REVIEW: ‘Heated Rivalry’ Season 1 Offers Catharsis And Steam

Originally produced for Canadian stream service CRAVE, Heated Rivalry Season 1 is a book-to-six-episode series adaptation that has captured audiences by storm. Adhering to romance tropes, especially those found in MLM stories, often called BL, the series focuses on two professional hockey players and their heated bedroom romance, matched only by their rivalry on the ice. 

Adapted from Rachel Reid’s six-book series, Heated Rivalry follows the almost decade-long romance of Montreal Metros star player, Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), and his rival for the Boston Raiders, Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie). Drafted in the same year, the two are known for battling against one another for MVP status, the Stanley Cup, and scoring records. 

Rivals on the ice from their rookie debut seasons, it’s what happens in the background that makes their story thrive. Embracing the enemies-to-lovers trope with ease, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov’s public personas rely on mutual hatred for the cameras. It sells tickets, and it puts the two young All-Stars in the center of the public eye no matter what they do. 

But with all eyes on them, their rivalry masks their off-ice relationship, which consists of constant hook-ups after games and secret hotel meetings. At first, the two navigate their dalliance as something to do, and as they save each other’s numbers as girls’ names (Lily and Jane, standing in for Ilya and Shane), they continue to sidestep the public eye. 

Heated Rivalry Season 1 embraces sex, but doesn’t forget intimacy in the process. 

Sex is the name of the game in the first half of Heated Rivalry Season 1. Ilya Rozanov is a ladies’ man, known for getting around, after all. Their relationship accounts for little more than hook-ups, but as the years continue, their situationship starts to strain. Not because they don’t need each other, but because they can’t actually stop lying to each other.

A forbidden relationship from the start, their hook-ups turn to love, and the couple has to find out what this means for them, and ultimately what they want. It’s this last part that makes Heated Rivalry Season 1 just good television. 

Yes, it’s steamy and mature, but at its core, Heated Rivalry Season 1 explores the fear of coming out, the fear of falling in love, and, more importantly, tackles masculinity and the need to perform it to perfection for athletes.  After playing in the All-Star game together, the two find it hard to keep miscommunicating and restricting their relationship to just hotel rooms. 

A good story on its own, knowing Heated Rivalry Season 2 is already on the way makes it that much stronger. 

Watching Shane and Ilya develop over the season’s six-episode run is an emotional exploration that doesn’t lose sight of the societal pressures the men risk being squashed under. While beloved for its sex scenes, the series’ penultimate episode, which is devoid of any sex, brings the beauty of the series to the forefront of its narrative. 

As much as the series is about a romance, it’s also about the love of a sport and the worry of who you are without it. It cuts through both men’s family lives and shapes who they are. Constantly fighting each other on the ice, Heated Rivalry is sure never to let the two of them stop being competitors. Their drive on the ice is core to who each character is.

That said, because of this, when they begin to prioritize each other over the sport they love, triggered by Shane’s injury, the stakes of the romance rise. The trajectory of Shane and Ilya’s relationship from dalliance to romance to love is mapped onto every game, and through a storytelling perspective that isn’t always linear, we can see as each man begins to prioritize the other over the game. 

Scott and Kip give audiences a side couple to root for in Heated Rivalry Season 1. 

At only six episodes, Heated Rivalry Season 1 has to cover a lot of ground, but thanks to its small budget, it does so by making sure every minute of screen time is grounded and focused on character work. A slim season, there is no fat to cut from the series, no filler, and more importantly, nothing superfluous. There is no drawn-out exposition that tells the audience exactly what’s happening; instead, the showrunner, Jacob Tierney, uses shifts in storytelling perspective to let the audience know exactly how each man feels. 

It’s a rate now, unfortunately, for series to trust its audience to just take in the information at hand through visuals and title cards. But Heated Rivalry never holds your hand; the small ways Ilya looks to take care of Shane, or how they act toward each other in a match, don’t come with over-the-top dialogue; it’s just there, making their relationship feel real and intimate. 

While audiences quickly found the series thanks to its unflinching look at sex, love, and intimacy between two men (still an underrepresented pairing in romance series and film), it is the catharsis that Heated Rivalry Season 1 offers that makes it a truly gripping series. We all know that gay athletes exist across sports, but we also know that they often only come out after they retire. 

The Crave Original series has all of the building blocks to be an instant classic for HBO Max. 

Heated Rivalry Season 1 doesn’t just use this as a plot device, but it also tackles the idea of masculinity that sports buy into and are fueled by. More importantly, however, is how much showrunner Jacob Tierney focuses on exploring how each of Ilya and Shane’s backgrounds shapes who they are in front of the flashing cameras. 

Neither man is treated or presented to the audience in a negative light for trying to hide their relationship. But at the same time, their secret romance avoids the traditional romanticization we see. It is sad, in the end, that their lives must be together but separate from everyone around them. Still, as athletes, they make their living not just on their skills but on the image they project to their teams and their fans. 

It’s Heated Rivalry Season 1’s second couple that embraces this look at romance while an athlete in its most tragic forms. A passionate romance, a deep love, that’s what we get with Scott Hunter (François Arnaud) and Kip Grady (Robbie G.K.). Scott is a hockey pro as well, playing for a New York City team. And Kip is the guy at the smoothie shop that Scott can’t help but fall for. 

