Sweetheart, does he match your yearn?
The Tropification of Nicolandria in Love Island USA, yearning on national television, and going where you're loved.
The essence of a good slow burn is in the pacing of tension—the bouts of affection coupled with ample enough distance. The magnetism between two people always in the right place at the wrong time, trying always to find their way back to each other. In Love Island, the relationship with the most buzz has undoubtedly been Nicolandria, the romance that began as a crackship and ended with the pair as runner-ups in the Love Island USA finale.
Nic and Olandria’s story started quite literally in the first episode, but their path to each other took a while to fully form. A quick TL;DR on their journey: they began coupled up with different people—Nic with Cierra, Olandria’s close friend, and Olandria with Taylor, Nic’s close friend. You can imagine why they decided not to pursue a relationship whilst these two were still in the picture. But even so, Nic put himself out there and admitted to his initial and ongoing attraction to Olandria later on in the season. They were a couple for only one day, so, in the spirit of Love Island, they explored. The Soul Ties Kiss™ was thus born, and stans across the globe cried, screamed and threw up at the numerous edits born out of it. Then, they friend-zoned each other, and for a week, we hardly saw them interact. Before they coupled up, we’d been living off of glances and touches and challenge kisses, but finally we had a meal. Hearty, filling, and memorable. Even the narrator Ian Sterling noted that moment in Soul Ties as an iconic piece of Love Island history.
Going back to the land of crumbs was difficult, but Nicolandria Stans are nothing if not persistent, so we trudged along. We walked until our legs grew weary and the sound of romance was being washed away by anti blackness and internet discourse.
Then, Cierra was removed from the show, and Nic and Olandria coupled up once again, but this time was different. Taylor was long out of the picture, and Nic was without a connection, so the only sensible thing to do was to couple up.
This is where the allegations of their relationship being forced come in, and it’s not entirely dismissible. It was unlikely that Olandria would pick Zak over Nic, someone who has opposed his closest friends just to save her from being dumped, and so yes, they were in fact put in the right place at the right time, but ‘forced’ is not the word I’d use to describe them.
Think of it this way: Nic and Olandria had already been coupled up once after the Casa and Villa dumping. They were given the chance to reenter the villa as a couple, an option that was clearly created for them to explore, and still, they called it off. So what, then, made Olandria decide to tell Nic the second time around that she was open to exploring their connection again?
She tells Huda in the episode following the recoupling with Nic that she’s been attracted to him. She kissed him in episode one, and they continued to gravitate to each other in kissing challenges, which Amaya also pointed out in the episode. To many, this episode felt like it was the second part of episodes 21 + 22, where we saw the potential of their relationship from Nic’s perspective, but episode 30 + 31 was Olandria making it known that she likes Nic as well.
Their story appeals to so many people, particularly romance readers and Wattpad veterans alike, because of the way it’s been structured through many beloved tropes: friends to lovers, forced proximity, unrequited love, and second chance romance. From the beginning, most people noticed Nic’s clear attraction to Olandria, almost as if we were reading a novel from his POV, and then suddenly the narration switches to Olandria in the later episodes, and we get a clear sense of how she feels about him.
The recoupling does not immediately solidify them as a romantic couple, but the seeds of this love plant, as Nic so aptly puts it, have been sown weeks prior.
From the moment they couple up, we see their feelings for each other surpass physical attraction and enter the awkward and shy stages of the Friends to Lovers arc. They have the banter and chemistry on lock, but what follows thereafter is tentative and blooming. In episode 31, they care for a (fake) child, Marcel, whose lore runs deep, and according to Nic, this is where their feelings began taking a romantic shape as they figured out their compatibility in regards to parenthood. They met each other’s moms in episode 34, both of whom were wholeheartedly supportive of their relationship, and they themselves continuously assured each other and those around them that this was growing into romance. It was slow, it was intentional, and it was a wonderful way to end out a show that had been missing its titular concept all season.
Nic and Olandria’s dynamic speaks to the nature of two people truly taking their time to know each other. Both have shown their intentionality in different ways; Olandria saw through her situation with Taylor until the very end and remained ‘fiercely loyal’ even when her loyalty wasn’t respected. Nic, though a little messy, never led Cierra on. Despite liking Olandria the entire time, he respected Cierra’s feelings as best as he could, given the context of how the show had been operating thus far, and when it came to Olandria, his honesty towards her was clear from the moment he realised they’d be coupling up. He showed her almost immediately how much he cared for her from his actions to his words.
