Maya Jama was right. While Shakira Khan, Toni Laites and Yas Pettet were all dressed up and holding hands as the last women standing in the Love Island final, it looked like they were Powerpuff Girls ready to take off and rid the world of toxic men. As the voting public's three favourite girls, who happened to all be best friends in the villa, it was vindicating to watch them find their happy endings.
Yas Pettet, or YasGPT as she is fondly known on social media, found the golden retriever to her black cat in Jamie Rhodes after a string of bad matches with men who could not match her energy – or her impeccable posture. After taking a risk two weeks before the final, Shakira re-coupled with the series villain, Harry Cooksley, who she'd had her eye on since their first conversation and they seem content even if others are not fully convinced yet.
Then there's the show's first ever American contestant Toni, who was caught in one of the series' most toxic on-off couples with Harrison Solomon and finally saw the light in the final few weeks and got back together with Cach Mercer, ultimately winning the show.
Most importantly, though, Yas, Shakira and Toni found their happy endings with each other. Against all odds this series, these three proved that Love Island's famous 'Friendship Island' adage is still true. Despite a divide existing between the girls from day one, with Toni, Shakira and Yas often feeling isolated from the rest of the group, this is what brought them together and allowed them to build loyal, lasting relationships that will continue in the 'outside world'. The fact they were the final three girls was the no doubt the work of the viewing public.
'Struggling to fathom how we managed to get Shakira, Toni & Yas as the final 3 girls. The UK did so well this year,' reads one celebratory post on X. 'Toni, Shakira and Yas must be feeling so loved right now, after weeks of constant mean girl behaviour against them and ostracisation, they know that we’ve been in their side since the start, they just haven't been letting us vote,' reads another. While a third viewer posited, 'Toni, Shakira and Yas were isolated, labelled mean girls, dogged out by horrible men but found a pure friendship, good connections & ended up in the top 3. We truly won.'
It's a victory for strong, silly, supportive women and it's a victory for friendship, but sadly the series remains tarnished by the toxic behaviour exhibited by several male contestants throughout the show, including Shakira's partner Harry.
Harry might have ended up with the girl he supposedly wanted to be with all along, but he trampled on both her and Helena Ford's feelings a number of times to get there. Throughout the series, he went back and forth between the two women almost as if it were a game. After humiliating Helena multiple times, he ended things with her to be with Shakira, then kissed her in a game, flirted with her and told her he enjoyed being coupled up with her more, which lead to them re-coupling. At one point, when things were seemingly going well with Helena and Shakira was coupled up with Conor, Harry even said: 'I still think I could get Shakira back now – if I wanted to.' Two days after making things exclusive with Helena, he realised he had 'buried' feelings for Shakira and dropped Helena over night.
All of which could potentially be justified given the nature of the dating show if Harry didn't show such a flagrant disregard for the dropped partner's feelings every time. Once he decided to pick things back up with Shakira, it's as though he wanted to pretend Helena didn't exist. When she confronted him about it, he managed to act like his partner swapping had taken such a toll on him that she ended up comforting him.
So when Harry stood next to Shakira in the final to take second place, I couldn't help but feel a pang of fury over the fact he has faced no consequences whatsoever for his behaviour. He won Shakira back, Helena changed her mind after a few days and said she wants to stay friends with him, and even Helena's mum called him 'a loveable villain' when she visited the villa in the final week.
Similarly, watching Toni and Cach crowned the winners was also bittersweet. Not only because Harrison was smirking in the back of the shot, but because voters know full well what she has been through to get there. Harrison's game playing was so alarming at points – particularly when he slept with Lauren Wood one night and asked for Toni back the next day – that it warranted a statement from Women's Aid.
Of course, the Women's Aid statement about Love Island was not the first of its kind, nor was it only about Harrison, but it condemned the 'unhealthy patterns of behaviour' we see every season. 'Women are often lied to, slut-shamed and manipulated, as well as laughed at behind their backs. Misogyny and sexism lay the foundation for the tolerance of abuse and violence - it reinforces a culture that excuses and trivialises violence against women and girls. More must be done to educate contestants on sexism and misogyny, and it is a great credit to viewers who take to social media, continuing to call out these behaviours as soon as they see them.'
'I have seen the backlash and it's hard to digest,' Harrison said after leaving the villa. 'I would disagree with a lot of it in terms of my respect for women, I do respect women. The worst has been from Women's Aid. I know myself and the girls on the show too. Toni said she knows I'm not a bad person, I just went about situations in the wrong way, but the Women's Aid statement wasn't nice... It's not nice coming out of the villa to my mum upset by that, so I would say that's been the hardest.'
This is probably how Dejon Noel-Williams felt three days before the final when the former islanders returned to vote off the least compatible couple – and picked him and his day one partner and girlfriend, Megan Moore. Of course, it's fairly unusual for former islanders to target the so-called strongest couple just before the final, but they seemed to do so because of Dejon's behaviour throughout the series. The behaviour you can't always see or recognise while you're in the villa, but you can more so while you're watching from home.
Speaking on Love Island Aftersun, Dejon told Maya Jama: 'It was interesting the way that we got dumped, because I feel like the decisions were definitely… you kind of heard from both people's point of view. [...] It definitely made me in this time of being like reflect on my actions over the villa.
'Coming in, I just thought, I'm on Love Island. I'm gonna explore connections, I'm gonna be flirty, I'm gonna see what my strongest connection was,' he explained. 'But in the back of my head, I always knew it was Meg, so I definitely see why that kind of… there's a lot of opinions about that, and I feel like I could have explored connections with being less flirty and stuff. I definitely understand why people have their opinions regarding that, and even there's times that, honestly, she's stuck by me, and she tells me how she feels, and she stuck by me more than more than she should. More than I deserved a lot of times.'
Unfortunately, even if some of the male contestants have retrospectively taken accountability (though many have not), overall this series was a troubling watch. Perhaps even more so than previous years, we saw men lie to and manipulate their partners, egg each other on and humiliate anyone who wasn't in their favour. Far from being a foregone conclusive, then, the Powerpuff Girls victory was a silver lining. One all three of them deserved.
Let's hope the message to future islanders and producers is clear: toxicity is out. These are the personalities the public are willing to get behind.
Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across entertainment, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things pop culture for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow with equal respect).