Welcome to the Villa, fellow unicorns! If you watched Love Island USA Season 8 and are currently wondering to yourself: “Wait a damn minute, there was bi rep during this season?” Congrats: you have walked directly into this season’s problem.
Season 8 of the ridiculously addictive dating experiment had everything that we’ve come to expect from Love Island: a million conversations about if people were “open” to explore a connection, Casa Amor chaos, couples breaking up and getting back together so fast it gave us whiplash from our couches, and enough kissing challenges to make us look like prudes on a Friday night out! What us viewers apparently did NOT see was the Casa Amor bombshell Amora Cachée repeatedly telling her fellow Love Island costars that she’s bi!
So, unicorns: grab your three favorite drinks, hunker down, and take your time to read this unusual Unicorn Scale, as instead of judging the bi rep that the show has given us and asking ourselves if it was good, bad, or messy, we are here to talk about the representation that Love Island USA apparently had the chance to give us, and it didn’t. Be warned: spoilers for the season ahead. Check out our rating metric here, and let’s dive in!
For those unfamiliar with Love Island, the premise is simple: a group of singles live together in a luxury Villa, where they couple up, flirt, and compete for the chance to develop a relationship — and eventually love (and a cash prize, of course). New Islanders are regularly introduced to shake things up, while the public gets to vote on couples and individual Islanders throughout the season. The biggest mix-up is Casa Amor, where the Islanders split into separate Villas and meet a new group of singles, giving everyone a chance to test their existing connections.
Amora Cacheé enters the season in Episode 17, when Casa Amor officially begins. She is one of the bombshells brought in to tempt the male islanders away from their existing couples, and much of what we see of her revolves around fellow islander Sincere Rhea, who is coupled with Melanie Moreno at this point.
The attraction between Sincere and Amora heats up quickly enough that Sincere later admits he might have chosen her if Casa had lasted a little longer. But when Casa Amor ends in Episode 21, he returns to couple back up with Melanie, leaving Amora single and vulnerable. That ultimately leads to her being dumped from the show.
But PLOT TWIST: America had other plans.
In Episode 23, the audience is allowed to vote one dumped Casa Amor man and woman back into the Villa, and Amora unanimously wins the women’s vote. She returns during Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hot Girl Bakery” challenge, directly dropping her back into the love triangle with Sincere and Melanie. Now, she gets to confront the difference between what Sincere told her in confidence during Casa Amor and what their connection is perceived outside of it. This becomes particularly relevant during movie night in Episode 25, when the Islanders see footage of Sincere telling Amora that, if he’d had more time, he would have chosen her. Amora argues that Sincere is minimizing what happened between them because he never expected her to return to the Villa and assumed he wouldn’t have to answer for everything he said. Juicy stuff, y’all!
While all of this is happening, though, we are still in the dark about Amora’s bisexuality.
After her final elimination in Episode 27, Amora addresses the rumors spreading about her sexuality. During a TikTok Live in July, she responded to someone asking whether she dates women by saying: “Guys, I am bi, it was never really a secret.” She then pushed back against the weird rumor that she was secretly a lesbian who had infiltrated Love Island by pretending to be attracted to men.
I did NOT infiltrate the Villa as a lesbian — I’m bi y’all!…and I actually said it multiple times on the show, like, it was just never aired. Literally.
More importantly, this means that, according to Amora, she was always out, and the show’s producers/editors deliberately chose not to include those conversations.
What I Liked:
First thing first: Amora, of course. There is something so freeing about the way that she’s so unapologetic when discussing her bisexuality on and off the show. The way she has stated so many times that she’s bi is definitely true to her character, because apparently during the entire run of the show she had made it known, but Love Island USA chose not to make it public! Her confusion over the audience not knowing makes so much sense now, since she made an effort to be visible and out while she was in the Villa.
Amora was bi before the show. She was bi while connecting with Sincere, when America voted her back INTO the Villa, while confronting Sincere and Melanie, and when she coupled with Gal. None of that makes her less bi because the connections we saw were with men. And that matters because bisexuality doesn’t need to be constantly “proven” through relationships with men and women. A bi woman dating a man doesn’t suddenly become straight, just like she doesn’t need to kiss a woman every few episodes to keep her bi card active.
It would have also made Amora stand out that much more within a series whose basic structure remains mostly heterosexual (because apparently, LGBTQ contestants are now “logistically difficult”). Of course, there have been exceptions. Season 5 gave us the connection between Kassy Castillo and Jhonnie Garcia, with Jhonnie discussing her bisexuality and the two women discussing their connection. But again, these moments remain the exception, not the rule or format the show accommodates. Even Season 8 host Ariana Madix (who is bi herself) has publicly said that she would love to see more queer representation on the show.
That’s why Amora’s story could have been more interesting without needing a same-sex romance. An openly bi bombshell just existing within the regular format would have been a great step toward acknowledging that queer contestants don’t always have to come with a “coming out” story to accompany them. Although there is something to be said for the fact that so many viewers (yours truly included) were so enthralled with Amora, we voted her back in and demanded more!
What I Didn’t Like:
Where was her bisexuality, Peacock? Why was it CUT?!
Reality TV is heavily edited, and not every conversation makes it to air. But that’s not what Amora says happened. She says she mentioned her bisexuality multiple times while filming, yet none of those moments were shown. Amora eventually had to defend herself against the “infiltrated lesbian” rumors by explaining that she is bi and had already tried to make that clear.
To be clear, I’m not asking for a miracle here, or for producers to find another bombshell who happens to be Amora’s perfect match. If Amora’s account is true, she already provided the footage, and we would have been more than happy to watch! All we needed was one mention.
That’s all it would have taken for viewers to understand that she is bi.
Instead, we learned about her sexuality through rumors, and those immediately perpetuated some of the most tired stereotypes and misconceptions about bi people. As soon as people discovered that Amora had previous girlfriends and romantic connections to women, social media and news outlets immediately went to “she’s secretly a lesbian.”
Nope. She’s bi.
She didn’t show any signs at all in the Villa !!
— 🖤 (@k25nf) July 19, 2026
Amora says on TikTok live she’s BI and it was never a secret, she said it out loud on the show but they never aired it. pic.twitter.com/ps73ihlBZO
Amora had to come back in and explain something she thought she had already made clear and obvious during her filming, and it highlights something important about TV: casting a bi person doesn’t equal bi representation when the version viewers get erases that part of them.
And then…we got the reunion.
The Season 8 reunion on August 31 brought the islanders back together to revisit relationships, breakups, show unseen clips, and some of the drama that happened outside the Villa. By then, Amora had already disputed the rumors regarding her sexuality, and it made the recap a super obvious opportunity to acknowledge this and bring her back. But we got nothing.
The reunion revisited the season’s biggest couples, but Amora was absent, and comments regarding her bisexuality were never part of the conversation. Did we really need a whole segment about it? Not really, but a quick comment would have been sufficient. Sadly, you can only find out if Amora is bi unless you follow her outside the show.
The Rating:
One out of four unicorns.
Let’s be clear: that unicorn is Amora’s and Amora’s only!
I can’t in good conscience give Season 8 any credit just because a bi woman happened to be cast, especially if she tried to make it known multiple times during her tenure and the show chose to leave that part out. Amora gets our half unicorn for being refreshingly unapologetic about who she is. And Love Island USA gets a very easy challenge for next season:
When your bi contestants want to let it be known they are bi? Maybe let us hear them.