USA” couples, Casa Amor had other plans.
Here’s a look back at some of the major moments that happened during episodes 18-23.
After an eventful introduction to the new women entering Casa Amor, the Villa girls get introduced to the new guys who will be joining them for the next week. The boys are brought in via boat, meaning the original guys can see the entrance from Casa Amor and reality starts to creep in that the girls might also have some fun making new connections this week.
Host Ariana Madix reveals that there are 12 new guys entering the Villa, but that the girls will need to spend the day getting to know them to narrow it down to six.
After a pool day party reminiscent of Barbie’s dreamhouse as well as a kissing game, the girls are ready to make their decision. Ronnie, Chay, Corey and Carl, as well as Los Angeles residents Gal and Dylan are invited to the week in the Villa.
Despite the girls being shown a live stream of how their guys were behaving during the Heart Rate Challenge, Melanie, Aniya and Kayda admit to still missing their men, but that they will push themselves to explore the new connections.
The main connections we see develop in the Villa are Aniya and Carl, Kayda and Chay, Melanie and Corey, Jen and Gal as well as Kenzie and Dylan. Over in Casa Amor, the main connections are KC and Tierra, aka TiTi, Sincere and Amora, Zach and Alannah, Corbin and Parmida, as well as Caleb and Jaiden.
Despite a kiss with Corey in the photobooth the first night, Trinity decides not to explore her Casa connection because she likes where things are going with Bryce, which is a relief to viewers as Bryce, too, quickly realizes he misses Trinity. This leaves Casa members Sydney and Ronnie working overtime to try to form connections with the other Islanders.
As has become tradition during Casa Amor, the two Villas compete in a steamy make-out challenge. Whoever delivers the more passionate performance wins a point. Each original Islander will compete against their original couple with a Casa Islander of their choice. They will also pick a theme at random. For example: Aniya chose the theme dance. She chose Carl as her partner while they competed against KC and Tierra at Casa Amor. Each villa also had a meter for Team Villa vs. Team Casa that lit up a bar at a time as the performance heated up. Whoever’s metere reached the top first got the point. In the end team Villa won the challenge.
For the sake of keeping this article safe for work, I will not be elaborating more than that.
The next day, narrator Iain Stirling announces that Alannah had left Casa Amor. The news comes after a resurfaced video and social media messages showed Alannah use a racial slur.
Then its the return of the mailboxes, which if viewers have learned anything, can only mean bad news for the Islanders. Each villa receives a postcard filled with photos of each of the Islanders making new connections during their Casa Amor experience. The groups begin to dissect the photos, trying to determine if makeouts were during challenges, which could be a pass, vs alone time which would mean more betrayal by their partners.
For the Villa girls, this is an additional reminder that their guys are exploring new connections and they should be doing the same. In Casa, Zach begins to panic when he realizes that the girls back in the Villa likely also received a postcard and his mind begins to spiral over what they might have been shown. Rightfully so, because the picture Kayda receives of Zach and Alannah kissing brings her to tears, covering herself with a towel as she’s overwhelmed by the confirmation of what Zach has been up to in Casa.
For the final day of Casa, the guys in the Villa are pulling out all of the big moves to try and secure their connections for the chance that the girls will recouple with them. For Corey, this means setting up a breakfast date in the beach chair area for him and Melanie where they share a few kisses.
That evening, the guys return to the Villa. The way the post Casa recoupling works is that the girls decide first if they want to couple up with one of the Casa guys, afterwards the Villa guy they were previously paired up with returns and it’s revealed if they chose to recouple with a Casa girl. If both parties didn’t bring someone back to the villa, they return to their couple, but if one person chose to recouple while the other didn’t, that leaves the individual single and vulnerable.
Things start of peaceful as the evening kicks off with Jen and Caleb, who went into the Casa experience single and each are bringing a new Islander back to the villa: Jen with Gal and Caleb with Jaiden. However, every recoupling after that becomes more tense than the last.
When Kenzie is up she mentions that part of her decision to recouple came from the disrespect she saw from Corbin towards her during the livestream, which is news to Caleb as he mentally prepares for what the rest of the guys have in store for themselves. Corbin also becomes aware of this information shortly after returning to the Villa with Parmida.
Next is Kayda who decides to stay single and vulnerable, despite revealing she felt disrespected by Zach from what she’s seen of his time in Casa. Her and the other girls are relieved when Zach walks in solo, meaning the two are in a couple once again.
Melanie is next. Despite speaking very highly of Corey and their connection, she reveals that she has decided to give Sincere one more chance. When Sincere returns to the Villa, the initial reaction from Melanie and the girls is excitement and relief. However after Sincere reveals that he had a feeling that Melanie would remain single because he knows Melanie and he thinks she knows him too, Ariana, asks Melanie if she knows Sincere, prompting her to get her feelings off her chest.
Melanie reveals to Sincere that part of what made her decision so tough was because all of the Casa guys were warning her that she hadn’t seen the full picture of how Sincere had been moving throughout the Villa during the first three weeks and she deserted better.
