Exclusive Interview

‘Temptation Island’: Inside Sydney’s Reunion With Mikey & Relationship With Xzavier After Season 2

Sydney McGregor was the only Temptation Island Season 2 cast member to leave in a new relationship. Though she wasn’t completely over Mikey Bivens, whom she dated for a year and a half, she knew she had to end things with him when he said he wanted to “shoot his shot” with a temptress. After ending that relationship at the final bonfire, Sydney decided to see where things could go with tempter Xzavier Odom outside the villa. They confirmed they were falling in love with each other in their final moments on the show.

Temptation Island Season 2 filmed in August 2025, so when the season dropped about seven months later, fans were eager to find out if Sydney and Xzavier were still together. Swooon sat down with them in a joint interview on April 13, days after their season’s premiere.

Sydney and Xzavier didn’t just reveal where they stand now, but Sydney also said that she got back together with Mikey shortly after their bonfire split.

First, though, Sydney and Xzavier spent about a week together when they returned home from Hawaii. “And then I was contacted by Mikey, and I had a conversation with him, and then I reached out to Xzavier, and I was like,’ Yeah, I have a few things to figure out. There’s some gray area from the show,'” Sydney recalled. “‘Mikey’s telling me that he didn’t say what I saw at the bonfires, that he didn’t do anything.'”

Sydney remembered Mikey explaining that he was “heavily influenced by people” to say that he would “shoot [his] shot with India [Kelly],” which is what caused Sydney to end things with Mikey in the first place. “And then he also said that when he said, ‘My biggest fear is falling for one of you,’ he told me that he didn’t say that. He said, ‘My biggest fear is Sydney thinking I’m falling for one of you.’” (“But that’s clearly not what he said as you watch the show,” she reflected now. “It’s very precise that he said that one line together, and it wasn’t cut and edited.”)

Sydney believed Mikey in the moment, so she decided to give him another chance, thinking that he’d changed. Over the next three months, she realized he hadn’t. Even outside of figuring out that Mikey’s comments weren’t edited, “it was just different things that I was like, ‘Yeah, you’re the same person that was the reason I left in the villa,'” she said. “And once I realized that outside of the villa, I was definitely firm in my choice.”

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After coming to that realization, Sydney reached out to Xzavier. “I was like, ‘I’m probably the last person you want to talk to.’ I was like, ‘But would you be open to having a conversation over coffee? I just really want to talk to you, tell you everything that went down, and tell you that I still really care about you, and I still have real feelings for you, and see where that goes.’ And he responded, he was like, Yeah, I’m open to that.'”

Xzavier felt “nothing but love” when he got the message from Sydney. “I’m someone who, when I express love and heartfelt feelings, it’s unconditional,” he said. “So we continued to stay friends, and I was pretty happy to start just talking with her again.”

Currently, Sydney — who has “no ill will towards Mikey” and “wish[es] him the best” — and Xzavier are figuring things out relationship-wise. They’ve been long distance since they started talking again. “I’m in LA,” Xzavier explained. “Her lease is up in North Carolina. She’s thinking about coming out this way. So that being said, with the pressure of the show being public and just us entering this new space where we’re in the real world, all the other factors, we’re not putting the pressure on that. That being said, we are intentional. We’re growing what we do have and seeing what that looks like.”

That comes after Sydney and Xzavier both confessed that they were falling in love with each other at the final bonfire. “I think we just bonded over just foundational values, like alignment with how we value family, how we express ourselves and our creative mediums, and just how we treat people,” Xzavier said. “I think that might have been the biggest one, actually, because across the board, all the single guys, everyone was just like, saying how good of a communicator and open and how comfortable Sydney made them feel.”

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There were quite a few conversations that didn’t make it into the final edit that Sydney feels conveyed “the depth of [their] relationship more.” During a dinner that wasn’t shown, Sydney recalled, “I looked over to Xavier, and I was like, ‘I would not have made it through this experience without you.’ Yes, I had my girls, but at the end of the day, he was the person that I really relied on. He was the person that I really talked to. And that is what started the love aspect of it for me. But then seeing him be a man and support me in a way outside of just emotional and physical, I think that’s what really pushed me to say I will fall in love with [him].”

Xzavier wrote Sydney multiple letters that weren’t shown, too. “I read them every morning, and I put them in my journal. So I was like, ‘Dang, like, they didn’t even show how he affirmed me in my way of love because I’m a big words of affirmation person,” she said.

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Xzavier noted that the comfort Sydney made him feel is what led to their final bonfire exchange. “I’m really particular with people who I keep around me and who I just open up to,” he said. “Over time, as days went by, it wasn’t even just the dates. It was just the in-between conversations and stuff. I felt just a level of comfort that, like I rarely feel with people, which led me into a space where I felt safe sharing those feelings with Sydney.”

Though they haven’t labeled their relationship, Sydney and Xzavier are both excited to spend quality time together going forward. “I’m very big on just being with my person, and then doing whatever it is, if it’s a walk on the beach, if it’s a picnic, like whatever it is,” Sydney said. “Just doing things with him is what I’m really looking forward to. And it’s been really hard not being in the same area or the same space anymore, so my goal is to move to LA and move out there, and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

Temptation Island, Season 2, Streaming Now, Netflix