As anyone who’s been following the non-stop Heated Rivalry press extravaganza knows, stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie wrapped up production by getting matching tattoos that read “sex sells.” It’s a cheeky nod toward what first made the show a sensation—both as a fun bit of wintertime hockey smut and as a genuinely revolutionary depiction of queer sex on TV. But while physical intimacy is the hook of Heated Rivalry, it’s a different quality that has turned the show into a full-on phenomenon in the month since its finale aired. Plenty of other romances have been this sexy (here’s looking at you, Bridgerton), but few have been this nuanced with their character work. And it’s that delicate exploration of emotional desire that has people watching the series over and over again.
In fact, sex is the easy part for rival hockey players Shane Hollander (Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Storrie). Their spark is immediate; it only takes them a few chance encounters and one sexually charged late-night gym session to trade ice hockey for tongue hockey. As creator Jacob Tierney so effectively captures, part of being gay in a highly homophobic world like professional hockey is being able to communicate a mutual sense of desire without outing yourself to someone unsafe. Here Shane and Ilya use longing looks and lingering touches to silently convey the same thing to one another: “I’d like to fuck you.”
The trouble is, that act of silent communication sets them up for nearly a decade of miscommunication too. Because their initial assumption about each other is correct, they both make the tragic mistake of extrapolating it out further—of assuming they know what the other is thinking and feeling even when they don’t. While Heated Rivalry could easily have been a romance about external forces conspiring to keep its two star-crossed lovers apart, the series makes the far more interesting choice to keep nearly all of its conflict internal instead. Only it’s not quite clear that’s what the show is doing until halfway into its run, when the character work that may have seemed thin at first is eventually revealed to be a complicated mix of idealization and repression between two young men who don’t understand each other nearly as well as they think they do.
When Shane looks at Ilya, he sees a portrait of extroverted self-confidence. Where Shane was basically raised since birth to be a humble golden boy and athletic role model for Asian-Canadians, Ilya is allowed to be loud, braggadocios, and openly cocky. He feels no pressure to be a good example; and though he hides his queerness from the public, he’s not hiding anything from himself. He’s been hooking up with both men and women for years now, and he’s more often than not the one leading the sexual encounters with Shane too. Shane can’t fathom what Ilya would have to be insecure about, so anytime Ilya pulls away or acts distant—as he does at an awards party in the show’s first episode—Shane assumes he’s just being a callous fuckboy.
What Shane misses, however, is that Ilya has none of the foundational stability that Shane takes for granted. Shane has two deeply supportive parents, endless brand deals, and close friends on his hockey team. Plus, he gets to live and work in his home country, where it’s safe to be openly gay. All of that feels a million miles away for Ilya, who grew up with a cruel father and brother, watched his mom die by suicide, and comes from a country where “promoting homosexuality” is illegal.
When he steps away at the awards night, it doesn’t have anything to do with Shane. He’s just upset at the thought of returning to Russia to be chastised by his dad for not winning Rookie Of The Year. But because Shane can’t grasp his own Canadian privilege, he misses that entirely. When Ilya tries to explain his bad mood by saying “I go home in three days,” Shane just responds, “Okay, must be nice.” Shane hears Ilya changing the subject, and Ilya hears Shane not understanding his life, which causes him to default to his survival mechanism of shoving all his unhappy emotions down even further.
It’s a beautifully subtextual exploration of the sort of real-life communication problems that actually keep people apart rather than the plot contrivances rom-coms so often reach for. And it goes both ways. For his part, Ilya doesn’t understand how much his self-acceptance is a privilege. Since sex, sexuality, and no-strings-attached relationships come easily to him, he dramatically underestimates just how much Shane is struggling internally with questions of who he is, what he wants, and what that means for his future. When Ilya randomly brings up his friend with benefits, Svetlana, after a hookup, he’s trying to be open about his life and invite Shane to do the same. But because he’s diving into one of the topics Shane is least comfortable with, Shane perceives it as Ilya pushing him away and bragging about his girlfriend.
