“I’m coming to the cottage!” It’s only been two months since Heated Rivalry premiered, but it has taken over the whole world in a way that no one ever expected. The series, originally made to stream only on Crave in Canada, was picked up by HBO Max in the US and various other countries a week before its premiere in November.
Heated Rivalry, based on the book in the Game Changers series by Rachel Reid, tells the story of rival hockey players Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) and their secret relationship spanning multiple years. It’s an emotional slow-burn love story, but physically they get together within the first 20 minutes of episode 1. It is a very steamy show, not something you’d want to watch with your parents, but it’s also no more revealing than Bridgerton or Outlander. But like both of those other shows, there is a very clear yearning between these two men, whose lust has turned into love, but are too afraid to reveal it for the sake of their careers and families, especially Ilya, who is from Russia and could never return if his relationship with Shane went public.
I think that is one of the biggest reasons why everyone has just fallen in love with this show and continues to rewatch it. It is such a beautiful love story, and Williams and Storrie have done so well portraying it with their acting. The entire show was shot out of order and filmed in just over a month. So, trying to imagine them going from filming the bathroom scene in episode 2, where there’s so much emotion that they are trying to conceal to each other to filming the club scene in episode 4 is just so insane. As someone who read Heated Rivalry and The Long Game before the show came out and already knowing that the club was rock bottom, still did not prepare me for how insane I went from the first second t.A.T.u.’s “All the Things She Said” starting playing in the scene and the staring across the dance floor. And episode 5 was probably one of the best tv episodes in general that I’ve ever seen. The phone call scene in Russian (also just Storrie learning Russian in only 2 weeks for this show!) and the fact that the intimate scenes are no longer graphic but occur off-screen show the shift to how serious they have become. And Scott (François Arnaud) and Kip’s (Robbie G.K.) kiss at the end of the episode on the ice was so important and impactful, and changed everything.
Episode 6 was released only a few hours after the release volume 2 of Stranger Things season 5 but 95% of every TikTok or tweet I saw was about Shane and Ilya at the cottage instead of Max escaping from Vecna’s mind. Now weeks later, my social media feeds still look like that, plus all the press Storrie and Williams have done–like what do you mean that they were both waiting tables in LA and Vancouver only 8 months ago, and now they just presented together at the Golden Globes! Four months ago, this show was only supposed to air in Canada and stay relatively small but it’s gotten so big that there’s even Heated Rivalry themed club nights and Club 90’s show is literally going on tour across the US, Canada, and London, UK because the demand is so high for people to dance to TikTok edits of One Direction’s “Rock Me” in person. Most shows are already sold out, but I have my tickets secured for one of NYC’s.
Season 2 is already confirmed, but unfortunately, we won’t get it until early 2027 at the earliest, and it will follow the story of The Long Game, which features Shane and Ilya exclusively together but still hiding their love for each other from the world. The biggest question a lot of people have been asking is if we’ll still see Scott and Kip’s story in addition to characters from the other Game Changers books like Ryan and Fabian, Eric and Kyle (who we already met in episode 3), and Troy and Harris–who are almost definitely likely since they both work on the same team as Ilya. While it may be a long year before Hollanov returns on screen, Reid recently announced that the final book in the series, Unrivaled, will be released on September 29 and will follow Shane and Ilya “facing their biggest challenge yet” together as a team on and off the ice. Until then, time to rewatch the entire show for the 10th time!
This was written by our contributing writer, Demi Tsatsaronis.
Image Source: Pexels, Tony Schnagl
Leave a Reply