There is still a long wait to be had for the highly anticipated second season of Heated Rivalry.
When Season 1 of the Crave book adaptation of Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series skated quietly ontoHBO Max Nov. 28, 2025, it quickly built momentum and became a phenomenon.
Season 2 is in the works while stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie ride the waves of their meteoric rises to fame and book other projects.
For everything we know about Heated Rivalry Season 2, read on:
When will Heated Rivalry Season 2 come out?
The goal is for Season 2 to air in the spring of 2027, likely April.
Has Heated Rivalry Season 2 started production?
Not yet, but creator Jacob Tierney told Gayle King on CBS that shooting will begin in August once he’s finished writing the second season.
What can we expect for the plot of Heated Rivalry Season 2? Will it be based off another one of Rachel Reid’s books?
Season 2 of Heated Rivalry will adapt The Long Game, the sixth book in the series by Rachel Reid. Jacob Tierney teased to Deadline in a recent interview that he may split that book’s story into two parts, citing “a lot of material” to work with.
The Long Game picks back up with Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov after they have been seeing each other for 10 years, keeping their relationship a secret. Ilya wants to go public, but Shane feels that they should keep it under wraps to stay at the top of his game.
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As for Kip (Robbie G.K.) and Scott Hunter (François Arnaud), G.K. told People that he would love to see that relationship explored more in Season 2.
“We catch Scott and Kip on the very top of the rollercoaster of our storyline, and I think that there’s a whole lot that could be explored after the fact,” G.K. told the publication. “So I’d like to see some of that.”
Tierney has also teased that The Long Game is “an emotionally sophisticated book that takes this couple seriously,” thus there are higher stakes for Shane and Ilya.
“It really is different, and the challenge, from an adaptation standpoint, is you’re in much more serious territory,” he explained at BookCon 2026, according to Entertainment Weekly. “There’s still lots of flirting, and there’s lots of sex, but it’s this kind of danger. This kind of ‘hotel room, adolescent sex’ stuff is largely gone.”
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Tierney said that when he first spoke with author Reid about adapting the books focused on Shane and Ilya, he stressed that he wanted to take their relationship seriously and not make it “pulpy and soapy.”
“Part of what transfixed me [about their relationship] was knowing where it was going with The Long Game. Rachel took them very seriously, and these little tidbits in the first book become real issues for them [later],” he said.
“What do you do after the rush of danger is gone and yet now you have to live in a relationship where you still aren’t communicating properly, much as you would like to?” added Tierney. “You can say you love each other, but as adults know, there’s so much more than that to make a relationship successful. And that is what they’re learning.”
Where will Heated Rivalry Season 2 be streaming?
In addition to HBO Max, Indian streamer Lionsgate Play has committed to the second season of the beloved ice hockey romance show. Sky in the UK will also skate into airing the second season once it comes out.
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Originally created by Canada’s Crave, distributor Sphere Abacus sells the show to streamers worldwide.
Will there be more Heated Rivalry books?
Yes, author Rachel Reid has a seventh book in the works, and it will also focus on Ilya and Shane. Originally planned for publication Sept. 29, 2026, the next installment in the series, titled Unrivaled has been pushed back to June 1, 2027.
“A line has been drawn—and the hockey world is divided. For the first time in their professional hockey careers, Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander have nothing to hide,” the synopsis for Unrivaled reads. “After more than a decade of keeping their love secret, they’re out, married, and even playing on the same team. The support has been incredible. Most of the time.”
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Reid’s Parkinson’s symptoms have worsened, making it more difficult to write. She cited this development as needing some more time to work on the book.
“There’s nothing more important to me than Unrivaled being the best book it can possibly be,” she said. “The writing is going well. I just wanna make a good book, and I need a little bit more time to do that.”
Are Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie working on other projects in entertainment?
Yes, both costars have films in the works, and Storrie recently hosted Saturday Night Live.
Williams is also set to star alongside Dylan O’Brien in Sofia Banzhaf’s thriller Apparatus. The darkly comedic thriller marks the feature directorial debut of Banzhaf, a Canadian actress (I Am in the World as Free and Slender as a Deer on a Plain). Banzhaf cowrote the film with Grayson Moore (Cardinals).
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Apparatus follows struggling young rideshare driver Tyler (Williams) as he falls under the influence of a self-styled entrepreneur, JP (O’Brien), who offers him a future in his handheld-massager business. But what appears to be a dream opportunity unravels as JP pulls Tyler into a violent downward spiral.
Williams also has Yaga, Crave’s debut half-hour series about the myth of Baba Yaga, in the works. He will star alongside Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix), Noah Reid (Schitt’s Creek) and Clark Backo (Letterkenny).
Storrie will star in A24’s Peaked alongside Molly Gordon, Allie Levitan and Emma Mackey. Laura Dern (Is This Thing On?), Simone Ashley (Bridgerton), Levon Hawke (Blink Twice), Mitra Jouhari (The Big Sick), and Gabby Windey (The Traitors) have also joined the cast as has Dua Lipa.
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