With an episode dedicated to their romance, the audience sees the two fall in love and also the small cracks that grow larger as they try to keep it a secret. Heated Rivalry Season 1 is careful not to set expectations on its characters and instead explores the pressures of life, romance, and homophobia when you’re put on an athletic pedestal. 

Heated Rivalry manages to play with tropes without being constrained by them. 

The turning point of the season comes in Episode 5, the penultimate episode. Scott and Kip, having last seen torn apart by Scott’s inability to love Kip in public, are kissing in the middle of the ice after Scott and his team won the Cup. It’s a moment that causes the audience to lean forward in their seats, and it’s mimicked by our protagonists. 

From that point on, the depth of Ilya and Shane’s romance grows, and the two of them have hope. This is where the catharsis comes in. After accidentally being caught by his parents, the back half of the Heated Rivalry season finale is just about coming out. It’s about finding support from family, but more importantly, having your partner by your side through it all. 

Not every coming-out story is happy; in fact, many of the ones I’ve heard from those in my life have been tragic. But here, Shane and Ilya are accepted, even if the moment is not without its own drama. Granted, it comes more from the fact that Ilya and Shane don’t actually hate each other, rather than any small-minded parents. 

Still, for a series that hasn’t tried to be a fairy tale, the support and love that Ilya and Shane find from Shane’s parents are heartwarming and something many people hope queer people see when coming out. It’s a moment of joy amid the secret they have to hold on to, but its message is clear.

Heated Rivalry isn’t a fairytale so much as it’s a grounded look at intimacy and romance against the odds. 

You, viewer, deserve to live in your happiness, and while Shane’s parents offer them a moment of respite, their story will be sad, given what they have to do. Something that Heated Rivalry Season 2 will focus on, thanks to its source material, The Long Game. 

Ending with only love in front of them, Heated Rivlery Season 1 sets the stage for what’s to come. In addition to always engaging with the athletics of it all, the series has also taken the two men’s identities into account.

From the very first episode, Shane’s life has been shaped by the kind of role model he can be for young Asian men. His bi-racial identity continuously comes up and pushes him to be the best, a reflection of his heritage as much as just a good hockey player. 

On the other side of that, Ilya is Russian. As the series notes, Russia’s outlawing of queerness comes into play. Add in an aging father and a bigot for a brother, and Ilya’s life is not glamorous or perfect. While he is with Svetlana, the one person he can turn to, even that begins to fall apart when they understand that he cannot love her romantically. But Ilya is still a Russian man, and the storytelling doesn’t forget that weight. 

Societal pressure takes a front seat as Ilya and Shane decide what to do next. 

Both characters’ cultural identities influence their decisions and approach to romance as much as their status as athletes does. Much of the way the series approaches love isn’t about forgetting the circumstances, but about how the men navigate them. How do they come to peace with them, and how do they decide to push back?

Conversations about Heated Rivalry and particularly the journey that Shane goes through as he begins to realize that he is gay and not bisexual like Ilya need to take into consideration that the weight Shane carries as an Asian professional athlete is different than Scott or Ilya.

In the same way that Ilya discusses, coming out means never returning home. But even with the worry and fear that bubbles up from time to time, especially in Episode 4, the series also doesn’t lose the joy that both men find when they’re with each other. While Heated Rivalry Season 1 doesn’t ignore how cultural backgrounds influence the choices the two men make, they are never reduced to them. 

Heated Rivalry Season 1 thrives because of Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie’s chemistry. 

Still, for all the series’ success, which comes from smart production and costume design, stellar dialogue, and pacing that revels in romantic tension as much as sexual tension, it’s the performances by Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie that make the series so captivating. The on-screen couple brings a level of comfort to their performance that makes the audience believe they have been in this relationship for years. 

Over the six-episode season, Williams and Storrie capture what it looks like to become gradually more comfortable with a person. Yes, they fall in love, but the small cues of comfort and trust that the two develop every time they meet build on the last. The romance is layered into each subsequent scene, even when the dramatic disagreements and flat-out arguments come to a head.

From their conflict on the ice to their inner conflict over their relationship, Ilya and Shane are a couple who feel grounded in reality. In fact, Heated Rivalry is a show that feels as much like a slice-of-life series about two athletes as it does an erotic series about romance. This relationship, despite the context of professional hockey, never feels unrealistic, and it’s that grounded nature that also makes it so important. 

A grounded series, Heated Rivalry Season 2 is already something we can’t wait for. 

As Heated Rivalry Season 1 comes to an end, the couple has gone through one test. They’ve confessed to each other, and in doing so, they’ve made a plan for the future. They’re officially boyfriends after almost a decade, Shane’s parents support them, and now, they just have to act. The hopefulness of the end-credit scene, in which Shane and Ilya drive into a literal sunset, is palpable, yet the difficulty isn’t erased. 

Having already been greenlit for a Season 2, Heated Rivalry’s success isn’t just because of its sexiness, although it definitely deserves some credit. The storytelling and the ability to embrace the difficulties of romance as much as its beauty solidify the series as well-crafted and heartfelt from beginning to end. 

Even when at its sexiest, Heated Rivalry Season 1 was building toward something. From electric chemistry to grounded intimacy, this is a romance series that plays with all of the tropes you would expect but hardly lets itself be constrained by them. 

Heated Rivalry Season 1 is streaming now on HBO Max.