\u201cLove Island USA\u201d culminated a tumultuous summer full of explosive breakups and shock exits Sunday.<\/p>\n
A public vote (spoilers ahead) crowned Amaya Espinal and Bryan Arenales as the winning couple of its seventh season.<\/p>\n
The season finale of the Peacock reality series followed a chart-topping run since the season premiered on June 3. The show brings young singles together in a remote villa in Fiji to explore connections with the ultimate goal of finding love.<\/p>\n
Each contestant in the winning couple randomly picked from two envelopes, one which contained the $100,000 prize and the other nothing. Arenales got the full prize, and chose to split it evenly with Espinal. <\/p>\n
Olandria Carthen and Nicolas Vansteenberghe were the runners-up, and Huda Mustafa and Chris Seeley came in third place. Iris Kendall and Jose \u201cPepe\u201d Garcia-Gonzalez placed fourth. <\/p>\n
The show\u2019s host, Ariana Madix, also announced that the entire cast of Season 7 will come together again for a New York reunion, which will be released on Peacock on Aug. 25, she said. <\/p>\n
The show, an American spinoff to the UK series, has shaken up reality TV, becoming Peacock\u2019s most watched entertainment series on mobile devices, according to NBC Universal. <\/p>\n
It became a breakout success and captured mainstream attention last summer, and this season grew into a true cultural phenomenon.<\/p>\n
\u201cLove Island: Beyond the Villa,\u201d a new series spinoff, premiered Sunday and follows Season 6\u2019s main cast as they navigate relationships, life and newfound social media fame in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
This season has also been under fire as two contestants \u2013 Cierra Ortega and Yulissa Escobar \u2013 left the villa following resurfaced posts in which they used racial slurs. <\/p>\n
Ortega, who was half of one of the season\u2019s strongest couples, left the villa just a week before the popular reality show\u2019s finale after old posts resurfaced that contained a slur against Asian people. She apologized for the resurfaced posts in a nearly five minute TikTok video Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s episode saw the elimination of Ace Greene and Chelley Bissainthe, setting the stage for the finale. Green and Bissainthe were the only couple to maintain a relationship throughout most of the show.<\/p>\n
The four couples each went on final dates during the last episode before the winners were crowned. <\/p>\n
Espinal and Arenales were given a photo book with pictures of each other throughout their lives, culminating with photos from their relationship during the show. The two bonded over family traditions. <\/p>\n
\u201cWith you, I don\u2019t ever cry out of sadness. Every time I feel like a heightened emotion with you, it\u2019s always just like happy tears,\u201d Espinal said. <\/p>\n
The date ended with Espinal and Arenales taking a picture, a final memory from their time on \u201cLove Island USA.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019m a Dominican Cinderella when I\u2019m with you, and I finally found my perfect glass slipper,\u201d Espinal said during their date. <\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Love Island USA\u2019 star Cierra Ortega has broken her silence following her shocking exit from the reality show.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cLove Island USA\u201d culminated a tumultuous summer full of explosive breakups and shock exits Sunday. A public vote…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":63732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,224,5337,6337],"class_list":{"0":"post-63731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-losangeles","13":"tag-reality-tv"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114849184723894143","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}