Heated Rivalry Fans Can Relax: Season 2 Is On The Way

If the hot face emoji were a TV show, it would 100% be HBO Max’s viral sensation Heated Rivalry. Since the series premiered in November 2025, fans have been living in a near-feral state of hockey-romance limbo, which has (not surprisingly) sparked nonstop conversation about the spicy sports romance’s future. But will we be getting more Team Hollanov face-offs in the form of a second season? It’s good news, fans: Heated Rivalry Season 2 is in the works!

But with so much talk about the show swirling online, it’s hard to parse what we actually know and what’s still TBD. So, here’s a realistic rundown of everything that’s been said — or hinted at — so far.

Is Season 2 officially happening?

If you’re in the mood to celebrate, go ahead and put the champagne on ice… because we will *definitely* see our hockey heroes Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) back on ice as well.

Crave, the Canadian streaming service responsible for Heated Rivalry, confirmed a second season back in December. HBO Max also confirmed the series will return for U.S. streaming. And, even more exciting, there’s a very strong possibility that the show will stretch well beyond a second season.

For starters, Williams and Storrie have both reportedly signed on for three seasons, according to GQ Hype. There’s also the fact that the show is based on Canadian writer Rachel Reid’s bestselling, soon-to-be-seven-book series Game Changers. Heated Rivalry is based on and takes its name from the second novel in the series, which was published in 2019. This, of course, means that there’s plenty more source material (more on that in a minute!).

Finally, the show has the kind of wildly passionate fanbase and online engagement that typically bodes well for future renewals.

When will Season 2 premiere?

It’s still way too early for a release date. However, we do have at least a little insight into a timeline. Speaking to Variety, Williams mentioned that filming could kick off in “July or August,” which would likely put the earliest release for the show in late 2026.

Comments made by show creator Jacob Tierney seem to suggest that timeline could be possible, but we could also be looking at, like, early 2027. Tierney told Variety in a December interview, “It can’t be same time next year because this time last year, I’d written five of these [scripts], and this time this year I’ve written zero of them.”

What could Season 2 be about?

OK, time to circle back to Reid’s book series. So, Heated Rivalry draws its material from Reid’s second novel by the same name, which obviously focuses on the start of Shane and Ilya’s rivals-to-secret-lovers relationship. Tierney told Collider that Season 2 will look to the 6th book in Reid’s series, The Long Game, as its “foundational document.”

What does that mean, exactly? While we likely won’t get any solid details for a while, the book itself gives us at least an idea of what we’re working with — and The Long Game really expands Shane and Ilya’s relationship beyond secret hookups to explore what sustained intimacy looks like, especially under the spotlight of public scrutiny. Can their love survive the pressure that comes with pursuing big-time hockey careers? What sort of professional sacrifices will they have to make? What are the rewards, but also the costs, of choosing each other openly?

Suffice it to say, there will be some heavier stuff coming for Team Hollanov.

“I think part of that is there's definitely an element of sadness to what's coming, of loneliness and of isolation,” Tierney told the Shut Up Evan podcast. “Of Ilya learning a lot about himself, and Shane learning a lot about himself too."

Who would return for Season 2?

Casting details remain unannounced, but it’s pretty clear based on Tierney’s comments that any continuation would include Shane and Ilya, aka real-life Williams and Storrie. Any other casting speculation remains just that for now: speculation.

And although the prospect of not seeing any of the cast in new episodes for another year (or more) feels unfortunate, at least we live in the era of streaming, where we can watch every episode of Season 1 on repeat until Shane and Ilya’s hockey romance skates back onto our screens.