There was a shocking twist this week on Love Island that has fans screaming. Well, not on the show, exactly.
Rita Ora gave the islanders on the reality series a VIP performance during a pool party and, yes, two couples were dumped from the island — but the thing that left U.S.-based fans of the British show reeling is that the episode disappeared from Hulu. It was added on Sunday and later pulled with no explanation.
Fans turned to Reddit and other social platforms to vent their frustration, and some included screen grabs of chats with Hulu customer service. A couple of those representatives guessed it could be a licensing issue — but The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that’s not the case. Viewers who watched the episode before it was pulled (including this writer) noticed that closed captioning wasn’t working properly, and that’s actually the reason the episode was removed. There are no issues with rights or clearances.
For the uninitiated, Love Island U.K. is a competition dating reality series from ITV that puts attractive 20-somethings in a villa on the Spanish island of Mallorca and follows their search for romance. There are silly, and often raunchy, challenges, lots of banter and no shortage of snogging as the cast competes to couple up. It airs every day for eight weeks and fans can vote on their favorite couples along the way, which sometimes results in the least popular duo getting dumped.
There’s a lag of several days between when episodes air in the U.K. and when they’re available to stream in the U.S., but they typically drop daily and there’s a preview of what’s coming next and when it will be posted. Over on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, @HuluSupport has been working overtime ensuring fans that it’s “all hands on deck” and the team would get them up as soon as possible.
As of Tuesday afternoon, THR has confirmed episode 50 has been restored to the platform. Hulu is working to get episodes 51 and 52 up as soon as possible and aiming to have 53 ready to go by its scheduled launch time at midnight EST tonight.
July 25, 4: 25 p.m. Updated with the news that episode 50 has been restored and three more episodes are in progress.
