The water bottles are filled up, the sun lotion is out and the villa doors are wide open – Love Island is finally back on our screens, returning last night with its latest winter season.
With a brand new line-up, a new host and a new villa, there’s a lot to get excited about for season 9 and if you happened to miss its big premiere, then we’re here to catch you up.
To find out the latest gossip around the first recoupling, the bombshell’s entrance and Maya Jama‘s presenting debut, watch our episode 1 recap video above.
The show kicked off by letting the boys loose on the villa first, before Maya made her first villa entrance to discuss the boys’ dating preferences.
While airport security man Shaq Muhammad said that he goes for “more personality and vibes” when looking for a match, Haris Namani revealed that he’s never been in a relationship and wants a woman with size 5 feet or smaller, with Maya joking that she’s therefore out of the running.
The girls then made their entrance one-by-one, with Tanya Mahenga coupling up with Shaq, Anna-May Robey choosing Kai Fagan and Lana Jenkins going for Ron Hall.
It wasn’t long until we had our first steal of the season however, with Olivia Hawkins going for Kai, leaving Anna-May single. Their pairing didn’t last long though, with Kai stepping forward for Tanyel Revan.
With the two single girls choosing from the remaining boys, Anna-May picked Haris while Olivia was left with Will Young.
The islanders began to get to know each other, with Lana and Ron bonding over their love of Harry Potter, while Olivia set her sights on Haris despite their age difference.
Shortly afterwards, she spoke to some of her fellow contestants, admitting that while she found Will funny, she saw him more as a friend and was instead interested in Haris.
At the end of the evening however, Maya returned to announce the results of the public vote over which bombshell should enter the villa.
She welcomed semi-pro footballer Tom Clare to the show and quickly dropped the latest twist: he would get to pick any girl from the line-up in 24 hours’ time.
With the very fresh couples now at risk of being broken up by Tom, it’s officially heating up in the Love Island villa.
Love Island will air on ITV2 and ITVX tonight at 9pm. Previous seasons of Love Island are available on BritBox – you can sign up for a 7-day free trial.
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