December is a strange time for big new things to happen. Media is no exception: most journalists get their ‘best of 2025’ lists out by December 10, ready to log out of their email and spend the remainder of the year half-watching The Muppet Christmas Carol. But in December 2025, some of the year’s most defining films and shows snuck in under the wire, like Josh Safdie’s dazzling Oscars favourite Marty Supreme. And then there’s the little (gay, Canadian) engine that could: Heated Rivalry, the year’s most unexpected hit. 

Then again – is its success all that surprising? ‘Gay rivals-to-lovers sports romance; lots of sex’ is a sentence that should prompt a cash register noise. It takes everything that was popular about, say, Red, White and Royal Blue and intensifies it. But it’s clear that few expected it to get this big. Gay sex in a romance show is still a source of nerves, for one; Jacob Tierney, Heated Rivalry’s showrunner, has relayed that at least one Hollywood exec recommended that he hold off on ‘consummation’ until season 2. Rachel Reid, author of the show’s source material, was braced for the show to be “a joke – a smutty novelty”. 

But the reception has been enthusiastic. The show follows Shane (Hudson Williams) and Ilya (Connor Storrie), two closeted superstar hockey players, from their first hookup through the next ten years. Across the season’s six episodes, the raw eroticism of their initial secret meetings develops into a deeper intimacy, which makes their public lives as hockey players increasingly difficult to maintain. It’s a hot, fun romance, carried by the fantastic chemistry between Williams and Storrie and a well-chosen wider cast. There are some frayed edges – the budget was clearly pretty low, six episodes isn’t much, a couple of performances are shaky, the show’s depiction of Russia is cartoonish – but it’s a show with real power and care, both when it comes to queer sex and to depicting being closeted in an oppressively hypermasculine environment. 

However, the show’s popularity – which has catapulted Williams and Storrie, who were both waiting tables a year ago, to near-instant fame – has prompted discussion and controversy that goes beyond the specifics of the show. Said wider discussion has clustered around two main questions. One: are the actors gay, and should we care? Two: it seems like a lot of women really like the gay sex hockey show. Is that a problem? 

Williams and Storrie have been barraged with questions about whether they’re LGBTQ+, with gay actor Jordan Firstman getting into hot water after criticising them for not being out; both have stated that they wish to keep their private lives private. Firstman’s response – just come out already! – reflects an understandable frustration about widespread closetedness in Hollywood, but one that new actors aren’t responsible for fixing. Showrunner Tierney has reiterated that it’s illegal to ask employees about their sexuality. Plus, gay representation is a lot more about writing anyway than about matching the actor’s sexuality to the character’s; I only personally take issue with straight actors in gay roles if they seem disengaged, preoccupied with reassuring the public of their straightness, or dismissive of queer fans and causes once they’ve cut the check. Storrie and Williams’ colourful press tour isn’t showing any signs of that. 

But I also don’t think this is actually a question of ethics. Straight and straight-appearing actors rarely catch much heat for playing gay. It can even be pleasant to see famous straight people who are unafraid to look queer. In this specific case, I think people are camouflaging desire in ethical terms. Williams and Storrie are convincing; they’re hot; they have great chemistry; outside the show they come across as stylish and eloquent, and as authentically devoted to each other (they’ve stated they are best friends). They sell the fantasy both on- and off-screen. Fans and onlookers are obsessed with the Ilya/Shane romance, but are also paranoid that they’re being hoodwinked by a gayness that is too good to be ‘real’. Williams in particular falls into the ‘is he/isn’t he’ zone that people sometimes respond to with anger and entitlement. If he’s not going to tell us what we want to know, the line goes, then we’ll accuse him of being a queerbaiter profiting from gay people. But why do people feel baited? Because he’s convincingly inhabited a queer role? Lord forbid a professional actor might be too good at acting. 

As a bisexual man [...] I fundamentally do not fear women’s desire, whether it be for gay men specifically, for male vulnerability, or just for eroticism. It’s how people act that matters, not what they want

A lot of Heated Rivalry coverage has also talked about its female fanbase in befuddled or sensationalising terms. (Women? Watching gay porn?). The fanbase’s skew towards women is real, though smaller than advertised – HBO Max’s stats say that its viewer base pre-finale was about 53 per cent women, rising to 66 per cent women later as the show’s word-of-mouth popularity grew – and there’s been various discussions about why women enjoy, and are horny for, gay erotic dramas like this. I’ve made similar points in Dazed before. As for whether women like the show too much, allow me to pull rank as a bisexual man for a minute: I don’t care. I am not concerned about women finding a deliberately erotic drama erotic. (Congratulations to both me and women. The sex is fun.) Nor am I concerned about the ways Heated Rivalry aestheticises gayness and gay sex for television; it’s a romance, but it avoids, say, sacrificing sex as supposedly inferior to romantic intimacy. I am interested in what romance doesn’t allow for. But I fundamentally do not fear women’s desire, whether it be for gay men specifically, for male vulnerability, or just for eroticism. It’s how people act that matters, not what they want.

I do have concerns about the treatment of the show’s actors, and how that emboldens the routine sexual harassment of queer men and the homophobic cruelty directed towards queer men who don’t fit shiny, sanitised ideals of gayness. But while some of this stems from majority-female fan culture, it’s a convenient fiction to target the ‘straight woman fan’ as a homophobic fetishist, not least because many of the show’s female fans are queer (multiple NYC lesbian venues have marathoned the show). Last week, Janelle James, Storrie’s co-presenter at the Actors Awards, was asked an uncomfortable, invasive question on the red carpet about what “goes through [her] head” when she looks at Storrie, now she’s seen “those scenes in Heated Rivalry.” That question wasn’t asked by a female journalist; it was asked by Marc Malkin, a Variety senior editor and openly gay man. 

Queer men have a lot of different opinions on Heated Rivalry. I think our grief about being a minoritised group, and one with a highly stigmatised sex life, makes many of us wary about sexually explicit gay shows being widely enjoyed – and profited from – by the straight people who dismiss and mock us. But there will be no one true gay show that is simultaneously ‘purely’ gay and popular, that salves all our wounds while also being sexy and compelling. To properly enjoy, and criticise, gay shows, we have to be willing to engage with them on their own terms and with the industry they’re contending with; we can’t be constantly distracted by fear of the homophobic female fan or the homophobic male actor, waiting to make fools of us if we enjoy something. If Heated Rivalry is a show about the difficulty, and rewards, of male vulnerability, perhaps it speaks to those conditions well enough.