‘Heated Rivalry’ Showrunner Teases ‘Much More Serious’ Season 2 Plot, Including ‘Role Model’ Book Storyline: ‘This Hotel-Room-Adolescent-Sex Stuff Is Largely Gone’

Apr 18, 2026 1:34pm PT ‘Heated Rivalry’ Showrunner Teases ‘Much More Serious’ Season 2 Plot, Including ‘Role Model’ Book Storyline: ‘This Hotel-Room-Adolescent-Sex Stuff Is Largely Gone’

By Jennifer Maas

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Jennifer Maas

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“Heated Rivalry” showrunner Jacob Tierney is in the midst of writing Season 2 of the hockey romance series, which he says will find Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) “in much more serious territory” than the lovers were in the first installment.

“It’s different. It really is different,” Tierney said during a panel alongside “Heated Rivalry” book author Rachel Reid Saturday at BookCon at the Javits Center in New York. “And the challenge of it is, from an adaptation point of view, is that you’re in much more serious territory. A lot of the initial — there’s still lots of flirting and lots of sex — but this kind of danger, this kind of hotel-room-adolescent-sex stuff is largely gone. And so it presents really new challenges.”

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