Trinity and Bryce are up next. To the relief of everyone in the Villa, the two decided to remain loyal to one another, meaning that they are once again in a couple. The reunions tug on the heartstring of viewers back at home as Bryce ran to Trinity as soon as he relized she was standing there alone waiting for him. The emotional reunion leaves the two choked up as they share how they were thinking of each other during their time apart, Bryce not kissing anyone outside of a challenge and Trinity sleeping solo in Soul Ties.
Finally, the most anticipated recoupling of the evening: Aniya and KC. Aniya reveals that despite her connection with Carl, and him being “so perfect,” she has decided to continue her connection with KC. And this one hurt for viewers, not only because Carl has been crowned the internet’s new boyfriend in the week since joining “Love Island USA,” but also because we know what’s about to happen, an accident you can’t look away from.
In walks KC and Tierra, and immediate disappointment and regret can be seen on Aniya’s face. After expressing her hurt, KC shares that the decision he made to recouple wasn’t for Aniya, it was for him. He then tells Aniya that up until now he had picked her time and time again. KC circles back to the first night in the Villa when nobody picked him.
Aniya’s response is a page straight out of a Shonda Rhimes drama series. “I have picked you every f–ing time. At this f–ing fire pit, I picked you. With the letters, I picked you. Here I picked you. You didn’t pick me. You didn’t pick me! And I picked you every time. Literally, even when we have conversations, you’ve said stuff, and I’ve said at the end of the day, I would still pick you. And this is the decision where you could’ve picked me, and you didn’t.”
Things get a little heated in the moments that follow as the Villa girls confront KC about previous comments he had made. Tierra also jumps to defend KC, leading to more tension between the Islanders as Tierra calls Trinity a “little girl.” KC doubles down on his decision and tells the others that he doesn’t need any of them to respect him because it’s his decision.
This completes the recoupling and Ariana reveals to the four Casa guys who didn’t get picked that they will need to pack their bags and leave.
And transparently, the internet, myself included, is devastated to lose Carl. You see, unknown to the Islanders, social media users quickly began to adore Carl. Fan edits were shared online comparing him to various leading men such as Prince Naveen from “The Princess and the Frog,” Milo from “Treasure Planet,” and Prince Christopher from “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” specifically the version portrayed by Paolo Montalban alongside 90’s icon Brandy.
Well, the producers must have picked up on this because at the end of Friday night’s episode, it’s revealed that it’s America’s turn to vote again, only this time they will be voting to bring back one dumped Casa girl and Casa guy.
The main thing we saw on Saturday’s “Aftersun” was the first unseen footage of the season: the Casa recoupling before the couples headed back to the villa. In the clip, we saw each guy explain why they were remaining single or if they had chosen to recouple and with whom. We also saw the moment all of the dumped Casa contestants were informed by producers that two of them would be returning to the Villa based on America’s vote.
On Sunday night, we saw the aftermath of the recoupling, where Melanie takes Aniya and gives her the pep talk of a lifetime. Aniya, who is the only single Islander after the recoupling, decides to sleep outside in Soul Ties that night, giving herself some time to process her emotions in privacy.
The Villa girls and Casa girls also make amends, noting that the frustration at the recoupling was not at each other, but because of the guy’s actions.
The next day its revealed that the Islanders are about to “shake” their “cakes” in the evening’s challenge in a boys vs. girls competition. And who better to host it than “Love Island” superfan and rapper, Megan Thee Stallion? Megan Thee Stallion returns to the Villa for a second year in a row to meet the Islanders while promoting her Hot Girl Summer swimwear line.
The Islanders play a few games as decorative cakes are displayed throughout the Villa. They start with a round of musical chairs, which KC and Tierra win. Next, they have the girls in a whack-a-mole cake where the guys share which girl they want to cake and why before throwing cake at her.
Then it’s the girls’ turn, but instead of caking the guys, they use a giant piping bag to squirt frosting at them after they’ve explained their reasoning.
And because she is truly a fan of the reality TV series, Megan Thee Stallion isn’t afraid to get messy when it comes to asking the Islanders some follow-up questions during the challenges. Including asking a confused KC if he remembers what he did in Casa while bringing up that he might not have moved the most respectfully during his time away.
Another theme of the episode? Everyone misses Carl; it’s even the reason Dylan cakes Aniya for taking away his favorite guy. Aniya agrees she misses him too, even Megan Thee Stallion joins in on the fun, shouting to the sky, “Where’s Carl?”
Well, it turns out Carl is closer than we think, because after having Zach and Kenzie compete in a head-to-head challenge to find a prize in the cake. The prize ends up being a note that says “revenge is sweet,” which has the Islanders confused.
Megan Thee Stallion then reveals America had the chance to vote for their favorite girl and boy, with the twist being it wasn’t from the Islanders standing there but from the dumped Islanders of Casa Amor.
The cogs begin to turn in Aniya’s head as she realizes hope might not be lost. And sure enough, to the delight of both the Islanders and viewers, Amora and Carl have been brought back into the Villa. Which will likely lead to two major plot lines next week: Carl and Aniya continue their connection and Melanie becomes more aware of what happened between Amora and Sincere during Casa Amor.
New episodes of “Love Island USA” air at 6 p.m. PT every day but Wednesday on Peacock.