everyone’s definitely entitled to their own opinions, no hate on that, not attacking anyone for their opinions, just my personal opinion on this view, but it always kind of rubbed me the wrong way seeing people dislike marisol for how she handled the rocco situation yet those same people either a) love and adore lottie and/or priya, b) are noah stans, or c) had their mc’s do a hell of a lot more than just flirt with someone behind their partners’ backs.
i’ll be the first to say that i absolutely love priya and would have instantly done her route had she been an li and still think she’d been a missed opportunity (alongside chelsea) but the whole operation nope thing had been super shady. she deviced an entire plan to “test the reality” of noah and hope’s relationship and it was all just an excuse to graft on noah without seeming like the bad guy. lottie i don’t like whatsoever and it’s not because i’m a gary stan but part of it being that she sticks her nose in everyone’s business, tries to stir the pot, and also made a huge deal about girl code yet kept the kiss between her and gary secret which makes her a huge hypocrite. they’re both two of the shadier girls on the island and yet they’re two of the most adored by the fandom for doing the things that marisol never actually did. and if mc is going down the noah route, she has to do some of the shadiest stuff just to be able to get him at the very end of the game. marisol never made a legitimate move on rocco until the kiss and tell challenge which, honestly, a lot of people used that challenge as an excuse to just kiss whoever they liked so it’s not like they were doing anything anyone else wasn’t.
yes, marisol should’ve just talked to gary and lottie about the fact that she was starting to get feelings for rocco but lottie would have made such a big deal out of the situation and blown it out of proportion even though it was pretty obvious she didn’t care about the guy that much and it would probably have been super awkward talking about that stuff to gary. i definitely think gary goes by unnoticed in the entire rocco situation which is really unfortunate because it all seemed to really effect him and i wish marisol had been more up front with him but i’m glad she didn’t just discard him. she definitely could have dealt with gary a lot worse and have really hurt him if she’d wanted to.
but all of that isn’t really much compared to the fact that mc is usually out there grafting hard behind everyone’s backs, especially if mc is going after gary and has to do all of her grafting during the rocco stuff. there’s a total of seven different times to be able to kiss gary, that including the kiss and tell challenge (both mc and gary’s questions plus the gem scene question), the gem scene by the fire pit, the gem scene at the gym after brunch, the conversation at the kitchen during priya and lottie’s argument, and the date before the recoupling. like, marisol only talked to a guy and didn’t do anything until a challenge and even then didn’t really do anything until after she’d spoken to lottie; mc is allowed to walk around grafting extra hard on other guys and it’s not a big deal.
also, i’m sorry, but the game is called love island, not friendship island. people sign up to find romance and sometimes that means some feelings will get hurt. marisol wasn’t “playing the game” in terms of trying to be in a good couple so that she can win the money, she was playing the game in terms of trying to find love. she had been in two unsuccessful couples and now this guy starts talking to her and she starts to see him in a different light and she’s beginning to be romantically attracted to him and it really shouldn’t be that scandalous. the only reason why it became such a big deal was because lottie was involved, whether it’s because she was butting her nose into mc’s business (if mc was coupled up with rocco at the time) or because she was miffed that rocco was “pie-ing her off” for marisol (even though she didn’t make her attraction to gary subtle and was holding onto the fact that she’d kissed him). they were only a few days in and everyone treated the situation like they were all in official couples and rocco and marisol were cheating on their partners when really they were just doing what the game was meant for (at least marisol was, rocco seems like he could have very well been “playing the game” than “playing” the game). should there have been more open communication? yes, of course. they’re all adults, they should’ve been able to have an open conversation about it. but does marisol trying to follow her heart (not to be corny) and needing to step over a few toes make her a villain? in my opinion, no. there are a lot worse things she could’ve done and she hadn’t done any of those.
like i said, everyone is entitled to their own opinions and you can like or dislike marisol for whatever reason you want, i just personally don’t like that some people dislike her for the rocco stuff and it’s usually hypocritical.