Exclusive Interview

‘Heated Rivalry’ Creator Teases Arrival of Troy, Harris & More Ottawa Centaurs in Season 2

[Warning: The below contains spoilers for Heated Rivalry Season 1 and minor spoilers for The Long Game by Rachel Reid.]

Heated Rivalry creator Jacob Tierney is figuring out his game plan for Season 2. After following author Rachel Reid’s book of the same name in Season 1, Tierney will adapt the hockey romance’s sequel, The Long Game. Whereas Heated Rivalry keeps its character lineup small beyond Shane (Hudson Williams) and Ilya (Connor Storrie), that’s not the case in The Long Game, which sees Ilya find his place with the Ottawa Centaurs.

Since Season 1 forgoes Heated Rivalry‘s epilogue, show-only fans will be glad to know that Ilya does switch teams to be closer to Shane, just like they discuss in Episode 6. Book fans, Swooon also has some reassurance to give you after we spoke with Tierney a few days ahead of the finale. While he hasn’t started writing the next season just yet, “there’s definitely some” book sequel characters that he’s already excited to add to the show’s mix.

“We’re going through time so quickly in this story, but The Long Game is so much more focused on the Centaurs and is a bit more settled into, I think, a two-year period, so I think that it will give us time to explore a bit more of the universe,” Tierney told Swooon. “And also to get to know more people that we know a bit: Hayden and Jackie and J.J. and the people that are on Shane’s team. But certainly, I’m excited to meet all of the fond members of the Ottawa Centaurs, including any new players that happen to show up there and maybe their social media manager…and who knows, all kinds of stuff.”

Sabrina Lantos / HBO Max

The Long Game readers know that Tierney is referring to Troy Barrett and Harris Drover, who are featured heavily in The Long Game and even have an entire book dedicated to them in Reid’s Game Changers series. Closeted hockey player Troy brings a complicated past with him: He used to be best friends and teammates with one of the biggest bullies in the league, Dallas Kent. But when sexual assault allegations against Dallas come out, Troy publicly renounces him. Traded by his team, the emotionally guarded winger winds up amongst Ottawa’s crew of misfits, which includes their lovable social media manager, Harris.

The timeline of Troy and Harris’ book, Role Model, overlaps with The Long Game — like Heated Rivalry and Game Changer. Tierney covers the events of Game Changer in Season 1, which turns its focus to veteran hockey player Scott Hunter’s (François Arnaud) relationship with smoothie barista Kip Grady (Robbie G.K.) in Episode 3. Aside from that bottle episode and two brief Scott and Kip scenes, Season 1 revolves solely around Shane and Ilya — and that’s not something that Tierney sees changing with Season 2.

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When Swooon questioned whether the new characters would mean that we’d see less of Williams and Storrie, Tierney answered, “No, they’re always going to be the focus of the show. This show’s always going to be that. Whatever this show does, it will always be centered around this relationship. This is the thing that is going to anchor the show, no matter how long the future is and no matter how many seasons we actually get. Which is not to say that we can’t do other things within this universe, absolutely. And I’m very excited to explore a lot of those options, but Heated Rivalry will always be based on Shane and Ilya’s relationship as a center.”

Which The Long Game character are you most excited to see come to life in Heated Rivalry Season 2? Let us know in the comments section below!

Reporting by Damian Holbrook

Heated Rivalry, Season 1, Streaming Now, Crave and HBO Max

Heated Rivalry, Season 2, TBA, Crave and HBO Max