The beauty in Heated Rivalry will always lie within the details.
A clever camera angle. A subtle shift in music. A house filled with windows letting the light and outside into a love story.
It’s befitting that a sexy, brilliant, mesmerizing series would end its first run on an hour filled with the details, and charm its way onto the god-tier list of sweeping romantic episodes that have the unique ability to break you and put you back together with the promise of hope.
The entire season has been slowly building toward Ilya and Shane not only acknowledging the depths of their growing connection, but also figuring out what that could mean for them going forward.
With only six episodes to shape the entirety of this part of the story, you can easily forget that the pair have been engaging in this dance for years. And Heated Rivalry Season 1 Episode 6 is the culmination of all that time.
You’ve seen the boy mature over time, even if it’s in small ways, and here they’re more open than they’ve ever been before, with their guards lowered, and a sense of calmness seeped in a terrifying swell of unfamiliar emotions wrestling inside them.
The hour opening with Scott Hunter’s impassioned speech at the MHL awards, which he uses to speak openly and authentically to the hockey community, the world at large, and Kip specifically, is a beautiful way to set the stage for Shane and Ilya’s cottage retreat, which is a chance for the two of them to connect in an even more meaningful manner without feeling like they’re pressed for time or the possibility of prying eyes.
Scott and Kip’s story is as paramount to the narrative as most things this season, and it’s nice that they get a moment in the finale, even a quick one, to remind audiences of their love story and of Shane’s desire to express loudly who he is and who he loves on such a grand stage.
Shane and Ilya aren’t at that place yet. And it would be disingenuous of the series to pretend otherwise, as the two stories aren’t mirrors of one another but more companions on a cross-country road trip with different destinations.
At its core, this final act is about choice. It’s about two men choosing honesty with each other in a uniquely intimate way within the parameters of their relationship.
Their connection, built on attraction, friendship, and affection for one another (it was always there, just unspoken), finally has room to breathe. It leads them to a place where they can look each other in the eye on the couch and vow to be emotionally transparent. It’s something the show has been building toward from the very beginning.
And once the two start talking, they don’t stop.
It’s hard to overstate how grounded this hour feels, rooted in the romance genre’s greatest strength: emotional presence.
There’s a heavy vulnerability throughout, one that replaces guardedness with assurances and grand words they’ve been fighting to keep at bay.
It’s Ilya, unfamiliar and unimpressed with a night spent in front of a fire pit, telling Shane about his mother and offering up a sacred piece of himself. You can tell he’s never felt comfortable or compelled to do anything before that moment.
But not only does he trust Shane explicitly, he feels appreciated, seen, and loved enough to lay himself bare in front of the fire, the loons, and the man he’s so cataclysmically in love with.
Moments like that, and later the conversation in bed when Shane comes up with a plan to control the narrative around their professional relationship as a means to start planning for a hopeful future, are shrouded in darkness, but the narrative has never been brighter.
All the moments within the confines of that cottage or its vicinity feel deliberate, and you appreciate it all the more when you think about the journey it took for these two men to get to this place.
And the episode doesn’t try at all to create obstacles for their time together, instead allowing the beauty of their love to flourish without fear, at least for a little while.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it: Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams have put in some incredible work throughout the season, and both have several standout moments in the final hour where they get to showcase the abilities that have turned this show into appointment television.
Learning now that Ilya was only a few years removed from his mother’s death when he and Shane met on top of the toxicity bestowed upon him from the rest of his family helps inform so much of his actions throughout the story.
He’s a man who’s spent so long without the comfort of unconditional love and kindness for kindness’ sake, and as he experiences that with Shane, it’s hard for him to reconcile that, even if loving Shane is the easiest part.
Storrie plays Ilya with ease, allowing his flirty, fun banter to flourish while always leaving room for his stoicism and restraint to ground the character, making the emotional breakthroughs in the finale feel earned rather than performative.
He has a powerful on-screen presence, and he draws you into his orbit with no plans on letting you leave with every fleeting smile and hard-nosed line delivery.
Where Ilya may be more outwardly expressive at times, Shane can present in a quieter, more measured, and introspective way.
Williams always plays him with this quietly illuminating spirit and, at certain times, pathos, resulting in some of the season’s best character beats when he’s allowed to express every single emotion Shane is experiencing without uttering a word.
It’s a special gift, and the finale is framed in ways that allow each man to exist in the quiet with the other, letting the stillness and gravity of the scene, along with their reactions, guide us through the emotions rather than spelling it out for us.
When Ilya casually drops that he could marry Svetlana to obtain Canadian citizenship, Shane is noticeably upset, face hardened and eyes shining with a hint of confusion and unbridled pain.