As Storrie put it when asked what the show has to say about love, “Everyone’s really going through their own thing. And half the time when we feel slighted by someone else, we have no idea exactly what’s going on in their head.” Indeed, moments like Shane’s unsent “we didn’t even kiss” text or the duo’s fraught post-tuna melt sex scene or their “All The Things She Said” dance-floor breakdown call to mind other sexy dramas about complex romantic yearning that have similarly sent the world into a collective obsession—like Normal People, Call Me By Your Name, and the second season of Fleabag. But what makes Heated Rivalry so unique is that it ultimately deploys all that intense character drama toward a happy ending rather than a bittersweet one.
Part of the reason people have gone so feral for the show’s last two episodes in particular is because they deliver the rare, beautiful rom-com magic of watching two people inspire each other to become better versions of themselves. Shane has to find his own form of Ilya’s internal confidence, while Ilya has to learn to open up and build a foundation of stability outside of his toxic dynamic with his family. And they both need to learn to actually understand each other rather than just project onto the other. They need to talk, which is why episode five forgoes the onscreen sex entirely for a different kind of intimacy.
It’s also the episode where Storrie and Williams ratchet up their already strong performances to a new level. Particularly on rewatch, you can really appreciate how Williams totally shifts Shane’s level of confidence after his girlfriend Rose Landry (Sophie Nélisse) gently but firmly ushers him out of the closet and into a new level of self-understanding. For all the beloved sequences in episode five, an underrated one involves Shane coming out as gay and pushing Ilya to admit they have something real. Tierney sets it up like a scene that’s going to serve as a moment of catharsis for Shane only to unexpectedly pivot to one of catharsis for Ilya—who’s suddenly talking about Russia and his family in a way he never has in the past nine years. One act of openness begets another. It’s the moment Ilya mentally shifts Shane from the guy he texts for a hookup to the person he calls when his father dies—an opening of the emotional floodgates he can at first only acknowledge in Russian. (This is the standout scene in a season full of them for Storrie.)
The other rewarding thing about Heated Rivalry is that it seldom takes the expected rom-com path. Over and over again, the show keeps setting up these potential false conflicts (Shane misinterpreting why Ilya said Svetlana’s name on the phone or accidentally spilling the beans while high on painkillers) only to keep things firmly in the realm of grounded human drama. Even the external push of watching fellow hockey player Scott Hunter (François Arnaud) kiss his boyfriend Kip (Robbie G.K.) on ice is a culmination of a parallel storyline about the importance of communication and understanding. And while Shane and Ilya don’t know what it took for Scott and Kip to get to that moment, the effect still ripples out to their now iconic retreat to Shane’s cottage.
After the high of episode five, there’s something wonderfully anticlimactic about the Heated Rivalry finale. Shane and Ilya have accepted that they desire each other physically and emotionally. The question is whether they can both admit they want something more than that too. And, fittingly, they have to revisit their past miscommunications to get there. This time, when Shane asks about Ilya’s family, Ilya opens up about losing his mom rather than burying his emotions again. And when Ilya brings up the idea of marrying Svetlana to get American citizenship, Shane digs into what he’s actually trying to say rather than assuming the worst and imploding.
Part of what makes “The Cottage” such an enchanting episode of television is the bittersweet joy of watching two people nine years into a situationship finally admit they have a mutual desire to understand and be understood. That’s the breakthrough that allows Shane and Ilya to actually say the “I love you” they’ve both been feeling for years now. And while it’s not a big rom-com moment like the one Scott and Kip get, that only makes it more earned. The finale is a reward for those who have deeply invested in the subtle character arcs that Storrie, Williams, and Tierney have been building all season. Even the very Slavic way Ilya does a full 180 from his detached playboy demeanor to a deeply loyal, supportive boyfriend as soon as he’s recategorized Shane as family is a reminder of just how much cultural differences were getting in their way.
Indeed, Heated Rivalry is filled with the kind of poignantly written, brilliantly acted scene work that so often becomes the breakout moments of prestige fantasy dramas or superhero movies or sci-fi shows. But what’s so special about the romance genre is that it doesn’t have to smuggle its character arcs into some kind of larger plot-driven package. The character work is the story engine in a way that’s singularly rewarding, whether on a first watch or a fifth. William Faulkner once said that the only thing worth writing about is “the human heart in conflict with itself.” And few shows have explored that as purely—or as carnally—as Heated Rivalry.