The Love Island 2019 Power Ranking: Week Four

Nobody likes change. Sometimes, all you want to do is cook dinner with your favourite frying pan, eat the same egg and chips you’ve been eating since you were seven, and finish off the night with a quick wank and a herbal tea. Sometimes, you don’t want to eat “more vegetables” or “go outside” or “not wank so much.” Sometimes, it’s just better to stick to the things you know.

Unfortunately for the Love Island contestants, change has come. Just like a military coup in an unstable democracy, the epoch of Casa Amor has arrived to destabilise power structures. Twelve new islanders have entered in a writhing mass of fake eyelashes, waxed chests and premature……….. kissing. Consequently, couples you once thought were solid, who you’d even consider frontrunners to win, are now being tried in a new court of justice, one in which six extra hot, sweaty bodies try and crack on with each other all at once.

The islanders are already on holiday, but the introduction of Casa Amor is the equivalent of a lads/girls holiday and thus, there are no longer any rules. Party holidays are the true test of any relationship that’s still in its infancy. So, unless the guy you’re seeing and his friends secretly fly to the same destination as you for their holiday and turn up outside the restaurant of your two-star hotel to “surprise you”, you will experience at least one of the following:

i. FOMO

Those who are coupled up are constantly thinking about what their partner is doing. The thought of the woman they’re coupled up with turning up with someone else on their arm, and them having to go back to their hometown to the sound of everyone talking about how you got mugged off on national TV looms large. Panic has set in. You love to see it.

ii. DOUBTS

Curtis was on the verge of asking Amy to be his girlfriend, but having spent a mere 24 hours away from her, he has come undone. Torn between taking pictures of Jourdan for her Instagram or settling down and buying a three-bedroom house in Surrey with Amy and filling it with children who will inevitably become theatre kids, he has to make the ultimate decision.

But so goes the power of Casa Amor.

Throughout this season, most of the women of the villa have had the exact same type: Tall. No other characteristics are important, and as it is widely known, having a personality on top of being tall is simply an added bonus. But most of the men in the villa are tall, making “being tall” as a quality redundant. That is, until someone is so tall that he makes the others look like 5’7 men who tell everyone that they’re 5’9. Introducing, Ovie Soko, the 6’7 professional basketball player from London. As someone who isn’t usually swayed by tallness, I have met my match. Ovie is so tall and so broad, that I have no idea if he has actually spoken yet. Has this man uttered a single word? He is so gargantuan, that Anna has said, “Jordan who?” I doubt Amber and Molly have even spoken to Ovie yet, but they’re in full support of him and Anna. What I’m saying is, you must be 6’7 to ride this ride.

Who among us can say that they have given someone an erection within 24 hours of meeting them? Anton’s sheer desperation for any physical contact played a part in Belle’s phallic power, but her ability to literally raise an appendage with the tips of her "big fuck-off nails" demands respect. Not to mention that Belle, like Alexandra before her, knows exactly how to secure a place in the villa when the competition is tough: crack on with the sad, lonely man and act like it’s because “he’s a gentleman,” and not because you’d like £50K.

Wow. Has a man ever turned down sleeping in a comfortable bed to instead sleep outside clutching your favourite stuffed toy, not because you’ve died, but simply because he “feels like half of himself is missing” after less than 24 hours? As the only couple of which both parties haven’t even entertained getting with someone else, Tommy and Molly-Mae just might be the strongest couple on the island. Truly wild to see.

For inexplicable reasons, Joanna seems to have become one of the most sought-after new women in the villa. Don’t get us wrong – Joana is, like all of them, acceptably hot enough for a BooHoo fashion line or a promotional contract with Bet365. Yet she possesses something very powerful – a kind of atomic-level allure, not quite perceptible through a TV screen but evident to anyone in close proximity to her. She has slowly worked her way into Michael’s head, who is arguably in one of the strongest relationships in the villa, and even Curtis quite likes her. Curtis!!

Like Harry Potter’s lightning scar, this horribly 90s physical iconography bodes well for Maura’s fate. All hail, The Girl Who Lived!

The islanders are obsessed with how the public perceive them, because the public are in charge of whether they get £50,000 or not – naturally they want to please us, their overlords. It took just one single tweet to make Lucie fully consider then develop feelings for Tommy and admit that she would be open to “more than friendship”. Plus, Michael has been harping on about being “whipped” by Amber for what feels like years. They are rattled.

For someone whose extensions are drier than the Sahara Desert, Lucie cares about hair an awful lot. She won’t stop talking to men, with the exact same hair that all men have, about how good their hair is. She has lost her mind. I have no idea how this is going to pan out for her, but what we do know is that Lucie shags hair.

Marvin, Dan, Brian, Jess, Lavena, Maria, Stewie – these are all names of people who may or may not be in the Villa. Can you guess which ones are correct? Of course you can’t, because nobody cares about a real estate student from Tunbridge Wells or a carpenter from Berwick when our protagonists have already been decided. In the Casa Amor era, there are only two ways to define yourself: 1) hug the lonely man or b) be so overwhelmingly tall and good-looking that you’re immediately unforgettable. Otherwise, it’s the bin for you, “Dave.”

@nanasbaah / @rubyJLL