Irina Solomonova: Is She the Worst Villain In Love Is Blind History?

A new season of Love Is Blind is upon us, and with it comes a new crop of hopeful couples and weird losers who never should have left the pod stage.

Into the latter category falls Irina Solomonova, an agent of chaos who appears to be motivated solely by her all-consuming desire to make other people miserable.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when we thought Shake Chatterjee’s title as Worst Love Is Blind Villain would remain forever uncontested.

But Irina certainly gave Shake a run for his money during her relatively brief time on the show.

If you’ve watched the first few episodes of the current season (if you haven’t proceed with caution — spoilers lie ahead!), then you know that Irina seemed to delight in her role as the embodiment of evil.

Usually, the most bonkers behavior on LiB is reserved for the stage where the couples return home and have to deal with real life together.

But Irina started acting out during the pod portion, teaming up with “best friend” Micah Lussier to bully her fellow contestants, some of whom were already struggling emotionally.

Irina focused most of her weird, misguided rage on Bliss Poureetezadi, with whom she competed for the affections of Zack Goytowski.

Solomonova won that battle, but she wasn’t very interested in reaping the rewards.

In fact, she seemed uninterested in Zack from the start, telling the criminal defense attorney that he looked like a “cartoon character,” and confiding to Micah that Goytowski “gives [her] the ick.”

Irina and Zach at least had the good sense to call it quits early, leaving him free to grovel for a second chance with Bliss.

These days, Irina is reading the reactions to her conniving ways and realizing that she needs to run some damage control.

“The first thing I want to say is that I have privately apologized to the people that I have hurt and mistreated,” she said in an Instagram video earlier this week.

“Second of all, I wanted to say I am so, so, so sorry for the people that watched the show that felt frustrated, angry, hurt by the way that I was mistreating people on the show,” she continued.

“It was very immature and naive of me in a lot of those situations.”

Irina explained that she now realizes how deplorable her behavior was, and she vowed to grow and change as a result of her experiences on LiB.

“None of those people deserved to be treated the way that I treated them. I know that none of those things were OK,” Solomnova said.

“I feel like being on the show was like getting a mirror put in front of your face, in the sense of seeing yourself from a different perspective,” she continued.

“That opened up so much to me and I’m still processing and going through everything that happened.”

The response from commenters was decidedly mixed, with some accusing Irina of apologizing just for the sake of her reputation.

“What? Sorry..I only heard ‘I’m posting this so I don’t get fully cancelled and this is all about me’ lolol,” one person wrote.

“No one is going to want any connection with you and your business with the way you treat people and laugh behind their back,” another chimed in, adding, “I hope this is a real wake up call for you and get professional counseling and help.”

Irina will likely have a hard time convincing the masses that she’s sincere about her desire to become a better person.

But hey, at least she’s not fully leaning into her villain arc the way Shake did!