Love Island star Lucinda Strafford and Mert Okatan enjoyed a brief romance after Love Island Games but split due to language barriers before she joined All Stars
Love Island star Lucinda Strafford and Mert Okatan enjoyed a brief romance after meeting on Love Island Games(Image: ITV)
Despite having a go at Love Island four times, Lucinda Strafford is evidently not ready to throw in the towel on love just yet.
The blonde stunner first graced our screens as a contestant on the seventh series of ITV2’s dating spectacle in 2021, before hopping over to the fifth series of Love Island Australia in 2023 and then bagging the top spot in the second series of Love Island Games in 2025.
She pocketed a staggering $125,000 on Love Island Games alongside Isaiah ‘Zac’ Campbell, but their romance fizzled out once the cameras stopped rolling.
Instead, Lucinda rekindled the flame with her fellow Love Island Games contestant Mert Okatan, who she was paired with for a week before he got the boot.
Their whirlwind romance continued off-screen, but it’s reported that Lucinda called it quits shortly before signing up for the current series of Love Island: All Stars, reports OK!.
Their whirlwind romance continued off-screen
Not long after they shared a loved-up trip to London on their vlog, the pair unfollowed each other and scrubbed all evidence of their relationship from their social media accounts in December last year.
Lucinda later opened up about their split on Ami Charlize’s Private Story podcast, where she shed more light on the situation.
She revealed: “Yeah so me and Mert have broken up but that’s really sad as well, the whole thing was just really weird.
“I was coupled up with Mert for a week and he couldn’t really speak proper English, but there was a connection there.
“We really fancied each other and we really got on but he just physically could not communicate with me.
Mert has been questioning if Lucinda is being “fake”(Image: Peacock)
“I feel like I need depth and he has depth but with his communication is was just really hard.
“And I couldn’t speak Dutch so it was just really difficult to speak to each other having a normal conversation and there was a lot of repeating and stuff.”
Just like Lucinda’s other former flame, Zac Nunn, who she finished runner-up with on Love Island Australia, Mert has been consistently critiquing Love Island: All Stars through his Snapchat stories.
He’s been calling out his former partner’s recent behaviour with Sean Stone inside the South African villa.
In a recent upload, Mert slammed Lucinda as “childish” following her trip to the secret garden with the confectionery salesman whilst fellow Islanders looked on.
In a separate story, Mert even posed the question to his followers about whether they believed Lucinda and Sean’s romance was “real”.
Mert recently sparked a frenzy online by announcing he was flying out to South Africa to join All Stars(Image: X)
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Mert caused quite the stir online recently when he revealed he was jetting off to South Africa to enter All Stars.
He posted a snap of himself apparently being unveiled as a bombshell contestant.
On Instagram, Mert appeared shirtless sporting some vibrant green swimming trunks.
Featuring the iconic Love Island All Stars logo plastered over the image, it also declared “Bombshell Alert” alongside his moniker “Mert”.
“SPECIAL DELIVERY FROM TOMORROW BACK ON YOUR SCREENS,” he wrote in the accompanying caption. However, insiders at ITV have informed The Sun that Mert will not be entering the villa and the explosive post he shared on his page is actually a manipulated image.
Love Island: All Stars airs Sunday to Friday on ITV2 and ITVX at 9pm
