Love Island fans had major cause for celebration on Monday night as Ekin-Su Culculoglu and Davide Sanclimenti were crowned the public’s favourite couple – but there was one major change made to this year’s final that they were less than thrilled about.
For the past seven series, the public have voted for their winning Love Island couple, who were then presented with the somewhat difficult choice of whether to share their £50K prize or steal the whole lot for themselves.
As with the short-lived (but still much-missed) ITV game show Golden Balls, if only one of them chose to steal the money, they’d get the whole lot for themselves, whereas if both did, they’d leave empty-handed.
So far, all seven of the winning pairs have decided to simply share the money, which might explain why at the beginning of Monday’s live show, Laura Whitmore explained to viewers that they wouldn’t even be giving the winning couple the choice between “love or money”.
Despite no winner having ever put the “share or steal” loophole into action, fans were still gutted to hear the option had been taken away completely, particularly as in 2022, it could have made for some explosive viewing:
Ekin-Su and Davide were named this year’s Love Island champions ahead of runners-up Gemma Owen and Luca Bish in second place.
Also making the final were third place finishers Indiyah Polack and Dami Hope, while Tasha Ghouri and Andrew Le Page were in fourth.
Love Island will return to our screens next year in the winter, as two new series are set to air in 2023.
Meanwhile, the final also included a confirmation from ITV2 that they’d acquired the rights to Big Brother, with a reboot of the long-running reality show debuting on the station next year.