“Enjoy the yearn,” executive producer Brendan Brady advised fans.

Heated Rivalry season 2 to begin filming this summer, creator reveals premiere date

"Enjoy the yearn," executive producer Brendan Brady advised fans.

By Mekishana Pierre

Mekishana Pierre

Mekishana Pierre is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2025. Her work has previously appeared on *Entertainment Tonight* and Popsugar.

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February 26, 2026 11:45 a.m. ET

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Hudson Williams as Shane Hollander and Connor Storrie as Ilya Rozanov on 'Heated Rivalry'. Credit:

Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max

No more edging, *Heated Rivalry* fans, we have some good news!

Show creator Jacob Tierney and executive producer Brendan Brady shared that the second season of the beloved queer hockey romance is already in the works and slated to start filming this summer, with a release date set for next spring.

"It's all happening, we're writing it now," Tierney told Gayle King during an appearance on *CBS Mornings* Thursday. "We're getting ready to start shooting this summer, and there will be more *Heated Rivalry* on your TVs, like, truly, as soon as humanly possible."

Brady added that, "like the best parts of this show," fans should "enjoy the yearn" of waiting for the show's next season, which King revealed during the final moments of the interview would be premiering in April 2027.

Jacob Tierney attends 'Heated Rivalry' premiere in 2025.

Harold Feng/Getty

The pair also opened up about the Crave romance becoming a viral sensation after the show's premiere on HBO Max late last year. Tierney admitted he hadn't expected the response, let alone to get a season 2 of the series.

"They trusted me, but they also trusted the material and the audience already loved this," Tierney said of working again with the Canadian streamer that they’d worked with previously for shows like *Letterkenny* and *Shoresy*. "What struck me was that there's a lot of people who think that they're smarter than the audience that loves the book, and I don't think they are."

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The writer, director, and producer also added that he felt the series was a "very faithful adaptation" of author Rachel Reid's source material. The book is part of Reid's MLM hockey romance book series *Game Changers*: *Game Changer*, *Heated Rivalry*, *Tough Guy*, *Common Goal*, *Role Model*, and *The Long Game*.

"This was a Canadian book. We're Canadian producers," Tierney told King earlier in the segment.

Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie lead the series as the star-crossed, puck-smashing Shane Hollander and Ilya Rosanov. The previously unknown actors soon found themselves mucking it up at the Golden Globes, being parodied on *Saturday Night Live*, and getting tapped as the official torchbearers for this year's Winter Olympics. Jimmy Fallon even told ** that Williams' guest spot on *The Tonight Show* resulted in "one of the hottest audiences we've ever had."

*Heated Rivalry*, the show created for Canada's Crave streamer and released in the U.S. on HBO Max, adapted the main events of Reid's second book while also incorporating storylines from the first book that involved the love story of hockey pro Scott Hunter (François Arnaud) and smoothie barista Kip Grady (Robbie G.K.), as well as the presence of Kyle Swift (Matthew Finlan), a main character from Reid's *Common Goal*.

While the TV series will continue to follow Shane and Ilya in season 2 — adapting Reid's *The Long Game* — Tierney also teased the arrival of Troy Barrett, another hockey player who is the center of Reid's *Role Model*, alongside social media guru Harris Drover.

Connor Storrie as Ilya Rozanov and Hudson Williams as Shane Hollander on 'Heated Rivalry'.

*The Long Game* picks up around three years after the events of *Heated Rivalry* and finds Shane and Ilya still dating in secret. Between Ilya's wavering mental health and Shane's intensified anxiety about being discovered, the pair struggles to contend with longing for family and belonging, as well as the fear of losing everything.

Fans, and those who still haven't joined the others at the cottage, can watch *Heated Rivalry* on HBO Max in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada, as they wait for season 2.

Watch Tierney and Brady's interview on *CBS Mornings* above.

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Source: “EW TV”