The Rise of ‘Love Island USA’: From Death Threats Against Contestants to Agency Battles for the Biggest Stars

Season 6 of “Love Island USA,” which is produced by ITV America and airs on Peacock every summer, saw its viewership double compared to that of previous seasons, according to NBCUniversal. Those numbers have only continued to grow in the two years since. This past summer, Season 8 drew 19 billion minutes watched, translating to 7.9 million views, according to data from Peacock.

The newly Bravo-fied “Aftersun” spinoff, now co-hosted by “Summer House” star Ciara Miller, saw a 135% increase in viewership from last season. And with other spinoff series such as “Beyond the Villa” and “Love Island Games,” many Islanders continue their journey far beyond their original seasons.

For Walker, Season 6 was the beginning of what she calls “the catapult.” For the franchise, it was the beginning of a transformation from a reality dating series into something much larger — one that would transform its contestants into global celebrities and content creators in the process.

“I don’t think we’ve seen anything quite like this,” says UTA unscripted TV agent Jamie Youngentob. “The closest thing would probably be Bravo, but those shows can take multiple seasons for somebody to really break through and stick.”

The Season That Changed Everything

Season 6 had taken the world by storm, but its success wasn’t the result of contestants entering the villa with dreams of becoming influencers. In fact, several of the season’s Islanders say the opposite was true: They had no idea anyone would be watching at the scale they ultimately were.

Kaylor Martin, who appeared alongside Walker in Season 6, was a senior in college when she applied. She was working three jobs, had about 4,000 Instagram followers and rarely posted on social media. 

“I don’t think any of us had expectations on our lives being changed,” Martin tells Variety, noting that she and her fellow Islanders had plans to return to work or school after the show. 

That naivete, she believes, is part of what made Season 6 resonate. The cast wasn’t performing for an audience they knew was watching.

“If I wasn’t on Season 6, and I was asked to go on Season 7 or 8, I don’t know if I would have cried that much or acted so organically because we truly had no idea everyone was watching,” Martin says.

The result was a group of contestants whose lives changed almost overnight. Martin went from being a college student to, two years after leaving the villa, working as a full-time content creator and host of the podcast, “Kaylor’s Crash Out Podcast.” 

Nobody expected Season 6’s spike in popularity, including creatives and talent agencies. When Martin left the villa, she didn’t prioritize brand deals or posting consistently because she didn’t realize social media could become a career. 

She says “Love Island” now helps its contestants navigate the transition, connecting Islanders with agencies and publicists after they leave the show — something Season 6 didn’t offer. After having to navigate that process largely on her own, Martin is now eager to help Islanders from recent seasons with their post-villa journey. Most recently, she connected with Season 8 contestant Kenzie Annis and gave her advice on growing her platform. 

Now, leading talent agencies view “Love Island” as a viable pipeline for creators looking to build long-term careers. It has become an increasingly competitive space to scoop up talent, says UTA partner and agent Mahzad Babayan, with the agency signing Season 8 winner Bryce Alakai just over a week after the finale aired. Gersh, meanwhile, reps Emmy-nominated host Madix and Season 8 contestant Annis.

But for agents working in the digital creator space, it’s not about securing the buzziest “Love Island” Islanders with the biggest brand deals — it’s about finding the right talent who are looking for longevity over a viral moment, far past the one-year exclusivity deal that limits what opportunities “Love Island” contestants can take. That usually means keeping them in the NBCUniversal family.

“The talent know, now more than ever, what they’re getting into,” says Gersh’s head of digital Jade Sherman. “‘Love Island’ is an incredible brand, and they try really hard to protect their IP. They’ve put things in place to do that, and it’s on us as representatives to be able to pivot and adapt to where their changing rules are.”

For UTA, signing Alakai was attractive because he already had a “real” career in music before going on the show, and even appeared in a Tubi film. 

“He’s been working incredibly hard at pursuing and building a DJ career,” Youngentob says. “That was exciting for us, alongside our music colleagues.”

The Islanders who followed in Seasons 7 and 8 entered a franchise that was already a proven launching pad to worldwide fame and opportunity.

Amaya, who won Season 7, was working as a registered nurse when a casting producer reached out to her. Like Walker, she had never watched a full season of “Love Island,” and her exposure to the show primarily stemming from viral clips on social media. 

Unlike the Season 6 cast, though, Amaya entered the villa knowing what the previous season had become. But the show’s newfound fame didn’t sway her decision to apply.

“I feel like life is all about taking risk,” she tells Variety about deciding to join the show. “You just have to trust your intuition, and it was the best thing I did.”

After becoming a fan favorite of Season 7 and being crowned its winner, Amaya was determined to pursue other opportunities beyond reality television. She’s now working on music, exploring her passion for poetry and taking acting classes, all opportunities that launched from her time on the show. 

“Thank God I decided to take the chance and to take the risk and to not let self-doubt hold me back,” she says. “That’s just the message that I’m trying to give overall — ‘Why not?’” 

Starring alongside Amaya in Season 7 was Iris Kendall, who was originally scouted for Season 6 but declined. When she decided to accept the offer for the seventh season, the success of the previous season made her anxious about stepping into the public eye. 

