Who Is Going to Win 'Love Island', Based On First Impressions Alone?

Right now they are larvae, and in eight weeks they will be flies. Does this not astound you in every way? The sheer alchemy of reality TV? ITV is about to take these people – these nothings, these nobodies, these scum – and expose their taut, shaved bodies to the rigours of living in a villa for 56 straight days while being televised and horny at each other, then at the end they will emerge, Fully Formed and Famous, and we will – all of us – toast to their as-yet-unrealised love.

Look at these fragile fools, these Love Island contestants. Every single one of these people is going to bone on TV this year. Look at them. Gaze into their eyes. Over the next eight weeks they are going to make night vision cum noises for you. Some of them will fall in love, and some of them will slosh a glass of rosé over someone while being dragged away by security. I love my sweet large songs and daughters already. I love them with my whole heart. Not Wes. Not the weird doctor lad. But the rest: I adore them.

Anyway, you know how this goes: we get to judge these pure, sweet fools based on exactly one video of them introducing themselves and some photos of them posing against a load of hearts and the pattern from the bottom of a swimming pool. Onwards!

Likeability: Dani just said "a woman on a date… cuts her dinner nice", and just spent what I'm guessing was an edited-down half-hour explaining how to pull a pint; she's the most likeable woman alive.
Annoyingness: Dani isn't annoying, per se, but she's clearly very difficult to shut up, so I think she’s going to be this year’s "unlucky-in-love" contestant, almost clinically so. Two years ago that was Zara, who was so UiL that she was driven to a state of frenzy and did a life-ruining blowjob on Alex. Last year it was Camilla, who kept relentlessly getting heartbroken before they sent that Calvin Klein model in to go and mate with her. Dani has "producers arrange a mid-season speed-dating session just for her, where she manages to over-talk at 12 boys in a row and ultimately goes home alone" written all over her. Nation's Sweetheart in waiting.
How far will she go?: She won’t win it, but she’ll keep coupling up with waif-and-stray boys who very secretly fancy Hayley – and also she'll be the most fun one in the house so won’t get voted out for, like, seven weeks.

Likeability: Depends how you feel about performing arts students, really, doesn’t it. I just: I just really feel like Samira breaks into impromptu song, like, five or six times a day.
Annoyingness: Thing is, the contestants who are most annoying in the first couple of days because their energy is a notch or two higher than everyone else's actually turn out to be some of the soundest in there, and I feel like Samira is primed for that: everyone is going to find her very draining for three or four days, and then, the first time someone gets mugged off in the house, she’ll go over with a weary expression and a whole pack of tabs and give them some really sound advice, and then boom: she’ll suddenly be absolutely integral to the fragile social structure that exists within the villa, best mate rolled into psychologist rolled into mum. So her journey is: Annoying > Very Annoying > Soundest Person In The House, meaning she’ll last quite a while.
How far will she go? Matches up with an incredibly dull personal trainer three weeks in and pretends she likes him, but ultimately doesn’t, and everyone will be able to see through that, so she’ll make it to the final week but not the final proper.

Likeability: Historically, petite HD-eyebrow brunettes who just tiptoe along the knife edge of being full psychopath actually do very well in the Love Island process (Kady, Amber), and Kendall, I’m sensing, is this year’s mad-head.
Annoyingness: Kendall is my early favourite right now – she’s weird, she’s on the show trying to annoy her ex-fiancé, she sells shoes??? – which means she’s most likely to go Full Radge after two glasses of prosecco and start calling Adam a stream of expletives so colourful that ITV has to run an ad break over them.
How far will she go? With the right Day One coupling up, Kendall can make it to the final, but I feel like she’s actually going to get fucked over by every lad in there with a sleeve tattoo and end up getting ejected from the house a fortnight in because she’s considered a threat to the rest of them.

Likeability: "The emoji that best describes me is an angel," Hayley says, "because I’m an angel." Calling it now: she will go down as history’s dullest ever Love Island contestant.
Annoyingness: At first glance, Hayley’s too nothing-y to be annoying – you can’t get annoyed at a plain glass of tap water, can you? – but she will be pushed out of the central social group because, I feel, she’s this year's "I'm not going to fuck on camera" contestant, so a series of lads with nose piercings will get increasingly frustrated with her and ask to get coupled up with Dani instead.
How far will she go? Out by the second week, in a committed relationship with a Championship footballer by August.

Likeability: Laura's go-to catchphrase is, "Hey, soz about me!" which is the most enormous mood in the world tbqhwy.
Annoyingness: Feel like Laura is going to be the most reaction meme-ready contestant in the villa, and that will give her longevity. Catch her in an oversized pair of sunglasses smoking her way through a hangover, saying, "I want to die." Watch her jumping into the swimming pool deliberately trying to catch Adam’s eye while saying, "Is he watching? Is he watching?" under her breath. Catch her going radge and crying while calling someone a bitch and tearing someone’s extensions out into the fire pit.
How far will she go? Reckon she’ll couple up with a lad in Week One – Adam, possibly – and he’ll get complexly voted out two weeks before the final but she’ll stay in, vowing to stay true to him, one of those odd ones who just sort of hangs around the house not shagging, waiting for the final and the sweet release of fame.

