Spoilers ahead for Too Hot to Handle season 2.
Update, July 24:
During the Extra Hot reunion episode hosted by season 1 and The Circle season 2 star Chloe Veitch, Melinda Melrose and Marvin Anthony confirmed they are no longer together.
The couple said they they had planned a trip to Mexico, but Melrose added he canceled it after a fight.
“I was just so sad. Honestly, at that point, I just wanted to be by myself,” Melinda said. “I was just heartbroken that a small argument would make him cancel the whole trip.”
Anthony seemed to hint that things aren’t over: “I don’t know what is going to happen, we will see,” he said.
The week of July 4, Peter Vigilante seemed to confirm, via an Instagram post, that he and Melrose are together.
“Let’s play Rock Paper Scissors …,” he wrote.
Melrose commented with a flirtatious comeback:
Their co-star Carly Lawrence commented with her apparent disbelief:
The THTH star couple is, however, both really enjoying their lives, post-THTH. In early July, Melrose posted another PDA photo with Vigilante to her grid.
A few days before that, she posted a video of fans recognizing her on the street:
Anthony, on the other hand, seems to be living large with his $55,000 prize money. This “Back to the Future” experience might not actually be how Anthony “blew the 55k,” but it’s kind of funny to think that’s true.
After Melrose announced her romance with Vigilante, Anthony posted a very telling caption on his grid: “With success in life, comes more haters. Don’t let them hurt your feelings. Use them for fuel.”
So. There might be some “on again” at some point, but right now things seem to be very “off.”
Original post, July 2:
All the episodes of Too Hot to Handle season 2 are available on Netflix now, which means most super-fans probably know that Melinda Melrose and Marvin Anthony left Turks and Caicos as a couple, as did Emily Miller and Cam Holmes.
Both couples formed at the start of the show, but both went through some rocky times. There were many times that Melrose and Miller were disappointed in their men, but by the end of the season, both couples were official.
Anthony asked Melrose to be his girlfriend while on a boating date, and they both got the green light from Lana (the robot who sets the celibacy rules) to share a kiss.
This time, Lana, aka the show’s producers, decided to allocate the entire collective prize fund to one person. After the whole cast debated among Anthony, Holmes, and their fellow cast member Carly Lawrence, they selected Anthony to take home more than $50,000 of prize funds. Anthony, who was happily in love with Melrose by the end of the show, was deemed the member of the group who made the most progress emotionally.
When the show ended, both Melrose and Anthony expressed doubts about how they could keep up their relationship. The show was filmed in September 2020, before any COVID-19 vaccines were available.
Anthony is from Paris, and Melrose is from New York, which meant seeing each other, especially during a pandemic, wouldn’t exactly be easy.
All of that leads to one central question: It’s been ten months since these two met in a villa for a reality-TV show. Are they still together?
There doesn’t seem to be an easy answer.
“It’s complicated, with Melinda it’s always complicated, Anthony said in an interview with Capital FM. “But we’re going to see, because we’ve been away for a long time. I was stuck in France, so we’re going to see how it’ll continue.”
Anthony seems to be referring to that whole pandemic problem. France has had some of the tightest COVID travel restrictions in the world, which means it probably wasn’t easy to see his THTH girlfriend.
However cheeky Anthony was in his interview, he did seem to confirm the relationship to a fan on Instagram:
And Melrose is either with someone else, or this is a real red herring.
Peter Vigilante was one of the biggest flirts of the season and was even kicked off by Lana for not forming any meaningful connections. So, this could be just Pete being Pete, tbh.
Because she still seems pretty affectionate with her season 2 beau.
We just have to wait for the reunion.
The first season of Too Hot to Handle had a reunion, so it only makes sense that there will be one for season 2. Netflix hasn’t confirmed it yet, but if Distractify is right, Netflix won’t leave us wondering.
We need answers!
Hilary Weaver
Hilary Weaver is a freelance writer based in New York who writes about politics, queer issues, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, and every woman the Queen has ever made a dame. I saw Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again three times in theaters, and that's pretty much all you need to know.
