The Winter 'Love Island' Power Ranking: Week Five

Casa Amor has wrought its share of iconic moments in Love Island lore. There was last year’s “deadting,” the genuinely chilling screams of Georgia Steel as she hollered the word “loyal” at Josh Denzel until it ceased to have meaning, and now, thanks to the inaugural winter Love Island, the immortal words: “Congrats, hun.”

The big story of the week was, of course, the end of Callum and Shaughna – an ill-fated couple from the beginning, really, with more of a "mum dragging her child around big Tesco" vibe than anything romantic – and specifically Shaughna's ability to still come out with absolute #lines when she's crying splodges of mascara down her face. While all that has been unfolding, it has also become clear that there are far too many people in the villa for this point in proceedings (Casa Amor created so many new couples that the makers of the show had to move three extra beds in.)

As we almost certainly close in on a big cull in numbers – surely they simply can’t afford to keep that many people in avocados and Kit Kats or whatever it is they eat in there – here are my attempts to make sense of the last week:

Easily the best thing that can happen to you as a woman on Love Island is to be mugged off by a man on the show. Obviously, being canned by someone you fancy on national television is not good for your short term feelings, but the business opportunities are absolutely sensational.

If you cast your mind back to the last summer season of the show, you’ll recall that Shaughna’s current predicament was shared by one Amber Gill, who ended up doing very well out of things – like, to the tune of a rumoured million quid. If you are a woman who is popular enough on her own already, like Amber was and Shaughna is, losing out at the Casa Amor stage can only be fuel to the fire of your underdog status (as if to clarify this, Shaughna now has the most Instagram followers of any of the Islanders.) Being in a sympathetic position also crucially endears you to the audience, who you’re going to need onside to use your discount codes – SHAUGHNA30 – when you leave.

As such, if they chuck in someone likeable to couple up with Shaughna for the last couple of weeks, she will absolutely walk the victory: "Congrats, hun" t-shirt line, photo op with Khloe Kardashian, £500K clothing line deal, Loose Women, the works.

Hot Molly is a very savvy operator. She has identified that as an objectively threateningly hot person (there are no two ways about it, she looks like she’s in a Fiorucci campaign for fuck’s sake) it would be easy for her to be viewed as the villain in the Callum-Shaughna-Molly triangle. So, she used her "date" with Shaughna to establish herself as a girls’ girl – the most important thing a woman on Love Island can be. By appearing understanding of Shaughna’s predicament (lots of nodding, concerned frown, only saying “Yeah, course”), Molly has effectively absolved herself from any residual blame she might have caught for the situation, and also ensured that brands will want to work with her when the show is done. A businesswoman!

Very up and coming now it’s been given the full Love Island endorsement, I’m hearing.

The Barbie and Ken of the season are much more likeable than Tommy and Molly-Mae, mostly because Paige is a laugh (and was recently responsible for the best and most heartfelt line of the season, when Shaughna lamented that she had spent ages blow drying her hair before the doomed Casa Amor recoupling: “You deserve a bouncy blow every day in life,”) and Finlay looks like he plays a kid with a secret (the secret is that he’s a werewolf) in a Netflix show about strange goings-on at an American high school. Now that they’re official, If Shaughna doesn’t get herself a man soon, I’d say that these two are pretty nailed down to take the £50,000.

The post-Casa Amor recoupling is always a very entertaining episode of television, don’t get me wrong, but the concept is getting really boring, especially when it basically frames men and women in a binary which dictates that the women will mope in one villa while the lads are off gallivanting. Love Island is the very essence of the gender binary in every single way, but it is a particularly annoying and boring narrative, and one that I feel like the producers go out of their way to assert. Instead of Casa Amor, I propose sending everyone to an even larger villa, releasing the ten new islanders and watching chaos reign for a few days.

I like Nas and I think it’s fair enough that he went for Eva if he’s more attracted to her but I will also say that in doing so he probably threw £50,000 out the window. UPDATE 11/02/2020: I was right.

Callum’s Casa Amor antics pissed viewers off so badly that In The Style even launched the discount code CALLUMISCANCELLED "in support" of Shaughna (really touching x). Also my big prediction for next week is that the newly single Luke M will try to couple up with Molly, so both in the villa and out of it: not great for Callum!

The golden rule of Love Island is that, despite the fact that we all know it is a game designed to create Instagram celebrities, you do not dare talk about or make reference to that fact, because doing so would unravel the very fabric of the show’s pretence (that is: “Love”). Natalia, in so brazenly piggybacking off Luke M’s attraction to her basically only in order to get into the main villa (and therefore get more screen time) has come dangerously close to ripping the mask away, which you simply do not do.

@hiyalauren