Anton Danyluk opens the curse of love island series by saying there is “no higher high than the summer you’re preparing for Love Island,” and Prime Video has released the two-part documentary as the latest series reaches Love Island's finale. The timing turns the show’s afterlife into the story: who gets swept up, who gets hurt, and what the programme now does differently.
600,000 viewers watched the latest series launch in 2026, a reminder that Love Island still reaches a large enough audience to shape careers fast and expose contestants to the kind of attention the documentary keeps returning to. It also means the discussion is not about a niche reality format; it is about a mainstream TV machine whose consequences last long after the villa closes.
Steven Douglass on Gradon
Steven Douglass, a close friend of Sophie Gradon, says she had a “zest for life” before the show and that the “spark” faded once she was in the public eye. That is the documentary’s sharpest human point, because it resists the lazy idea that the deaths can be reduced to a single cause tied to Love Island alone.
Sophie Gradon died in 2018, Mike Thalassitis died in 2019, and Caroline Flack also took her life after serving as Love Island presenter for five series. The documentary points to a curse around Love Island, but the deaths are presented as far more complex than that, shaped by online vitriol, financial pressures, family problems, existing mental health conditions, relationship problems, rolling media coverage, and instant renown.
Contestant care after 2019
Marcel Somerville, who appeared in the 2017 series, says current support would have changed the picture: “If the care that is currently being offered to contestants was being offered back then, it might have had a better bearing for Mike.” That care now includes therapy, 14 months of contact, and advice on finances, social media, and adjusting to new lives.
Anton Danyluk appeared on Love Island in 2019, Luis Morrison in 2015, and Malin Andersson in 2016, which places the documentary’s argument across different eras of the format rather than one isolated season. Luis Morrison calls watching the show back “disgusting” and “embarrassing,” while Malin Andersson describes it as “quite toxic … so superficial and artificial” and says, “The producers are fucking with people who can feel deep things!”
Caroline Frost sees a pattern
Caroline Frost calls it “a pattern forming,” and that is the most useful way to read The Curse of Love Island. The documentary is not just revisiting old grief; it is measuring how a hit TV franchise learned to build more support only after the worst outcomes had already happened.
That leaves the real issue in plain view: whether the documentary can show a direct causal link between Love Island and the suicides it discusses, or only a cluster of pressures that became impossible to ignore once the fame arrived.
