Every year we know it's coming and yet somehow it still catches us off guard – it's that point in every Love Island series when budding couples are torn apart, their progress turned to dust, as a group of new bombshells fight for a place in the main villa. Welcome to Casa Amor.
This year, Love Island producers were faced with some new challenges. After feeding us two series in a year for the first time (the pandemic disrupted previous plans for this to happen in 2020), viewers were starting to complain that the show had lost its charm. In fact, many complained that it had become so boring that they weren't ever going to watch it again.
So for this summer's series, they've decided to play around with the format a bit more. We saw our first mixed gender coupling up in the opening episode, we met another alumnae bombshell by the name of Kady McDermott and now we've seen a former islander Molly Marsh return to shake things up in Casa Amor.
Now, this could have been quite exciting if it involved a couple that everyone was invested in. Or if it led to an explosive reunion or surprise rejection. However, Molly and Zach's will-they-won't-they has taken up quite a lot of air time already, no one seems that bothered about their relationship and their reunion in last night's episode was pretty boring.
Molly re-entered the villa with the new Casa girls to a mixed reaction. Mitch looked like he'd seen his sleep paralysis demon, Sammy said 'that girl looks a lot like Molly', and Zach's jaw fell to the floor. In the teaser clip before the episode aired, it seemed like Zach wasn't best pleased to see his former fling show up on his lad's holiday, but the actual episode suggested otherwise. It showed a calm Molly confront her former partner (who she wasn't ever 'officially' going out with) about how quickly he moved on, and a calm Zach apologise with a little smirk on his face.
From what we saw, it's as good as confirmed that the pair will get back together. Now, this twist didn't land as well as the producers might have hoped for a number of reasons. 1) It means none of the new girls will get a look in with Zach, despite several of them confirming that they think he's fit. 2) It means their reunion will get a lot more air time, despite them remaining unconvincing and slightly dull. 3) A lot of people think Molly's second coming in the villa is unfair, given that the same opportunity has not been afforded to other people dumped from the villa.
On Twitter, as always, fans of the show have a lot to say. One user wrote, 'Molly hasn't got the personality to carry off a villa return lol. Like if you're coming back to confront your man you need to be screaming, shouting, cussing. She's not that girl sorry.' And another said, 'So zach is off limit for these girls? They need to be focus. Who’s molly to them pls.'
Another fan observed that, 'Molly being there is like going on a stag with your girls mum there' and said 'I'm annoyed for the boys.' Even former Love Islander Dami Hope weighed in saying, 'I’m confused what did Molly want him to do, she left while they were still fresh and open. Mans got to finish his love island experience.'
Whether the response would be the same if viewers were rooting for them as a couple, or if other former islanders got a chance to return with her, is hard to tell. What's clear is that Zach was doing just fine before Molly came back – he was dating Kady, things were heating up with Whitney and he was bound to get more attention from the new girls in Casa. Now all of that has been vanilla-fied. We might get a fiery villa reunion episode (Kady's reaction is likely to be priceless) when the girls are all back together, but we fear that's about all. Sorry but this twist didn't stick.