“Love Island USA” Season 7 has come to an end, revealing America’s favorite couple in a finale that arrived amid online controversy.
On July 13, Amaya Espinal and Bryan Arenales were revealed as the winners of “Love Island USA” 2025. Alongside their bragging rights as the fan-favorite couple, the two split a $100,000 prize.
Nic Vansteenberghe and Olandria Carthen were the runner-up couple, thanks to viewers who cast their votes on the Peacock show’s app. Iris Kendall and Pepe Garcia-Gonzalez and Huda Mustafa and Chris Seeley also made it to the finale.
In the last regular episode before the finale, Day 1 islanders Chelley Bissainthe and Ace Greene were dumped from the villa following a fan vote.
As anticipated, the reunion was also announced. It’s slated to drop Monday, Aug. 25, at 9 p.m. ET.
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‘Love Island’ 2025 was beset by racism controversies
Episode 36 marks the end of another summer of games (both emotional and physical), “crashing out” and endless neon lights, which all kicked off with the June 3 premiere.
But there was trouble in paradise early on, with starting cast member Yulissa Escobar unceremoniously exiting off-camera with limited acknowledgement. Narrator Iain Stirling simply told viewers, “Yulissa has left the villa.” On July 6, Cierra Ortega – who was in a front-running couple with Vansteenberghe – was removed from the show, with Stirling explaining she “has left the villa due to a personal situation.”
Though each season sees a portion of the cast depart for various reasons, which are never made apparent to viewers, Season 7’s two unexplained exits were related to both contestants’ past online activity that involved racial slurs.
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Before the show even premiered, Escobar, a 27-year-old Miami businesswoman, received backlash when several clips of her using a racial slur on a podcast surfaced. She later posted a written apology “for using a word I had no right in using.”
In the week leading up to Ortega’s exit, screenshots of alleged recent Instagram posts showed the 25-year-old contestant using a racist slur against people of Asian descent to negatively refer to her eyes. Her use of the word caused an online uproar, provoking her family to denounce viewers who’d allegedly reported the Ortegas to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Ortega, who lives in Los Angeles, is originally from Arizona, and her family is of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage.
The show this season condemned “cyberbullying, harassment (and) hate” in messages shared on the air and on social media.
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Within days of leaving the villa, Ortega posted a nearly five-minute “accountability video” apologizing to “the entire Asian community” and saying she “had no idea that the word held as much pain, as much harm, and came with the history that it did, or I never would have used it.”
The conclusion of Season 7 also marks the launch of “Love Island: Beyond the Villa,” a spinoff series with Season 6’s breakout stars, including JaNa Craig, Kenny Rodriguez, Leah Kateb, Miguel Harichi, Serena Page, Kaylor Martin and Aaron Evans.
