Heated Rivalry showrunner Jacob Tierney is teasing the storylines and “new challenges” that will be at the center of the queer hockey romance drama’s second season.
While speaking at a BookCon panel on Saturday, alongside the book series’ author Rachel Reid, Tierney got candid about Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) being “in much more serious territory” in the second installment, set to be released next year.
“It’s different. It really is different,” he said. “And the challenge of it, from an adaptation point of view, is that you’re in much more serious territory. A lot of the initial — there’s still lots of flirting and lots of sex — but this kind of danger, this kind of hotel-room-adolescent-sex stuff is largely gone. And so it presents really new challenges.”
After Shane and Ily confessed their love for each other at the end of season one, season two — which will focus on The Long Game, the sequel to Heated Rivalry in Reid’s Game Changer series — sees the couple navigate being in a secret relationship.
But Tierney revealed that the show’s season installment, which is also being cowritten by Michael Goldbach, will include part of Role Model, the fifth book in the series. Role Model largely unfolds concurrently with the plot of The Long Game, focusing on Ilya’s new Ottawa teammate, Troy, and the team’s social media manager, Harris, making the Russian hockey player a major part of the story.
“Part of the reason you start off with Heated Rivalry, as far as adapting goes, is because you want to get to The Long Game,” the showrunner explained to the panel’s audience. “Because The Long Game is an emotionally sophisticated book that takes this couple seriously. What I’ve always said about this show is there are a lot of books — Game Changer is in Heated Rivalry and obviously, as I think you guys all know by now — obviously parts of Role Model are going to be in [season two], to the great surprise of absolutely nobody. But Ilya and Shane are the heartbeat of this series, of my show. It’s always going to be about Ilya and Shane; that is what is the trajectory that runs through it as their world expands.”
The realities and challenges that come with romantic relationships are something Tierney is notably looking forward to unpacking in season two. He even recalled a major fight between Shane and Ilya being one of his favorite moments from The Long Game.
“There’s a Bergman-y kind of, what do you do after the rush of danger is gone and now you have to live in a relationship where you still aren’t communicating properly, much as you would like to?” he said. “You can say you love each other, but as adults know, there’s so much more to making a relationship a success.”
Tierney noted that The Long Game isn’t the only storyline that’s “here to ground this in something that feels very real,” but that Role Model also gets quite deep.
“The same thing with Troy and Harris, right. I think there’s an easy, facile way of looking at Role Model as it’s very grumpy/sunshine, it’s very apple orchard. It can drift into things that you want,” he explained. “But Troy is a really damaged guy. And Troy is quite damaged on the show. I would say we are digging into that even harder. Because that’s what’s interesting.”
Heated Rivalry season two, from Canadian streamer Crave and airing on HBO Max in the U.S., is set to be released next year. Reid also previously announced that she’ll be publishing her seventh book, Unrivaled, in the Game Changers series in June 2027.
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