Who is left to defend Love Island? As the sixth series has dwindled to its conclusion, its final weeks have perhaps been mired by controversy more so than ever before. The tragic death of former host Caroline Flack lingers over the final episodes, transforming the trashy, guilty pleasure into a true exercise in guilt, only now with no corresponding pleasure. The deeply uncomfortable ‘tribute’ episode may have opened with a sombre, reflective eulogy in place of a witty recap, but that which followed played out exactly the same as any other episode, with the same tone and the same sardonic commentary as ever. Bar the tribute to Flack, it was, in fact, the exact same episode that was pulled from air after the news of her death broke. Jarring is certainly an understatement. It has left the remainder of the series limping to the finish line, but tonight’s finale will see its young, not-so angsty contestants participate in a climactic ritual to wash away people’s cynicism, albeit temporarily.
Flack’s replacement, Laura Whitmore, will enter the villa and whichever couple has enamoured themselves most in the eyes of the public will then be faced with one final challenge: Will they split their cash prize with their Love Island partner, or will they steal the full amount, no doubt dumping their partner in the process?
Last year's winners face their Split/Steal dilemma.
It is, admittedly, less of a challenge, and more of a formality, as over the past five years, no contestant has managed to channel enough pure chaotic energy to gift us with the TV moment that we all secretly yearn for. As such we have to ask: is stealing the £50K even possible?
Yes, yes, the prize money is paltry in comparison to what their minor celebrity status will bestow upon them in the show’s aftermath, and perhaps marking themselves as a villain will remove some financial viability to their post-show careers (though how much I do wonder…). Maybe there is, in fact, a moral line some are unwilling to cross. There are valid reasons contestants simply wouldn't want to steal the money. Still, reasoning such as this belies the specific function the ‘choice’ and prize money serve in the show’s design: it is not that the cash money is a lesser prize, it is that it is no prize at all. The money has to be forsaken as a final legitimisation of the performance of love. Perhaps their attraction has seemed false, perhaps we do not believe their confessions of love, but by refusing the prize money they have allowed selfless love to conquer over personal self-interest and we, the audience, can now believe in them unironically. Even more than this, after having restored or encouraged our faith in the (now-deserved) winning couple, the choice justifies the series as a wider product.
It functions as our one true moment of ‘romance’; the dates and the gestures which precede it, where couples enact bizarre proposal scenarios simply to make their coupling official, constitute only a surrealist performance of romance. It is not one which we are expected to engage seriously with. It is a show put on for the audience, not representative of these character’s own truths. But, in this final, guaranteed story beat, Love Island itself is orientated away from pleasing the court of public opinion and into the gauging of love’s authenticity. You are allowed to doubt the show at any point except this. Everything up until this moment can be faked, scripted, overly edited or staged, but this has to be read as authentic. Going back to the earlier seasons we can see this more explicitly; we should recall that in place of the 50K envelope there was instead a Golden Balls-esque decision between ‘Love’ and ‘Money’. The key assumption being that the former was as material and as quantifiable as the latter. Is it not true that were someone to elect not to split the cash then the show would cease to be Love Island? It is an option never to be picked: freedom of choice, so long as you choose correctly.
Then, let us imagine that tonight one of our darling 20-somethings is revealed to have been a Machiavellian gameplayer all along. What do we expect to actually happen? The audience will jeer, Laura Whitmore will swoon and, no doubt, the heartbroken partner’s face will melt as if they had looked into the Ark of the Covenant. The producers will panic, frantically attempting to reconcile their celebratory tone with the anti-romantic horror taking place in front of their cameras. The same planned music may well play or, perhaps, the final episode of Love Island will fade out with awkward silence. Some days of media furore will follow, as each tabloid rushes to abandon any lesson they might have learned from the maltreatment of Flack to hound winner and loser, villain and victim, alike.
And, once the winner is sat back home, checking their mobile banking app, they would see not a deposit of £50K, but a deposit of £25K, twice.
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