The Love Island Round-Up: 'Shaughna Phillips has never had a cheese sandwich' (20th-26th January)
Monday brought fans probably one of the most exciting episodes of Love Island so far – the girls-versus-boys heartbeat dance-off challenge. Usually this challenge comes much later in the season, which makes you think perhaps the villa was so boring that it needed a bit of a shake up? Well it certainly did the trick.
For those who don’t know what the challenge entails, all the contestants dress up in provocative garb and one by one they try to raise the heartbeats of the opposite sex. As always, we saw an excess of willy-waggling, thrusting, slut drops, fireman lifts and…ear sucking? The boys went first, with the girls following shortly after. But in a surprising twist, a new girl joined the dance off, making for a very dramatic entrance. Rebecca Gormley, stormed in looking like a Greek goddess and proceeded to very daintily sit on every boy’s lap and kiss them on the cheek, leaving the entire villa gormless (get it?).
Rebecca’s arrival fully disrupted the new-found serenity amongst the couples, with Finley, Callum and Connagh’s heads’ all sent spinning. Rebecca has over the last few days used her tom-boyish charms and natural beauty to her advantage, coming across as quite the opposite of a ‘girls' girl’. Instead she spends all of her time hanging out with the boys and asking important questions like ‘what does your sex face look like?’ Initially refusing to admit to the girls who she was interested in, Rebecca later took just Jess and Siânnise aside tactically, to finally confess where her wandering eye had landed. This interaction planted the growing seed of tension between Rebecca and Siânnise, which has now blossomed into a full on war between the two brunettes.
If Rebecca’s entrance wasn’t enough, we then witnessed the arrival of a Justin Bieber lookalike and a Liam from The Great British Bake Off lookalike - Luke T and Luke M. So many contestants have entered the villa this year with the same names, is this a deliberate choice from the producers to confuse everyone further, or does it in fact highlight how utterly devoid the British public are of any sense of originality? Over the next few days Luke and Luke took three girls each on a date, standing them in good stead for the next recoupling.
Friday night arrived and, instead of enjoying their turn to hold the power, the girls were overwrought with the gravity of their recoupling decisions. The couples remaining at the end of the evening were: Shaughna and Callum, Leanne and Mike, Jess and Luke M, Sophie and Connor, Paige and Finley, Rebecca and Luke T, and finally Siânnise and Nas. Rebecca snaked Siânnise out yet again, after leading Connagh into temptation to then dump him at the last second for new arrival Luke T. This meant that poor Connagh was sent home, which did feel slightly sad.
Yet another twist came on Sunday evening’s episode, with Laura Whitmore making a surprise entrance to the villa to announce that the couple with the fewest public votes would be at risk of a dumping. It didn’t come as much of a shock that Sophie and Connor, who have been bickering rather a lot during the course of their two-week relationship, received the fewest votes. The British public has no doubt been clinging to the edge of its seat waiting to see which one of the pair will be dumped as, in another twist, it was revealed that this decision would be down to the islanders themselves…
Tune in to ITV2 on Monday evening at 9pm to see the drama unfold…
#FLODown: Love Island fans may have seen the news over the weekend that previous contestant and winner, Jack Fincham, became a father for the first time over the weekend -unfortunately not with his ex-beau and co-winner, Dani Dyer, but instead with new girlfriend Casey Ranger.
Words by Mollie Kate Cohen
