“Love Island: Beyond the Villa” Season 2 dropped its first two episodes on Peacock Wednesday night, picking up with the “Love Island USA” Season 7 cast months after leaving Fiji. The short version: the winners broke up, the runner-ups broke up, and somehow TJ Palma is the hero of the premiere.
According to Newsweek, Season 7 garnered more than 18.4 billion minutes streamed on Peacock, making it the most-watched season the platform has had. Season 2 of “Beyond the Villa” picks up the emotional wreckage.
Amaya Got Broken Up With Over Text
Amaya Espinal and Bryan Arenales became the first Latine couple to win “Love Island USA.” They broke up just over a month after the finale. The show wasted no time getting into it.
In Episode 1, Amaya opened up that Bryan ended things via text message. “It was my first time being intimate with him — he knows how serious I take that and that I’m not an easy girl — and then, boom, he breaks up with me through a text message,” she said. Her public breakup statement at the time had already gone viral for its closing line: “You don’t have to drink the whole sea to know it’s salty.”
On “Beyond the Villa,” she is choosing music over mourning. “That rewind button is nowhere to be found,” she said in Episode 1, working on new tracks in a New York studio. She is not softening her stance on Bryan either. “I’m still following the policy of not being friends with any exes. However, that doesn’t take away from being able to have a mature conversation, especially when things were left very unclear,” she told Cosmopolitan.
Iris Is Not Okay — But She Is Getting There
While Amaya is channeling her heartbreak into music, Iris Kendall is still processing hers out loud. Her split from Pepe Garcia-Gonzalez came after a cheating scandal, and she did not hold back on camera. “This has been the most stressful situation I’ve dealt with in my entire life,” she said through tears while furniture shopping with Hannah Fields for her new LA apartment.
The silver lining: TJ Palma. “I feel like I’m in such a happy place,” Iris told Entertainment Tonight ahead of the premiere. “We compliment each other so well.”
Pepe denied the cheating claims in one of his confessionals.
TJ Made It Official — and It Was Actually Cute
In a season that opened with two messy breakups, TJ Palma was quietly the standout of Episodes 1 and 2. He rented a vintage car, drove Iris down the Pacific Coast Highway, and had Jeremiah Brown and Amaya Espinal set up a whole romantic beach scene — all to ask her to be his girlfriend. Iris said yes immediately, joking she had been waiting since he first walked into the Villa.
Taylor and Clarke Are Still Going Strong
Clarke Carraway and Taylor Williams were adjusting to life in Williams’s native Oklahoma, with Carraway — self-described as a “city girl” — still getting used to the surroundings as she cared for Williams during his recovery from severe injuries sustained in a horseback riding accident.
Clarke told Cosmopolitan that their relationship only deepened after the accident. “We only grew stronger and got to understand each other more,” she said.
The Friendsgiving Nobody Could Have Pictured
Iris and TJ hosted a Friendsgiving potluck in Episode 2. Bryan and Pepe were not invited. They found out anyway. Bryan texted Amaya at the party asking for a conversation. She was not expecting it, and the episode ended before we found out what she said.
Bryan told Cosmopolitan he wanted to “rip the band-aid off.” Amaya’s take: “There were things that just needed to be said. I feel like that was exactly done, and I can’t wait for that to be shown to the audience — and for me to still stand on business.”
Meanwhile, Clarke Carraway and Coco Watson’s feud widened when Watson accused her of “love bombing.” Jeremiah Brown arrived with one roll of paper towels and actively avoided Andreina Santos, who had texted asking to meet one-on-one. He was busy. He was traveling. He was clearly not interested. Clarke attended Friendsgiving solo — Taylor was back in Oklahoma recovering. But the two are one of the few success stories from Season 7.
What’s Next
Episodes 3 and 4 drop next Wednesday, April 22 on Peacock at 9 p.m. ET.
“Love Island: Beyond the Villa” streams exclusively on Peacock.
Want the daily reality TV drama — no spam, just the good stuff?
Subscribe