Olga Nechaeva at the LARB:
IT IS HARD to finish Heated Rivalry (2025– ) and simply move on. It has been more than a month since the first season’s finale, but people cannot stop talking about Jacob Tierney’s series for Crave, which follows two hockey superstars—the Russian Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) and the Canadian Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams)—who are forced to keep their relationship private while their rivalry plays out in public. As one viewer, a 43-year-old woman, shared online: “I found out about this series on TikTok the day after the first two episodes came out, and since November 29 I haven’t had a moment’s peace. I’ve become obsessed. I rewatch every episode every day.” Another described the show’s aftertaste as something stranger than satisfaction: “After the finale, what’s left isn’t the euphoria you get from so many series. It’s the opposite: emptiness, and the urge to go back to the beginning and watch the story again, already knowing how much pain and, at the same time, tenderness is hidden inside it.” A third viewer framed the show less as escapism than as something closer to solace: “Heated Rivalry arrived in the midst of a crisis of meaning and a global epidemic of trauma and loneliness, where the hunger for intimacy and the fear of it go hand in hand. For many viewers, the series had a therapeutic effect.”
more here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.