Here's What We Know About Love Island USA's Quarantined Season 2

A bonafide sensation in its native England, Love Island (and its contestants' over-use of the word "like") made the hop across the pond in 2019, with the series airing its first US-based season on CBS last summer.

Although overall ratings for the five-nights-a-week show weren't what CBS had hoped for, it managed to draw new, younger viewers to CBS, earning it an early renewal, with the original plan to return to the show's set in Fiji for a new season beginning this past May.

Then came the pandemic and the production shutdown that turned TV on its head. For a time it seemed like we wouldn't be getting a new season of Love Island this year, but in July CBS announced plans to move the show to Las Vegas, where a brand new cast will be looking for love on the rooftop of Caesars' The Cromwell hotel, living in a villa that will serve as a quarantine bubble.

Of course what happens in Vegas will most definitely not stay in Vegas this go around, but producers are doing everything in their power to keep the coronavirus from crashing the party. Here's what we know about the new season ahead of its premiere:

The Cast & Gameplay

If you haven't watched Love Island before, the premise is similar to shows like Bachelor in Paradise: single, largely hetero folks must couple up and find love on the island. The last couple standing earns a $100,000 prize, but to get there you have to make sure you and your partner keep choosing to couple up. If you're left solo in one of the show's infamous coupling ceremonies, you get sent home.

To keep things interesting, the gender split between the cast is imbalanced: six men, five women. This means one man will be solo, and will have to work his way into a woman's heart to get her to choose him at the first recoupling. The men fighting for the women's hearts this season include two Virginians — personal trainer James McCool and college athlete Johnny Middlebrooks — plus another personal trainer, Tre Forte, karaoke fan Connor Trott, "country boy" Jeremiah White, and romcom devotee Carrington Rodriguez.

The five women they'll be competing to woo are billing coordinator and go-go dancer Justine Ndiba, model Moira Tumas, "Cali girl" Cely Vazquez, Michigander Kaitlynn Anderson, and student Mackenzie Dipman. You can learn more about the 11 starting cast members in the video below, but do keep in mind that they're just the beginning. As the season goes on and singles are eliminated, Love Island will introduce new players to shake things up.

The Host and Announcer

Comedian and actress Arielle Vandenberg returns for a second stint as host. Announcer Matthew Hoffman (not to be confused with Big Brother 12 player Matt Hoffman) also returns, his sardonic voice serving as the glue that holds the show together from a proper social distance.

What's New This Season

Aside from the new locale, producers are promising several other changes for the coming season, including a new "secret jacuzzi" where couples can spend time away from the group, and new (and more) opportunities for viewers to influence and change the game.

Like any good reality competition, this season's contestants will also be kept on their toes with a series of new twists, including the mid-season introduction of a second villa (dubbed "Casa  Amor"), stocked  with an entirely new group of ten singles to tempt the existing players.

The Broadcast Schedule

The best answer to "When is Love Island on?" is "all the time," but for specificity's sake: A new hour-long episode will air Sunday through Friday at 9:00 PM ET, with tonight's two-hour premiere starting an hour earlier at 8:00 PM ET. There will also be a recap episode every Saturday, also two hours long. All episodes will also be made available for streaming on CBA All Access. 

Safety First

Producers are said to have chosen The Cromwell because it had been shut down since early March. That made it easy to take over for a quarantine bubble shoot. Much as we've seen with Big Brother and The Bachelorette, this year's contestants are quarantining on their own before entering the bubble.Crews will work in pods for ideally minimal interaction, and COVID testing will happen regularly throughout production.

Like Big Brother, Love Island turns around its episodes very quickly, which means it will be a tight production schedule. But for the sake of the sexy singles on a quest to find love, we can only hope all the quarantine procedures keep this a safe, secure set.

Love Island Season 2 premieres tonight at 8:00 PM ET on CBS

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Kevin O'Keeffe is a writer, host, and RuPaul's Drag Race herstorian living in Los Angeles.