Love Island Beyond The Villa: Why Nic, Olandria and Huda Are Missing and What Their Absence Says
When love island beyond the villa returns to Peacock on April 15 ET, the familiar faces fans expect will not all be there. The new season shifts to the Love Island USA season 7 cast, but Nic Vansteenberghe, Olandria Carthen and Huda Mustafa are not part of the lineup.
Why are some season 7 Islanders missing from Love Island Beyond The Villa?
The omission is immediate for viewers hoping to follow the full post-villa story. Nic Vansteenberghe and Olandria Carthen, whose chemistry turned them into a widely discussed pair, will not appear. Neither will Huda Mustafa. The show’s return is built around the season 7 cast, yet these three names sit outside that frame.
None of the three have publicly given a direct reason for stepping away. What is clear is that each has been busy with work beyond reality TV. Nic has been building a music career under the DJ name Nic Vans and has also been dabbling in acting. Olandria has been pursuing modeling, including her New York Fashion Week debut in September 2025, along with campaigns and brand partnerships. Huda has walked the runway too, has teased new music on her Instagram, and is part of the debut cast of Alex Cooper’s reality competition series Unwell Winter Games, which premiered on April 6 ET.
What does Love Island Beyond The Villa try to show viewers?
The spinoff was designed to track life after the villa doors close. Its premise follows former Islanders as they test romantic relationships in the real world, deal with unfinished business with exes and confront the challenges that come with life outside the show. That makes the missing cast members part of the story as much as the returning ones: the series is not only about who shows up, but also about how quickly the attention around these relationships gets redistributed.
For Nic and Olandria, that post-villa pressure has already been part of the public picture. In a December 2025 conversation with Glamour, Olandria called the scrutiny around their relationship “draining, ” while describing the regular mental-health check-ins they keep with each other. “We always have check-ins, like, ‘How’s your mental? How are you today? I’m always here, ’” she said. “I wish we didn’t have to do that as much as we had to. Thank God we’ve got each other, because I don’t know what we would do without each other, literally, when it comes to that. ”
How are their lives evolving outside the villa?
The absence of Nic, Olandria and Huda is also a sign of how quickly reality TV fame can expand into other work. Nic has been moving into music and acting, and he said during a December 2025 appearance on the Roommates Show that he would not go on Love Island USA again, while he was trying to get cast on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars next. Olandria told Glamour in December 2025 that she was booked up until May and had “some really exciting things” coming up within the year.
That pace matters because it changes what a spinoff can capture. Since leaving Fiji, Nic and Olandria have done brand collaborations and advertisements together, have been seen on nights out and attended the Super Bowl in February 2026. Olandria is still living in Houston, while Nic has been a bit of a nomad, though he still considers his parents’ house in Jacksonville, Fla., his main residence.
For viewers, love island beyond the villa now arrives with a smaller cast but a clearer sense of the trade-off at the center of reality fame: the more the post-show world opens up, the harder it becomes to keep any one storyline fixed in place. The villa is over. The scramble beyond it has only just begun.
