Cierra Ortega Leaves Love Island USA as Resurfaced Videos Show Her Using a Racial Slur

Love Island USA brought the drama on Sunday night’s episode—but not in a fun way. Cierra Ortega, a Love Island USA bombshell who entered the villa during episode one of the seventh season, made a shocking exit, and fans are reeling.

For Love Island fans who aren’t caught up, as well as anyone else who’s nosy by nature (hi), here’s the TL;DR on Cierra’s shocking Love Island USA departure.

Give me the TL;DR

Love Island USA revealed on Sunday, July 6, that Cierra Ortega had departed the show due to a “personal situation.” Narrator Iain Stirling’s announcement at the beginning of the episode that Cierra had left the villa was the show’s only acknowledgment of her departure.

The timing of her exit is leading some fans to believe that she was removed from the show by producers after multiple videos of the 25-year-old content creator using a racial slur for East Asian people on her Instagram story have resurfaced in recent days. The show is filmed in real time, allowing producers to intervene as things are happening outside of the Love Island villa in Fiji, where the show is filmed.

What does Cierra’s exit mean for the show?

With Cierra’s departure, her partner, Nic Vansteenberghe, was officially single. But not for long. When fellow Islander Olandria attempted to comfort Nic about Cierra’s departure, Nic decided to rekindle their one-time romance.

By the end of the episode, Nic and Olandria were an exclusive item. In other words, the Islanders were Islanding as if nothing happened.

Why are people talking about it?

After the videos of Cierra using the offensive slur resurfaced, Love Island fans attacked her on social media, flooding her feeds with death threats not only directed at Cierra, but at her friends and family.

While the videos are offensive, and there’s nothing to be said in defense of using such language, some have called the backlash counterproductive, especially considering the show’s history of bullying behavior by fans. In 2020, former host of Love Island UK Caroline Flack committed suicide; she had faced relentless criticism from both fans and tabloids.

Love Island USA’s host, Ariana Madix, recently addressed some fans’ tendency to take things too far. In an episode of Aftersun, the biweekly recap show, she addressed the “passionate” people online.

“Don’t be contacting people’s families, don’t be doxing people, don’t be going on Islanders’ pages and saying rude things—you still have time to delete all of that, because the Islanders don’t have their phones, so we’re giving you a chance,” she said directly to camera. “This is a fun, amazing, beautiful show, and we should be thanking each of these Islanders every single day for giving us themselves.”

What has Cierra said?

Cierra has not yet addressed the backlash or apologized for her past comments, as the Islanders do not have access to social media in the villa.