Love Island USA Recap: Return to Sender

Love Island
Episode 20
Season 8 Episode 20
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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Each season of Love Island USA is approximately 1 million episodes, and we are recapping all of them. Check back for morning-after recaps of weekday episodes and a Monday roundup of the weekend’s shenanigans. 

So, let’s get this out of the way really quickly. Alannah has left the villa because, all together now, social media found evidence of her using racial slurs. I blame the show, obviously, for continually failing to vet for use of racial slurs on social media when casting this show. But I also wonder who applies to be on this show when they know they have used the N-word in writing on the internet. Moving on. 

The mailboxes are back to wreak more psychological warfare on our Islanders, and some of them genuinely need it. At the main villa, Kenzie finds a mailbox in the yard containing a postcard from Casa Amor, with an unnecessarily mean (in my opinion) “Wish you were here” note, and a photo collage of all the boys making out with Casa girls. At Casa, the boys receive a similar, though much tamer by comparison, postcard. These send everyone spiraling. Well, except Corbin and Parmida, who simply laugh. The girls are completely undone, but it seems that one wakeup call wasn’t enough, and they needed a second. The only person I wish could be spared is Bryce, who now has a photo of Trinity and Corey making out in the photobooth, but he doesn’t know that she cried from guilt and has since been sleeping in Soul Ties out of loyalty. 

Tears or no tears, the mailboxes really haven’t moved the needle all that much, as far as I can tell. If it convinces Aniya to recouple with Carl, it will all have been worth it — but I’m not holding my breath. 

Kayda, Aniya, and Melanie’s eyes are opened. Again. I hope.

Even before the mailboxes and their incriminating missives arrive, Trinity and Kenzie are trying their damndest to get Kayda, Melanie, and Aniya to put a little more genuine energy into their Casa connections, because they know in their heart of hearts that Zach, Sincere, and KC are behaving like they’ve just been released from prison and dropped off at a strip club. “There is a high chance that the boys bring back somebody else,” Trinity astutely notes. 

Kenzie is urging them on by saying, “Look how ripped Carl is, Aniya! Chay is the whole package, Kayda!” But Aniya calls Carl “genuinely sweet,” and Kayda says she still misses her “Zacharias.” So Kenzie just puts it to them as plainly as she can. “I guarantee y’all, they ain’t holding back shit,” she says, spoken like a woman who has been done dirty before. She does not want them to regret wasting their time when there was a great guy standing right in front of them the whole time. This is when I stand up from my couch and applaud. 

They tepidly agree until later, when Kenzie comes marching back to the pool, waving the postcard around in her hand and declares, “Y’all are not gonna want to see this shit!” Kayda immediately falls apart and begins to sob on the daybed. Melanie tries desperately to insist that this picture of Sincere and Amora kissing is from a challenge, until Trinity snaps, “Stop being delusional.” Aniya keeps it together until bedtime, when she, too, falls to the floor and cries. 

Trinity and Kenzie never say “I told you so,” which is big of them, but we are all running out of patience. Aniya asks what she should do, and, without missing half a beat, Trinity says, “bring somebody back.” Kenzie cosigns, “100 percent.” They all agree, “return to sender.” Trinity comes to the makeup room floor with a rousing hype up speech, “I wanna know what’s the plan! Are y’all gonna keep being sad about it?” she demands like the Coach Taylor of Love Island. “I hate to be like that, but bitch, get a number two!” Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose!

I really, really, really hope I’m wrong here, but from the one conversation they have this episode, I’m losing hope that Aniya is picking Carl at the end of this. At this point, I kind of feel like KC could be making out with Tierra to her right, while Carl is holding a boombox over his head to her left, and she would still pick KC.

Kenzie is expanding the roster.

In the times when Kenzie is not trying to open her friends’ eyes to the truth, she is once again under pursuit by two dudes. Though Dylan and Gal are, to my eyes, interchangeable, Kenzie is having trouble deciding which she likes best. Dylan is the one who’s been sharing her bed and whose undivided attention she’s really enjoying. Gal is the one that Jen likes — but he owns a coffee-and-surf shop and, Kenzie says, she’s always wanted to move to California and raise little surfer babies. This is the first we’re hearing of this dream, but hey, do you girl. 

What this does mean is that Kenzie has to have another chat with a friend about who gets to claim dibs on a man. She says she’s not losing her girl over a guy, but Jen has already started to move on with Ronnie anyway. 

Casa Amor is all talking shit about the villa. 

I’m just gonna say that the Casa vibes are absolutely rancid right now. There may have been worse Casa Amor behavior in the history of Love Island, but this outing is feeling especially mean-spirited. With one notable exception, everyone over there has nothing but ugly things to say about their main villa counterparts. Corbin, who has found his twin flame in Parmida because they’re both hot, says the villa girls are like high school girls and the Casa girls are like college girls. I can think of several ways to interpret this observation, and all of them trigger a gag reflex.

But at least when the postcard arrives, he is not personally offended (that we can see anyway) that Kenzie has moved on with someone else. Unlike KC, who is banging around the bedroom, claiming that Aniya is going to be on a “thin-ass line” with him when he gets back to the villa. One of the boys asks if he will likewise be on a thin line with her, and he says no because, and I quote, “I literally spoke life into her every fucking day.” Even the Casa girls are getting in on the trash talk and making fun of Kenzie while they get ready for the evening, which is just bad form. 

And then there is Bryce. Dear, sweet Bryce, who is the only one of the guys willing to risk it all for love. Even after seeing Trinity kissing that guy in the photobooth, Bryce tells a baffled Sincere that he would still “rather just sit up there and die on my shield of how I’m feeling,” but you get what he’s saying. He would rather stand by Trinity and look stupid than pick someone else out of spite. Remembering all the times he and Trinity have shared, he says, “That’s what love is.” He continues, gaining steam, “That risk is worth it!” Sincere, who cannot imagine not making out with someone, has no idea what Bryce is talking about, but I do. Don’t worry Bryce-y-pants. She’s waiting for you!