This is what I loved the most when it came to their relationship. For a short while, we got a real show of genuine attraction and the potential for love in two people who were vulnerable and dependent on each other. The episodes are immensely popular for a reason. Aside from the Soul Ties Kiss, watching Nic and Olandria interact as ‘friends’ in a couple who clearly wanted each other this whole time was like doing a line.
The main fallout was in episode 22 where they friend-zoned each other, but my theory is that Nic noticed how often Olandria brought up Taylor and Cierra, and felt it best to just stay friends whilst they figure out their respective couples. People have used this moment as the ‘gotcha’ that proves Nic and Olandria’s strictly platonic relationship but it’s almost painfully clear what the real reason is; despite liking each other, Olandria was still working through her situation with Taylor, and Cierra was in casa amor, thinking she’d just lost a close friend, and waiting to get back to Nic. If they’d coupled up, it would have been a shit show, considering how the black women have been treated thus far for putting themselves and their principles first. It wasn’t just about friendship. It was also about timing.
I’ve also relearnt through this season’s discourse that people have very flighty beliefs simply for the sake of discourse. On one hand, there were opinions surrounding how Nic and Olandria didn’t even like each other and were coasting through to the finals in a friendship couple, and on the other were claims that Nic only wanted to sleep with Olandria, and that it was purely sexual.
This dismissal of real feelings that exist within the context of the couple’s individual and conjoined dynamic is crazy to me, perhaps because of my laser focus on said context. Olandria made it clear several times that she prefers a slow burn, friends-to-lovers type of relationship. Nic expressed his desire early on to take care of someone, and that he prefers taking it slow with someone he really likes. With Olandria, Nic valued this slowness over whirlwind physicality, something many have already pointed out as the strangest part of the season. This obsession with lust, or at least, physical intimacy as the only real show of feelings, has irritated me deeply, especially as a slow-burn girly myself.
To insinuate that their relationship is forced simply because of how little they touch each other or kiss outside of challenges takes away from the smaller moments; the hand holding, Olandria never walking down a flight of stairs unassisted, Nic making her breakfast, laying out her clothes, exchanging jewellery, the makeup on his clothes and face, and Nic’s consistency in speaking about Olandria with intention and a sweetness that can only be described as love. Their moments are small and often cut out of episodes entirely, but as someone who’s paid attention to what’s being inferred, I’ve seen it from the beginning.
Life Post Villa and the obsession with humbling Black women.
There’s a trend I, Nicolandria stans and casual fans alike are #noticing, where there seems to be an almost perverse excitement to disprove the relationship between Nic and Olandria. You can dislike their pairing, and shit, you can ignore it all altogether, but what fascinates me is the vitriolic anger with which people—mostly online and mostly irrelevant to their actual private relationship—are taking imaginary bets on how their relationship will ‘inevitably’ end. Along with this is the nature of relationships where Black women are loved on loudly, specifically by men, we’re told we can’t pull.
Nic is a hot white man who complements Olandria both physically and emotionally. At first, scenes of them together were picked apart with a whimsical sense of delusion as fans goaded on the crackship. I joined in on this, of course, because I love love. Then their relationship expanded, and the delusion was no longer just that. Their love story that used to live primarily through X's ‘walk with me’ threads and TikTok edits proclaiming ‘Nicolandria in Five’ was now real, live and direct on the screen. This was truly a bonding moment between me and the thousands of other Nicolandria stans that never thought the day would come, but it seems as though there is a collective desire to watch hot people pine for each other in awkward and endearing ways. Unfortunately, however, some people can’t seem to wrap their heads around the concept of a conventionally attractive white man being the one to diligently pursue a woman like Olandria.
Olandria Carthen is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. Sharp cheekbones, a gorgeous posture, beautiful brown eyes and a wonderful smile. I truly feel like she lights up any room she walks in, and as per the raving reviews of the islanders she spent weeks with, the sentiment stands firm that Olandria is a lovely person. So why, then, is it difficult for people to believe that Nic likes her romantically?
Since they’ve left the villa, Nic and Olandria have continued on the path they laid together in the final week of the season; a slow and tentative stroll into the future of their relationship, whatever that looks like. The issue some parasocial fans, or undercover haters, seem to have is that this is not enough, apparently. The couple that only got together 30 episodes into a 36-episode season is taking it too slow for their connection to be considered romantic, as though their history of friendship and loyalty to each other means nothing.
People especially nitpick Nic’s actions when it comes to his feelings for Olandria. There was speculation on him saying that they could be ‘lovers, best friends or partners’ in his final speech, instead of just ‘lovers’ or ‘partners’, and now, post villa, there’s a constant slew of new opinions on how Nic is eventually going to leave Olandria for a skinny blonde white woman.
This desire to determine the downfall of their relationship by the standard of a white man leaving a black woman sours in the mouth when you realise that it’s really just an obsession to humble said black woman.
