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Another season of Love Island USA has come to conclusion.
On Sunday night, Peacock aired the latest finale of this reality sensation, with host Ariana Madix revealing the grand prize winners to the audience.
Anyone out there care to start a drumroll?
In the end, Amaya Espinal and Bryan Arenales received the most votes and were named season 7 champions.
Nic Vansteenberghe and Olandria Carthen were the runners-up, while Huda Mustafa and Chris Seeley came in third place and Iris Kendall and Pepe Garcia-Gonzalez finished in fourth.
When it came down to decide who got the $100,000 cash prize, Bryan let Amaya pick the first envelope from Madix… which contained no money.
From there Bryan opened the $100,000 envelope, but he agreed to split the cash prize evenly with Amaya. What a guy, huh?!?
In celebration, Amaya got the “zoomies” one last time, as Madix referred to it — and then the whole cast jumped in the pool to mark the final night of their time in Fiji.
This was a time that was not without controversy.
Not long before the finale aired, Cierra Ortega left Love Island due to backlash she received over racially insensitive comments from a few years ago.
“I am deeply, truly, honestly, so sorry. I had no idea that the word held as much pain as much harm, and came with the history that it did, or I never would have used it,” the 25-year old recently said on social media. “I had no ill intention when I was using it. But that’s absolutely no excuse, because intent doesn’t excuse ignorance.”
This mea culpa came in the wake of old post made by Ortego that recently went viral.
In it, the content creator references her eyes, using a racial slur at the time that has been used to denigrate the Asian community.
The Ortega scandal and quasi firing took place few weeks after Yulissa Escobar also departed the same Peacock reality program after we learned she had said the N-word during two separate podcast appearances.
Still, Espinal and Arenales had 100,000 reasons to be thankful when all was said and done.
“I feel like I’m flying in the sky right now. To feel so seen and validated and for people to see how powerful our connection is… And like, boy, was this a ride, here on Love Island,” Amaya said on the finale.
“But this, man, I would do this ride all over again if it led me to him,”
Bryan, for his part, added:
“I don’t even know how to put it into words. Meeting Amaya here turned my experience around ridiculously. I’m so thankful to meet this person. I would do this experience a hundred times over. It feels surreal.”
