As Love Island veterans, Gabby Allen and Casey O’Gorman are well- aware of the show’s history of crowning couples whose roads to romance are rocky! For that reason alone, they tell Collider they were surprised to win Season 2 of Love Island: All-Stars after smooth sailing through the experience together after connecting when Casey came in as a bombshell on Episode 2 of the reality series.
The Winning Couple Didn’t Expect to Win ‘Love Island: All-Stars’

Image via Peacock

“Obviously it was a close final, there were a lot of votes for Ekin-Su [Cülcüloğlu] and Curtis [Pritchard], a lot of votes for Luca [Bish] and Grace [Jackson], a lot of votes for us – and people are going to have their favorite couples — we just really didn’t expect to win,” Casey explained. “Because from watching previous Love Island seasons, it’s this whole thing about having a journey. It’s having a roller coaster of these ups and downs, you get drama and all this. We were so drama free and we didn’t really get involved in that and we didn’t have these massive ups and these massive downs. We were just so good with each other the whole time.”
“We were like, ‘We probably won’t win,” Casey recalled. “The other couples, they’ve had these whole dramas – the whole Luca/Grace/Samie [Elishi] situation, or the Curtis/Danielle [Sellers]/Ekin bit and they’ve gone through it and they’ve made it and now they’re very loved up. By the end of the show, we were like, okay, they probably have a better chance than us. But we were just so happy with being drama-free in there that it really didn’t bother us.”
It seems that the third time was indeed the charm for Casey, who previously appeared on the initial season of Love Island: All-Stars, which closely followed his first attempt at finding love in the villa. “I’d literally done the last three years in a row,” Casey said. “I think the only difference for me was the fact that I came in pretty much from the start, whereas the other time I came in two, three weeks in, when everyone was already in their couples and relationships.”

Related

This Is Why ‘Love Island’s Most Successful Couple Works

Absolute couple goals!

That much previous exposure to Islanders nearly proved detrimental to Casey, who drew the ire of Kaz Crossley almost as soon as he arrived in the All-Stars villa. Kaz accused Casey of being a player, saying he ‘f***ed over’ her friend [Georgia Harrison].
Despite Kaz’s outburst, Gabby says she wasn’t swayed in her interest in Casey from the moment of his arrival. “When Casey came in, I was excited to see him,” Gabby recalled. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I fancy him.’ When Kaz said what she had to say – I love Kaz and I appreciated that she was probably coming from a place of wanting to stand up for her mates. She’s very vocal and she ends up just saying what she thinks and how she feels, which is fair, but I will always make my own judgment on someone. You can’t just go for what everyone else sees, you’re just got to trust your gut.”
There Was Lots of Drama to Overcome in the Villa

Image via Peacock

Casey wasn’t the only one confronted by old Love Island issues upon arrival. Gabby came face to face with her ex Marcel Somerville on the Season 2 premiere of All-Stars and things had ended so badly between them, they hadn’t spoken in years.
“Obviously when Marcel first came in, that was quite overwhelming,” Gabby told Collider. “Having to face that, when you think that you’re going in for a new opportunity and a whole new set of people, and then you’re faced with the person that you were on the show with last time, it’s not ideal. But you know what? It was a long time ago, and we squashed it pretty quickly. That was resolved quite fast. There’s no bad blood there now and I would consider us friends.”
With their past experiences put to bed, Gabby and Casey were able to focus on getting to know each other and their relationship bloomed without interruption almost from the start. “I would genuinely that after a week, when there was other bombshells coming in and I actually really didn’t want Gabby to get to know them, I knew,” Casey recalled. “That in my head was like, ‘I actually really like this girl.’ I wouldn’t ever say it to her but I was like, ‘I don’t want her to get to know these boys – I hope she doesn’t fancy them.’ Thank God she didn’t.”
There Was a Pivotal Moment They Realized They Were in Love

