What Are You Doing With Your Hours Until the 5th Episode of ‘Heated Rivalry’?

I have listened to "All the Things She Said" so many times this week that Spotify redid my Wrapped. 

By Lauren Tousignant  |  December 18, 2025 | 11:10am
Photo: Crave EntertainmentTV
What Are You Doing With Your Hours Until the 5th Episode of ‘Heated Rivalry’?

If you haven’t spent the last few weeks getting lost inside the situationship of two gay hockey players, consider this your invitation to turn off whatever cheesy Christmas slop you’re about to watch for the 47th time.

If you don’t already have a friend, group chat, or random neighbor who’s broken out in a sweat while gushing to you about Heated Rivalry, then I suggest taking a look at who you’re surrounding yourself with. But until then, allow me to be that friend. I admittedly was two weeks late to the hype, but my god, this show about a years-long mid-aughts secret affair between two closeted professional athletes is the hottest thing I’ve seen since…well, since the Wuthering Heights trailer—but before that, it’s the hottest thing since I don’t even remember when.

Based on the 2019 novel by Rachel Reid, Canadian streaming service Crave picked up the series, and American fans of the book huddled so loudly online to figure out how to watch that HBO caught wind and also picked up the series. We meet Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) in 2008, as they both enter Major League Hockey (this world’s version of the NHL) as hot-shot rookies. Shane’s the shy Canadian prodigy who becomes captain of his team, the Montreal Meteors, leading them to back-to-back Stanley Cup championships, and Ilya’s a cocky Russian pitbull on the Boston Bears who’s also won the Stanley Cup (but not back to back!).

Over the next eight years, while the hockey world cheers on their assumed rivalry, they’re meeting up and having crazy hot sex behind closed doors every time their teams play each other. The tension, the build-up, the fucking will make your skin tingle. It’s a show that proves that no AI could ever touch the human magic that goes into creating this kind of soul-burning chaos.

A lot of coverage has also seemed surprised at how popular the show is with women, but why wouldn’t women be invested in a story about desire, yearning, the moment you catch someone’s eye across the room and have to hold yourself back from ripping off their clothes, and the wild sex that follows? When, in the first episode, Ilya says, “I might knock,” I literally squealed.

Unfortunately, there are only six episodes, and the fifth episode, “I’ll Believe in Anything,” premieres at midnight tonight (December 19)—though the show was just renewed for a second season this week (thank God). If you’ve been watching, I imagine you’re spending all your time between episodes just…waiting for the next episode. So my question to you is: how are you spending your hours until the most anticipated episode of the season drops tonight? I have listened to “All the Things She Said” so many times this week that Spotify redid my Wrapped.

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