The following article contains minor spoilers for ‘Heated Rivalry’
Heated Rivalry has women in a chokehold. Yes it’s beloved by gay men, obviously, but it also has women—straight, queer, everything else—going absolutely feral for these gay hockey players. It’s easy to see why: Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) and Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) have the sort of love that transcends gender. There are none of the heterosexual dynamics that straight women in particular are so tired of. And, well, they’re nice to look at, regardless of which way you swing. Altars could be dedicated to the little crucifix that bangs against Ilya’s chest. I, too, have watched that video of Storrie dancing to “Like A Prayer” no less than 35 times.
But there’s something else. The women in the show. While it would have been easy for the women in the two protagonists’ lives to be positioned as watery, one-dimensional plot devices, or even needy, desperate villains getting in the way, they are anything but. The women in Heated Rivalry are smart, strong and supportive. They behave in normal, cool ways. They’re also, crucially, quietly important to the backbone of the story. It’s Elena (Nadine Bhabha) who gently pushes Scott (François Arnaud) to prioritise his love for Kip (Robbie Graham-Kuntz). It’s Svetlana (Ksenia Kharlamova) who emotionally supports Ilya while harbouring a tacit awareness of his love for Shane. It’s Rose (Sophie Nélisse) who offers Shane an ear at the exact moment he needs it.
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Nor are they women who exist purely as shoulders to lean on, without fleshed-out lives of their own. Svetlana is a powerhouse hockey obsessive who wants rather than needs Ilya’s love. It’s Shane’s mother, Yuna (Christina Chang), who appears to control the business side of things when it comes to Shane’s career. Rose is a famous actor whom Shane is initially starstruck by, and is often away shooting a superhero movie—she’s not chasing after a man whose heart she doesn’t have. When she suspects Shane’s sexuality, she approaches the situation with both kindness and humour (“Like, 70 per cent—actually 80 per cent—of my ex-boyfriends have left me for other guys”). Even Jackie (Kamilla Kowal), the wife of Hayden (Callan Potter), appears to be the one leading the charge in their relationship.
Too often, in stories that centre men, women are subjugated to flattened stereotypes, or barely make an impact at all. It can make such stories boring for women to watch, and sometimes even uncomfortable (there’s a reason that, halfway through Oppenheimer, I considered walking out of the cinema for the first time in my life). Of course, women don’t need to be main players when it comes to queer love stories about men specifically, because it’s not about us. But, equally, I do think the way women are positioned in Heated Rivalry is at least partly responsible for the show’s intense and almost cult-like popularity among women as well as gay men.