Throughout the season, Chelley and Olandria have been under fire for actions they took in the villa that are disproportionate to the amount of hatred they’re still getting. The fire has now been stoked way past online discourse and into the social posts of brands like Buzzfeed Tasty and Time Magazine, and influencers and podcast hosts who seem to only have a problem when it comes to these two women. In every podcast or interview I’ve seen, Olandria and Chelley’s names are in the mouths of people who would smile in their faces when it really comes down to it. Taking part in the discourse this season has been draining, but it has also been a reminder that you deserve to be loved at your own pace, regardless of outside pressure.
In my last Love Island essay, I noted that Olandria’s desire to control her emotions and stay ahead of her feelings likely stems from her role as the eldest daughter, and Nic, both in the show and in recent interviews, mentions how empowering and pleasantly surprising it is to watch her walls slowly come down. During their final date, Nic and Olandria receive letters from their respective family members, and they both cry in each other’s arms. The show of not just affection, but real vulnerability is what we as fans of their relationship have been waiting for.
A lot of the romantic connections on past and current seasons of Love Island can sometimes boil down to telling the audience the dynamic of a couple’s relationship rather than showing the things that make them click so well. Here we can see their love for their families drawing them closer together, making it easier to envision their relationship really flourishing with the knowledge that their families do support them. I truly do wonder how people miss these key moments of their relationship when it has seemed so clear to me and thousands of other people that Nic is the type of person Olandria deserves; someone kind, someone empathetic and strong enough to handle things under pressure, and above all someone capable of meeting her where she’s at.
Because of this slowness, many people continue to believe their relationship has been faked for the purpose of getting the 100K prize money. This does not make any sense to me, considering this very intentionality they’ve chosen a week before the show ends, but once again, the intentions of the islanders are second to the assumed intentions that the audience derives.
I’ve said before that the audience participation has been the worst part of this season, especially since it seems like throughout this epidemic of anti-intellectualism lives another branch of forgoing nuance and basic empathy. People are constantly inserting themselves into the minds of certain islanders without any regard for their ability to make up for mistakes. Despite not liking certain people, there is still a line to be drawn, especially now that the show has wrapped and some islanders are taking their time with integrating back into the public eye. This doesn’t always mean something, but again, the lack of nuance means an influx of baseless assumptions.
With Nic and Olandria, this weird need to see a black woman be humbled stems from the fact that Olandria did not have to struggle to be with Nic. Whilst they both were attracted to each other in the beginning, Nic pined for Olandria throughout the entire show. In his final speech, he says, quite beautifully, that, “We began this journey deeply involved with other connections, but I always was your secret admirer.”
Some might say Nic only enjoys the chase, a sentiment he also shared at the beginning of the show, but in my eyes, his desire for Olandria evolved the more he got to know her as a friend, and then as a lover.
The mass speculations bother me only because of how centred it is on Nic and Olandria’s relationship being forced in the last week of the show, when there have been clear signs of attraction since the beginning. The four final couples were created after Casa Amor, and more than two of those couples only recoupled at the same time as Nic and Olandria, but because of their immediate physical connections, they were deemed more genuine.
This logic, though flawed, paints a clearer image of the state of dating for Gen Z. Moral panic has pushed more people into a puritanical way of thinking, but at the same time, we have never been more sexually charged. Brainrot has extended to extreme ends of physicality like sex but never sensuality, and overall, there’s a large percentage of people engaging with sexual content yet hardly pursuing it in real life, making it harder to spot when a genuine relationship forms at a natural pace on a show like Love Island, where instant gratification is rewarded with more screen time.
The obsession with wanting to police every decision these people make is not new, but it has taken on a unique and all the same familiar shape with the addition of Nic and Olandria being an interracial couple. Despite the jokes of their ‘swirlship’ being just that, a joke, the people who don’t like their relationship make it a point to note that Nic’s type isn’t usually Olandria, a dark skinned black woman with non-Eurocentric features. This, coupled with the fact that Nic is the one to initiate most of their romantic interactions, has ruffled feathers in a majority of public takes on their relationship, in and out of the villa. Regardless, Nic stands ten toes down behind Olandria, and the corners he’s being backed into don’t deter him from continuing to let everyone know that he really likes this woman and she really likes him.
Nic and Olandria will probably continue to be scrutinised under the bright white lights of adoring fans and drooling dissenters waiting for the other shoe to drop but I hope, and I truly do hope, that their relationship maintains the same magic it has throughout the show, and whether as friends or as lovers, it’s clear that the everlasting relationship Olandria hoped to have will prevail in the end.