Williams plays it beautifully, keeping Shane so tightly wound that you can feel his pain ricocheting around the open concept living room, and only reigning himself in when Ilya very cutely admits to him how much he likes him in a way that only Ilya can.
The tears gathering in Shane’s eyes, not falling but glinting off the soft lighting of the cottage, elevate the scene and this interaction, and it’s one of the episode’s best, amongst a sea of them.
Lesser shows might opt to end the season on an angsty note, as even though the series is based on a book, it’s still a television show at the end of the day. The uncertainty of their relationship and whether they will find their happy ending could have served as the cliffhanger and hook to keep audiences coming back for another season.
But Heated Rivalry has always understood that romance is the payoff in all of this, not something to ultimately be delayed or complicated for the sake of it.
Shane and Ilya confessing their love for one another through muddled tears and bright smiles is joy, and the series trusts the audience to find the meaning in that.
The entire season leads us to the cottage, where tenderness becomes the reward for everything that’s come before.
It’s a testament to series creator Jacob Tierney’s vision that he saw the beauty in what the book outlines: first love, queer love, identity and intimacy, and two people learning how to choose each other despite everything that’s taught them not to.
If you did read the books, then you probably guessed what the final act would be, which has David showing up at the cottage to retrieve some dishwasher pods (repurposed here with a pesky phone charger, and isn’t it annoying how they are constantly changing?) and seeing Shane and Ilya in an intimate moment.
All things remain the same here, in that Shane struggles when confronted with having to tell his parents both about his sexuality and his relationship with Ilya before he’s wholly prepared to do so. What results is an at-times humorous, but above all else, real and emotionally honest depiction of that moment.
Before Shane and Ilya even arrive at the Hollander’s home, they take time to check in with one another, offering an even clearer view of just how far their relationship has come and the depths of the passion and care they have for each other.
Shane seeks solace at his most desperate, and Ilya stands beside him through every second of it, offering a comforting word and a gentle touch, never letting him face anything alone.
Williams is once again supremely excellent at radiating Shane’s internal battle as it collides with his need to speak his truths in front of the three people who mean the most to him in the world.
The Hollander’s aren’t surprised to hear that Shane is gay, but they are surprised by the Ilya of it all. Their surprise isn’t rooted in rejection, but in genuine curiosity, shaped by years of watching the two men compete against each other for years and believing, like the rest of the world, that they were and would always be rivals.
It’s undeniably sweet watching Shane and Ilya try to put words to their years-long relationship, while Yuna and David listen with rapt attention as they try to reconcile Shane’s love for his longstanding “enemy.”
Now Shane has obviously played into the narrative that he and Ilya were on-ice enemies, which only underscores how close he guarded their relationship. He kept it so close to his heart that at first, his parents could not fathom him liking Ilya on any level, let alone being in love with him.
Again, the moment is occasionally played for small laughs, which undercut the gravitas, but that feels intentional rather than distracting.
When Shane and Yuna talk alone, the scene becomes a gut-punch in the most profoundly satisfying way. It’s everything Shane needed to hear from his mother, whose opinion and love mean the world to him.
Shane’s apologies, rooted in the belief that he needs to apologize for not being straight, paired with Yuna’s hard-stance declaration that he has nothing to apologize for, land with devastating clarity, particularly for any child who feels they’ve disappointed their parents, whether or not it’s true.
This is especially true for someone like Shane, who’s built so much of his identity around being good, correct, and dependable. That reassurance has to mean everything to him.
Williams and Christina Chang are so brilliant in this scene, as Shane struggles even to look his mother in the eye. Yuna stands there passionately making her stance clear, and the sincerity of the moment is exquisite.
It’s a perfect coda to an impassioned and romantic hour that’s never cheesy or overindulgent. It’s not begging for more, but instead closing this chapter of Shane and Ilya’s story in a way that feels honest to the story that’s been building since two teenagers met outside in the cold for the very first time.
This part of Shane and Ilya’s story feels deliberately closed. It honors everything that came before and, more importantly, gives us a glimpse of what the future could be, while also reminding us that the very concept of love is something to be earned and beautiful, not deferred.
This story doesn’t end here, but this chapter feels whole and confident in that.
We’re the passengers in the back seat of that Range Rover as the credits roll, watching these lovers bask in the beauty of the beginning of their ever after, reminded that oftentimes the most impactful endings are simply the ones that let happiness exist.
Coming to the end of this Heated Rivalry ride feels bittersweet, but what an insanely amazing ride it was.
This show has captured so many hearts, and to know it’s coming back for season two? Well, that’s just priceless.
Please let me know how you felt about this journey out to the cottage, and what you hope will come when the season returns.
You can watch Heated Rivalry on Crave in Canada and HBO Max in the United States.
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