Likeability: I hate this man. I loathe this man.
Annoyingness: It's not annoying, exactly, to be a serial killer – more inconvenient for your victims and harrowing for their families, but not annoying – so A&E doctor Alex sort of wobbles clear of that, but I just feel like he’s going to be the first solo person in the house (traditionally the first coupling up sees five couples formed, then one glamorous 11th contestant waltzes in – someone we don’t know about yet, possibly Carla Howe – who shatters one of the couples apart and leaves one person spare, just desperately trying to graft, the eternal third wheel, and this will be Alex), and he'll overstep the mark with someone's partner and basically Wes is going to spark him so unconscious he falls backwards rigidly into the pool and the Love Island ambulance is going to have to get called to escort him away.
How far will he go? No way this lad isn’t back in his weirdly immaculate apartment listening slightly-too-intensely to Phil Collins albums within a week.

Likeability: Can’t call this one. Eyal is either this year's slightly-smarter-than-the-rest-of-the-lads likeable oddball, the most primed to embark on a mid-season bromance, the Kem to this year's Chris; or, he’s a proper Men's Rights Activist type who has to get dragged to the diary room and given a formal warning because he keeps vocally dissing feminism when he's on dates with Laura.
Annoyingness: He seems both i. quite sound, and ii. as if he makes up "comedy raps". So hard to make a call on this guy.
How far will he go? Friends, weirdly: I think we could be looking at a dark horse for the final right here.

Likeability: He's an extremely tall, buff Geordie personal trainer with two sleeve tattoos, so he’s extremely likeable to women and ignites maddening jealousy in me, a man who is ostensibly not a buff Geordie personal trainer w/ sleeve tattoos.
Annoyingness: Extremely Tall Buff Geordie Personal Trainers are the blood that pulses through every season of Love Island, and actually they come close to being a philosophical quandary: if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And: if a series of Love Island happens without a dead-eyed massive Geordie saying "do some bits", did it really happen?
How far will he go? Sadly, very far indeed.

Likeability: He's literally had to be separated from women at work because he keeps shagging them, the man is a walking HR dossier.
Annoyingness: I just very much feel like Jack is going to have to make a contrite apology video after shouting "SMELL MY FINGERS!" on TV the morning after the first night in bed with someone.
How far will he go? Thing is, the public likes "a journey", so if Jack can be very very annoying and laddy for the first couple of weeks – something I sincerely believe he is capable of doing! – then has exactly one emotional break-through by the end of the series, he could be in the final, tightly holding hands with a beautician from Rochdale, praying for fame.

Likeability: I personally want to flush this guy’s head down a toilet, but everyone else on our editorial Slack chat wants to fuck him down to dust, so I guess Niall gets "a mixed reaction".
Annoyingness: Very much feel like Niall is going to be in a series high number of fights this year, leaning through the outstretched arms of both Wes and Adam to call some new guy called Freddie a "muggerator", and then angrily going to have a cigarette to calm down after Hayley once again bins him off.
How far will he go? He’ll make it four weeks in before taking his mic off during a live re-coupling and going viral for trying to storm out of the villa but coming up against a locked gate instead of an open door.

Likeability: The most enlightening moment of Wes's on-screen interview is the bit where he says he slides into the DMs of "some pretty darn… good-looking… girls" on Instagram dot com, not revealing whether said girls actually ever DM him back. So I have this weird suspicion that he’s going into a romance-and-shagging based TV competition without any actual game with which to speak of.
Annoyingness: Every year there’s a lad who spends the first three days in the villa trying it on with literally every girl in there – not knowing about the concept of girls talking to each other to tell each other that that is happening – and then at the re-coupling at the end of Week #1 gets binned off and ejected from the house, spending the next seven weeks live-tweeting every episode and doing a line of cry-laugh emojis every time any girl he's ever tried it on with (i.e. all of them) does anything vaguely sexual with anyone who isn't him. I mean, I wish Wes well with his nascent nightclub appearance career, but I also won’t care if he lives or dies after about three more weeks of this.
How far will he go? If I even remember he exists after ten days of the series I will be surprised.

Judging on form from the last two seasons, the first couple to truly "couple up" in the house – and, also, the shortest male – will last right through to the final, so I have to say Eyal is going to make it to the end, and he might do that by embarking on a love affair with… Kendall?

But it doesn’t matter in the end, does it, because whatever cynicism I have now will melt instantly as soon as I see these idiots graft, and interact, and gossip and create drama, and do those weird slo-mo gameshow bits where they have to smash balloons full of cream with their arses, and they’ll cry and laugh and go ruby-red sunburnt beneath the heat of Magaluf, and one way or another, forever, they will all be etched onto my heart. Apart from Alex. I’m never going to like that guy.

@joelgolby