This article contains spoilers for the show Heated Rivalry.
In the locker room shower. A hotel room in Montreal. A bathroom at an awards gala.
The boys of Heated Rivalry are hooking up a lot — in TV-defying detail, and in lots of different venues.
The Crave original based on a Canadian book series about rival hockey players and their secret off-ice romance has generated buzz from viewers for its explicit sex scenes (and its heartfelt love story alike).
TikTok is awash with users too obsessed with the show to think about anything else, spicy edits of heartthrob characters Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander, and brave fans watching the series with their parents.
The show’s stars — Hudson Williams, who plays Shane, and Connor Storrie, who plays Ilya — got matching “sex sells” tattoos to mark their work on the production. And they seem to be dead right.
Crave says Heated Rivalry became its most-watched original series debut within the first week of its release, and the most recent episode is the second-highest ranked episode of TV of all time on IMDB. A second season of the show also got the green light earlier this month.
But fans and TV critics say the show is more than just good entertainment. It’s resonating because it pushes the boundaries around how much queer sex can be shown on popular TV, depicting intimacy that feels true to life and maintaining a compelling love story — while still being incredibly steamy.
The Canadian streaming sensation Heated Rivalry — which centres on two gay professional hockey players — has been a big hit with viewers, who have ranked it among the highest-rated episodes of all time on IMDB.
Gay sex on the small screen
One reason the show stands out is because it isn’t shy in its depictions of gay sex. It’s something that’s rare for a mainstream production.
“Traditionally … it’s a lot of suggestion, perhaps a lot of fading to black,” said freelance culture writer David Mack. “It’s like the [1950s], with people lying in bed with a cigarette afterwards or something like that.”
That makes Heated Rivalry‘s scenes “very shocking” in comparison, he said.
For example, the first sexual act takes place a mere 14 minutes into the first episode. Many of the scenes are long, with a few unfolding with no cutaways for the duration of the act. That leaves little to the imagination, said Mack, who co-reviewed Heated Rivalry’s spicy scenes for Slate. (He gave them a 10/10 on the horny scale, if you were curious.)
“From the moment [Ilya] opens the door to the moment he leaves, you are there in that room with them,” Mack said of the characters’ first hookup. “So it feels incredibly intimate to be witnessing it.”
Brendan Shust, a Canadian fan who is gay himself, said he’s enjoying how the show’s director, Jacob Tierney, included a wide range of intimate encounters. He’s been excitedly following the series after first bingeing the books by Rachel Reid in the spring.
In particular, he said, he appreciates the differences between the main characters’ love story, which is sexual from the beginning, and that of Scott and Kip, which starts with a meet-cute at a smoothie shop before developing into a full-fledged romantic relationship.
“The way they presented them in such a contrast, I think, was really interesting,” Shust said. “And I don’t think [Tierney’s] done anything that’s unrealistic.”
Shust said the show reminds him of Queer as Folk, a TV series from the early 2000s seen as one of the first to candidly depict the sex lives of gay men.
“I definitely think [Heated Rivalry] is going to be one of those shows that moves the needle.”
Moving beyond a subculture
Adam Vaughan, a film and TV professor at Southampton Solent University, agreed, pointing to The L Word as an example of a show that similarly shocked viewers at the time.
But outside of those shows, queer intimacy has often been couched in fantasy worlds — think Game of Thrones, or depictions of group sex in Sense8 — allowing viewers to separate that queerness from reality, he said.
Heated Rivalry also breaks the mould in part by bringing queer intimacy to the very hetero world of professional hockey, said Karen Tongson, a gender and sexuality studies professor at the University of Southern California.
“What it’s doing is moving gay sex beyond the realm of the subculture of queer life,” she said. “This is about understanding gay sex is happening well beyond those enclaves and in places that you might not expect, but where it surely happens.”
There has still never been a publicly queer hockey player in the NHL, the only major North American men’s sports league for which this is true. Luke Prokop became the first openly gay player under NHL contract in 2021, but he hasn’t yet competed in the league. It’s a stark contrast to female pro sports leagues, which tend to have more LGBTQ+ players.
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Sex first, romance second
Ilya and Shane’s love story begins with sex and later leads to a loving relationship, rather than the other way around — something that happens in real life, too, and isn’t always seen in a love story like this, said Xtra magazine senior editor Mel Woods.
That the first sex scene is a moment of cruising (a way of soliciting casual sex common in the gay community), for example, is “exciting” to see, Woods said.
And the sex still serves the story, they said; this is a romance, after all. The intimate moments aren’t just there to titillate — like a fight sequence in an action movie, the sex scenes reveal details about who the characters are and their evolving feelings for each other.
“It tells a story throughout those scenes just the same way that any of the dialogue scenes tell a story, or the hockey scenes tell a story,” Woods said. “[Intimacy] is as integral to the plot as those other aspects of these men’s lives.”
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While Woods doesn’t like to characterize anything as “good” or “bad” representation, they said the direction by the show’s director Tierney, who is gay, comes through in the show’s sexier moments, even though the original source material was written by a woman.
“The way that these guys are looking at each other, the way the camera is looking at them, the way their bodies are shown … you can tell that a gay person made this.”
A place for PG and steamy queer stories
Not all viewers have found the show to be realistic, however. Actor Jordan Firstman of HBO’s I Love LA told Vulture that Heated Rivalry was “just not gay” — though he’s since walked back his comments and posted videos online featuring Williams in an effort to show there were no hard feelings.
Regardless, Woods said it’s important to depict all kinds of queer stories on screen so audiences can find one that resonates with them — especially in a time when those narratives are at risk of disappearing.
Imagine a world where the two best male hockey players in the country weren’t just rivals, but were also in love with each other. The new Canadian TV show Heated Rivalry brings the idea to life.
GLAAD’s 2025 “Where We Are on TV” report, which annually tracks LGBTQ+ characters on TV, found that there were 489 queer characters on scripted, prime-time shows, but over 40 per cent of those characters would not be coming back, either because the show was cancelled, a character is leaving the show, or because the show was a limited series.
“I’m glad that we live in a world where we can have [PG gay romance] Heartstopper, which is this incredibly twee, gentle, calm, warm thing. And then we have this very spicy, hot, fiery other thing,” Woods said. “The gay experience is broad … and it’s good to see that sort of diversity of perspectives showcased.”
Shust, the Canadian viewer, agrees. While shows like Queer as Folk were groundbreaking, the characters suffered adversity in part because of their sexual orientation, losing their jobs, experiencing physical violence and, in the American remake, dealing with HIV/AIDS.
Compared to that, Shust said, he’s glad to have “joyful gay stories where we can have sex and we can have relationships and we could have that happy ending.”
“To just be able to watch gay content and know it’s gonna be OK — we don’t have to wait for the hammer to drop — is a big relief.”
The show’s season finale is set to premiere on Crave this Friday, Dec. 26.
