After a sexless year, Love Island 2021 is back to its randy former glory

If I were to describe the first episode of Love Island 2021 in a single word, I’d probably pick “horny”. From the aubergine emoji prints covering the villa walls to the listing of kinks and a desperate need for some action in the introduction videos, it is clear this series of the dating show has sex at its heart. After a year of lockdown and park dates, the Islanders have been immediately transported to a Mallorcan villa with 10 other beautiful people – of course you’d lose your head.

Love Island already has a reputation for prompting pearl clutching among the public, but the class of 2021 stand out in their commitment to making this a seriously sexy series. We’re introduced to West Country lad Jake, who has, to quote directly, a “massive foot fetish”, while fashion blogger Kaz is looking for a guy to “rail” her and estate agent Faye wants a man to “rip her a new a*****” (metaphorically, obvs).

Less than an hour in, the scenes on ITV2 hark back to a pre-Covid era. The islanders quickly get stuck into a getting-to-know-you game involving kissing, licking earlobes and sucking toes (which Jake, of course, whipped out his phone to film). It’s no wonder The Independent’s Elise Bell asked: “Could this be the year kink discourse turns mainstream?” in her review of the opening episode; after a year of lockdowns, these islanders are on one.

This may sound like standard Love Island fodder to an outsider, but it marks a shift in the show back towards something more recent competitors have distanced themselves from. As a low-level reality show first airing in 2015, sex was part of the Love Island lingo. Couples regularly bed-swapped and had sex with others in the room, while Zara Holland infamously lost her Miss Great Britain title after being shown licking her lips post-coitus, sparking a public debate about slut shaming.

Things changed when the show exploded in popularity mid-series three, the contestants entering for a fun summer and emerging bona fide B-listers. With an ever-present awareness of the islander-to-influencer pipeline ahead of them, a shiny pot of charcoal toothpaste at the end of the rainbow, contestants promised (often aloud to their partners) that they would not be having sex on telly. Those that were more explicitly sexual, such as Megan Barton-Hanson or Maura “Fanny Flutters” Higgins, felt like anomalies – even if they were loved by fans for it. With the eyes of 5.61 million people on the islanders (the average during series five), sex became something that could jeopardise a career rather than enhance a relationship.

In many ways, it’s not surprising that a global pandemic would be the thing to usher in a new batch of randy islanders. Bar a few short spells, single people and non co-habiting couples were not able to meet inside for over a year in the UK from March 2020, with frustration (political and sexual) growing every day. The news that people would be allowed to meet inside again from May was widely circulated on group chats with the words “shagging legalised”, as people redownloaded Hinge, Tinder, Grindr. We’ve been promised a second summer of love, Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hot Girl Summer” our anthem. The islanders, like so many of us, are preparing to let loose for the first time.

One week before Love Island began, this chaotic horniness was given a sneak peak on Netflix’s dating show Too Hot Too Handle. This is Love Island with a twist, where an international group of bright young things are restricted to a “long, hard, sexless summer” in which any sexual contact results in money from the shared $100,000 prize fund. On the first season of the show (which felt oddly prescient when it aired last April), the rules were occasionally breached but generally followed safe in the knowledge that kissing probably wasn’t worth it at $3,000 a pop.

open image in gallery

It’s fair to say that idea’s been thrown to the wolves in season two. Desperate to get back at it post-lockdown, the contestants get distracted by each other’s rippling abs and logistically implausible bikinis, losing a whopping $21,000 in the first day alone. A personal trainer from Newport knocks $3,000 off the total by pleasuring himself in a shower while his friends stand guard.

Ultimately, however, Too Hot Too Handle’s outlook is puritanical, the idea being that the players should want to go from “meaningless flings” to “genuine relationships” and that abstaining from sex completely is the only way to do it. In Love Island, the rules are more self-enforced. The contestants want to be marketable and palatable post-villa and marketable people don’t have sex on TV, they think – at least if they want their own Boohoo capsule collection.

One episode in, it’s hard to tell if the cast of Love Island 2021 will maintain this trajectory, or if the contestants will turn out to be all mouth, no trousers (sorry). But as these contestants desperately declare their sexual frustration on TV, it feels like a telling prophecy for the moment social contact limits lift for the rest of us. The summer of love is coming, a wardrobe of white skinny jeans or a bikini and wedges compulsory. Whether you’re watching on TV or living it IRL, it’s what we all deserve.

Love Island continues tonight at 9pm on ITV2.