Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Heated Rivalry Episode 4.It’s been a while since a small-screen romance novel adaptation took the internet by storm (Bridgerton, anyone?), but now, Heated Rivalry is here to satisfy readers’ ravenous appetites. Adapted from author Rachel Reid‘s bestselling Game Changers book series and hailing from creator, writer, and director Jacob Tierney (Letterkenny), the Crave Original — airing on HBO Max over here in the U.S. — has become a hot-button topic among critics and viewers alike for several reasons, though none are more prevalent than the show’s willingness to fully embrace steam.
Anyone who makes romance novels a prominent portion of their literary diet will tell you that sex isn’t always explicit or even required to be on the page, but when it is, it can be an aspect of character and relationship development that’s just as important as the moments that don’t play out between the sheets. In this way, Heated Rivalry is already overwhelmingly succeeding; you can track the evolution of the romance between the series’ leads solely through how they kiss, touch, and yes, f*ck in any number of positions.
It would be a mistake to imply — or even declare, as some critics have — that sex serves no narrative purpose in this show, because the developing relationship between Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) lives as much in what they do behind closed doors as it does through the scenes where they struggle to verbalize deeper emotional feelings. Nowhere is this more true than in this week’s episode, “Rose,” written and directed by Tierney, which arguably boasts Heated Rivalry‘s steamiest moments yet but also culminates in one of the show’s most heartbreaking exchanges between the fan-favorite couple.
‘Heated Rivalry’ Episode 4 Doesn’t Skimp on the Sex, but There’s a Reason for That
Much has been written about Heated Rivalry‘s R-rated nature, but what many of those takes have failed to acknowledge is how Shane and Ilya’s hookups do ultimately serve the show’s greater narrative arc, both for them as a potential couple and as individual characters. These hockey rivals may be wildly competitive on the ice — Shane is a captain for the Montreal Metros, who frequently play against Ilya’s team, the Boston Raiders — but when all the trappings of their sport are stripped away, it leaves room for more vulnerability to rise to the surface.
Compared to Ilya, Shane is the more inexperienced party in the bedroom when they first sleep together, but as the years go by, he becomes more confident in asking for what he wants, with his secret texts to Ilya (under the alias of “Lily”) gradually rising to match Ilya’s more brazen missives. On the heels of an episode that primarily revolved around a different romance, “Rose” confirms that these two have been limiting their hookups exclusively to the hockey season, arranging secret meetups in hotels when their teams are scheduled to compete. It’s also obvious, however, that during their time off, Shane and Ilya are having an increasingly difficult time not thinking about each other.
While there has been some criticism of the show’s use of timejumps so far, Episode 4, in particular, wields them to hammer home the fact that Shane and Ilya’s dynamic has grown beyond a mere fling without them even being capable of acknowledging it yet. Yes, the montage that kicks things off is a whirlwind of explicit images and sounds — Shane and Ilya’s bodies violently colliding on the ice juxtaposed against the two of them tangled up in a bed, or a shower — but what’s even more telling are the moments in which they can’t help but look at their phones, eager for the slightest continuation of communication that doesn’t have anything to do with hooking up. When the Montreal Metros take their season to the ultimate victory two years running, Ilya watches Shane hoist the championship cup from the privacy of his own couch and smiles to himself despite the sting of his own team’s defeat. It all culminates in an afternoon that begins like any other, with the two meeting up for what’s intended to be another clandestine liaison during the first rivalry game of a new season, but when Shane and Ilya reach a small but critical turning point in their relationship, it turns out that one of them isn’t fully ready to take the plunge.
‘Heated Rivalry’ Episode 4 Ends in a Devastating Place for Shane and Ilya
Right away, eagle-eyed viewers will be able to pinpoint that something has shifted when Ilya invites Shane over for their latest rendezvous. Things progress much as they always have at the start; Ilya distracts Shane with kissing, lifting him onto a counter before a longer conversation can occur, and they quickly tumble into bed together, but very quickly, it becomes evident that this instance isn’t going to follow the same trajectory. For one, Ilya asks Shane to stay afterward, rather than immediately taking his leave, and the two nap alongside each other, something they’ve never done (at least, not onscreen) in any of their previous hookups. After they wake up, in a scene largely lifted from Reid’s novel, Ilya offers to fix Shane a tuna melt — he’s already making one for himself, so why not a second? It’s not that he hasn’t taken care of Shane before, as we’ve seen in previous episodes, but this isn’t happening in a sexual context, with Ilya gently guiding Shane through an act he’s never participated in before; this is Ilya attending to Shane’s basic needs, and Shane clearly doesn’t know how to process that in the moment itself.
When the two move to the living room couch for their lunch, Tierney’s direction and the initial framing of the scene starkly call attention to the physical distance between the characters; Shane and Ilya don’t fully know how to exist in each other’s space when they’re not on the ice or in a bed. Slowly, the gap between them begins to shrink, most notably after Ilya leaves the room to take a call from his ailing father, Grigori (Yaroslav Poverlo), and returns; when Shane inquires about Grigori’s well-being, Ilya deflects from answering the question, pulling Shane into a hug instead. Even something as innocuous as cuddling on the couch, however, doesn’t last for long, and their proximity inevitably turns into another hookup, which seems to feel safer and less complicated than everything they’ve been tiptoeing around.
Up until this point, they’ve only been referring to each other by their last names; it’s a carryover from their professional relationship that has extended into their private one, too. But when Shane straddles Ilya on the couch, in the heat of the moment, they use each other’s first names for the very first time while their faces are inches apart. Not even the typically blissful aftermath is enough to settle the fear that constricts in Shane’s chest when he starts to grasp the significance of what’s just happened. He immediately climbs off Ilya’s lap, barely able to look the other man in the eye as he fumbles through a made-up excuse about not wanting to be late for a Metros team meeting. While this reaction might seem surprising, the truth is that these two have been building to this emotional crossroads since the very first episode. This isn’t intimacy in dark hotel rooms, with bodies bathed in shadows and facial expressions difficult to parse from certain positions; this is domesticity in the daylight, bright and open, and for Shane, on the heels of the tuna melt, and their sleepover, and Ilya calling him by his first name, it’s absolutely terrifying. So, despite Ilya’s audible protests — even though he, too, can’t fully give voice to the reason why he wants Shane to stay — Shane turns on his heel and leaves. This is exactly what he was afraid would happen, or perhaps never fully expected to happen, given Ilya’s initial rejection of deeper conversation. Despite efforts to keep what they have casual, this affair has become anything but.
It’s no wonder, then, that after this crucial scene, Shane enters into a rather public relationship with actress Rose Landry (Yellowjackets‘ Sophie Nélisse), which ironically represents everything that he’s not ready to let himself have with Ilya — a romance splashed across the headlines, a partner wearing his jersey at Metros games, and a person he can hopefully be honest and vulnerable with. The only problem with this relationship, however, has nothing to do with Rose, whom the show fortunately hasn’t framed with any tired, overdone genre tropes so far; it’s that Shane’s not really being honest with anyone about what he really wants, most of all himself. With two episodes left in Heated Rivalry‘s first season and a renewal still up in the air, it’s unclear how Shane and Ilya’s story will resolve itself, but provided the series follows the number one rule of any romance novel, chances are these two are still destined for a happily ever after. It’s just going to take them a little longer to get there.