Image via Peacock

For Gabby, she realized her feelings for Casey were real in the days leading up to her birthday. “I just feel like we’d already spoken about communication and I know everyone needs a bit of reassurance and being able to communicate that to Casey and him give me that back,” Gabby told Collider. “Seeing that, I felt a shift in my energy towards him and I felt a lot more confident and comfortable with him. I was like, ‘I’m just gonna go for this because I like him and I need to let my guard down.’ Then when it came to my birthday, I felt like that was when it was the real deal for me.”
Ironically, the pair hasn’t seen the way their love unfolded on television because they haven’t watched this season of All-Stars yet. “I cringe so hard every time I see myself on screen,” Gabby admitted, explaining why she’s delayed viewing the Peacock series. “We were at Gabby’s the other night and I was like, ‘Come on, let’s start it,’” Casey recalled.
“I think I need to have wine to watch it,” Gabby added. “We need to watch it on a weekend when I can get drunk and then it’ll be okay.” “Because I came in after the second day, I never got to see this red flag where Gabby and Marcel had that little – whatever it was,” Casey laughed. “I’ve missed all that, so I do want to watch it. I want to see everything.”
Life Has Been Better Outside the Villa For the Couple

Fortunately, the real action is truly starting to heat up for the couple, who say their relationship has only grown stronger outside of the villa. “It’s definitely better,” Gabby said without hesitation. “When you’re in there you have to have conversations, you have to talk about your feelings all the time. The difference now is that we’re just talking about normal stuff and living our daily lives and we can talk about what we’ve done in the day.”
“We’re not waking up every morning and having to debrief about how we’re feeling,” Casey agreed. “Just getting to know each other in a normal way, I’ll come over and we’ll watch a film – but we don’t really watch a film, because we just talk – but chilling together without cameras is nice,” Gabby told Collider.
While the winning couple have been enjoying their time outside the villa, they have faced both public pressure to take their relationship to the next level. The pair have endured tabloid rumors of being a ‘showmance,’ simply because they’ve chosen to take things slow. And while they have been enjoying fielding brand deals and appearance offers, Casey assures us that he and Gabby won’t escalate their relationship before they’re ready to.
“It’s so crazy,” Casey said. “I had a DM this morning from a proposal company saying, ‘Can we help you with your proposal?’ And I’m thinking, ‘What is going on?’ I literally have known Gabby for two months. A proposal is not even in the back of my mind yet. For me it’s only been a couple of months.”
But just because he’s not quite ready to put a ring on it doesn’t mean Casey and Gabby aren’t totally outside the realm of making things official. “I’m really, really enjoying us, and we are an item,” Casey confirmed to Collider. “We are together, but we just haven’t put a label on for girlfriend and boyfriend yet. We’re just going at the pace we want to go. It’s working for us both and yet we get so many DM’s about, ‘Are you boyfriend and girlfriend yet? Are you?’ We just don’t want the outside noise to pressure us into putting a label on it, or what we wear, because we know what we’ve got.”
Gabby agreed wholeheartedly with Casey’s comments. “If you had a friend and your friend had been seeing someone for two months and then they got engaged, you’d be like ‘Serial Killers!’ Gabby said. “It’s going really well, and it will get to the point where we are boyfriend and girlfriend, and it will be very soon, but at the moment, we’ve only ben out a couple of weeks,” Casey added. “We hadn’t known if it was going to work on the outside yet, so we’re just going through that process now. I hear you and it is working.”
While some of the public commentary has been tough to endure, Casey and Gabby say they’ve also had their share of positive moments. “We were coming out of a restaurant last night and there was this couple who were maybe 40 odd or 50 odd and they said, ‘Look, we love you so much – we voted for you the whole time and our daughter was having an operation and you got her through it from being so funny, so thank you so much!” Casey recalled.
“Stuff like that is so nice to hear,” he added. “You don’t realize you’re having such an impact on people because we’re just there doing us and you forget the cameras are there quite a lot of the time. So knowing that sort of information – like I saved someone from their operation is crazy to me.”
With their win secured, it’s clear that Casey and Gabby won over hearts everywhere with their good humor and positive outlook. We’re excited to see what the future holds for the pair, who both will likely continue careers in television.

Love Island: All Stars

Release Date

January 15, 2024

Network

ITV2

Franchise(s)

Love Island