“Honestly, in a perfect world, if it wasn’t filmed and I did the social experiment, that would be freaking awesome,” Kendall tells Variety, laughing. “But it definitely made me nervous to be in the public eye and have people critique every single thing that I could possibly do, especially when the cameras are on you 24/7.”

By the time Kendall left the villa, the scale of the franchise had grown even larger. At the Season 7 finale, the cast was told the season had performed seven times better than the previous one.

And the opportunities followed. Kendall signed with WME and turned what she expected might be a handful of brand deals into a full-time career.

“I just thought I’m going to get maybe some deals here and there, but I didn’t think that I was going to be doing anything that I’m doing now or having this as a full time career,” she says about her success after the show. “I’m just so thankful that I put myself out there to the public.”

Fame Has a Price

But underneath the brand deals and business ventures lies an increasingly attached fanbase analyzing the Islanders’ every move. After getting her phone back and seeing the world’s reaction to Season 7, Kendall says she quickly learned that fans could develop strong opinions about Islanders based solely on what they’ve seen on television and social media. 

“We have parasocial people commenting on our lives,” Kendall says. “They don’t really know us. They don’t know what we text about. They don’t know what we talk about.”

While the Islanders are in the villa, they’re completely oblivious to the fact that an entirely new universe forms on social media among those tuned into the show. Viewers take it upon themselves to determine who the token heroes and villains of the season are, often fighting over just how well a contestant should be liked.

In Season 7, fans notably targeted contestant Huda Mustafa, turning her vulnerable moments into widespread memes (yes, we’re talking about her “dream date”). In Season 6, fans honed in on Andrea Carmona, quickly labeling her as an antagonist.

“I was not expecting that. I had to get off of social media for two weeks,” Carmona tells Variety. “My TikTok for you page was just people saying very nasty things about me, and this whole narrative that I knew in my heart wasn’t me. But at the end of the day, people are going to perceive you however they want.”

The feeling that viewers personally know the people they’re watching on screen could stem in part from the fact that the show is on six days a week each summer, which gives audiences hours upon hours of consistent access to the Islanders’ lives.

“Younger fans are drawn to it as appointment-viewing television, because a lot of what is transpiring on screen are relationship dynamics that they might identify with themselves, so there is a lot of projection onto the cast of characters. And that creates an entirely new show,” says Brandy Monk-Payton, assistant professor at Fordham University. “It’s almost as if there is the show that exists on Peacock, and the show that exists on TikTok.” 

Danielle J. Lindemann, the author of “What Reality TV Says About Us,” adds, “There’s this whole other discourse happening online that you almost have to follow in order to watch and understand the show. You kind of have to do them both in tandem.”

Additionally, viewers engage with “Love Island” on a much higher, more intense level than other reality dating shows because they’re able to directly vote on which couples they want to stay together and, ultimately, which couple takes home $100,000 on finale night.

“Who you enjoy, who you want to win, becomes a projection of your identity and so you have all of these conflicts online that are just proxy wars,” Bonk-Payton adds.

Carmona says that, even two years after her season, she still gets hate messages from those still parasocially attached to Season 6. 

“I generally say from my season, I’m happy that I was the one that got all this hate because truthfully, I don’t think anyone on that season could have handled the amount that I got and still be here today. That’s how bad it was.”

Daniella Bondar, an admin of a “Love Island” Facebook group with more than 300,000 members, says that people get reported every day for hateful comments, although she notes that the group remains mostly positive and cordial. Discourse in the group continues long after the show airs, with members keeping up with the contestants from past seasons via social media and clamoring for details about their lives.

“When I watched the show, I didn’t know what the problems with Zach were, but then I go to the group and I see the big discussion is that everybody thinks he’s here just to be on social media, just to be famous, they didn’t like him,” Bondar says. “They’re taking all the things they see on TikTok and Instagram and then bringing it back into the group to see how everybody else feels.”

False narratives and misconceptions are common in “Love Island,” largely stemming from the fact that Peacock creatives are tasked with condensing 24 hours of footage into one-hour episodes. That sometimes means key elements of a contestant’s personalities, their relationship dynamics and their friendships don’t make it into the final cut. 

“What matters the most to me is how the people in my life view me, how I treat other people, and if I’m doing a good job at that,” Kendall says about receiving negativity from viewers with false perceptions of her. “That’s what’s important to me, not what random people say or what random people think.”

To help control the negative comments online and bullying online, Peacock released a statement ahead of Season 8 prior to the first episode airing, reminding fans to “keep it kind” and “keep it positive.” A similar statement was released in Season 7, reminding fans that the Islanders are “real people.” 

Building Community

With the Season 8 reunion dropping on Aug. 31, the Islanders — who have strategically been quieter on social media than contestants from past seasons, and have done limited press in the lead-up to the reunion — are ready to move into the next phase of their lives outside the “Love Island” bubble.

Unlike Walker, who might as well have appeared on an entirely different show than what the Season 5 Islanders experienced, contestants who get off the show now know they have a community of past “Love Island” Islanders to connect with. 

That’s an especially important point for Carmona, who extends a hand to contestants facing hate.

“We all trauma bond together,” Carmona says. “No one understands the experience of what we went through.”