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Aired summer 2018 · Filmed at Sa Vinyassa, Mallorca

Series 4 (2018)

The momentum season. Riding the wave of the breakout, Series 4 brought a charismatic cast and a format running at full confidence, with Casa Amor now a fixture.

Filmed
Mallorca, Sant Llorenç des Cardassar (Spain)
Sa Vinyassa villa, Sant Llorenç
Premiered
Jun 4, 2018
ITV2 · June 2018
Episodes
49
Around 49 episodes
Format
Summer · Casa Amor returns
Casa Amor now a recurring fixture
Cast size
11 cast members
Roughly eleven launch islanders
Host
Caroline Flack
Caroline Flack, fourth summer
On this page6 sections
  1. 01The take
  2. 02The shape of the season
  3. 03Where it sits in the canon
  4. 04What to watch for
  5. 05Adjacent in the canon
  6. 06Also appears in
01The take

The momentum keeps building.

Peak-era casting energy with the format firing on every cylinder.
02The shape of the season

Forty-nine episodes, a new high.

Series 4 inherits the breakout's energy and runs hard with it. The cast is loud, quotable, and well matched, and the production has the format down to a science. Casa Amor is now load-bearing rather than novel, and the run length settles into the modern shape. It is not the season that changed things, but it is one of the most watched and best cast of the Flack era. A strong, high-confidence entry.

03Where it sits in the canon

The #04 slot.

Slot #04 of 13 in the Love Island UK Editor's Canon. Series 4 lands just below Series 1 for the same reason Series 1 outranks it: running an established format at full confidence, however impressively, doesn't out-argue having built that format in the first place. But the gap to Series 1 is thin, because Series 4 is close to the ceiling of what a non-originating season can achieve. Below it, Series 2 is doing an earlier, rawer version of the same job — finding its footing rather than commanding it — and the difference between the two is confidence. Series 4 has already answered the questions Series 2 is still asking, which is why it sits comfortably above it and only narrowly beneath the seasons that matter more historically.

No spoilers. Every page is reviewed before it goes live.
04What to watch for

4 moments, no spoilers.

  • Ep 1 · Launch coupling

    A confident opening for a cast arriving into peak national attention.

  • Ep 10 · Mid-run recoupling

    The fire pit at full format strength, stakes well established by now.

  • Ep 22 · Casa Amor

    The second-villa twist, now an expected pillar of the summer structure.

  • Aftersun · The cultural moment

    The companion show at its busiest as the series rides the franchise's biggest stretch.

06Also appears in

Cross-references.