Featured Essays Heated Rivalry Take the Fire Out From the Wire: Imagining a Future in Heated Rivalry How can we find a path forward after the cottage? By Rachel Kessler | Published on February 23, 2026 Credit: Sabrina Lantos / HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Sabrina Lantos / HBO “I’m coming to the cottage”  Five words that broke the internet when spoken by Connor Storrie’s Ilya Rosanov at the end of Heated Rivalry’s immaculate fifth episode. Spoilers for the first season follow: After years of fighting the deeper feelings underneath his sexual relationship with hockey arch-rival Shane Hollander, Ilya’s decision to accept Shane’s invitation to his cottage is a definitive moment of hope for what might be possible between them in the future.   Suffice it to say that since Canadian showrunner Jacob Tierney brought the characters from Rachel Reid’s Game Changers romance series to screen, the concept of the “the cottage” has sustained its fan base through the tumultuous weeks at the start of 2026. I can definitely confirm my mental health is hanging by the thin thread of a group chat named “Stupid Canadian Wolf Birds.” I will also confess I’ve taken no shortage of delight from scandalizing students at the college where I am chaplain when they hear that the priest is obsessed with the “gay hockey show.” Far from being a guilty pleasure, however, I honestly believe Heated Rivalry is a piece of media we desperately need right now, and one which resonates deeply with my own faith.  As an avid romance reader, one of the things I have appreciated about Tierney’s approach to the source material of Heated Rivalry is the respect shown to romance as a genre. Tierney understands romance as, essentially, a kind of fantasy. It is a credit to Tierney’s writing that he does not dismiss the female fans of romance (including of M/M romance, which is a larger and nuanced conversation). At its core, the idea of “the cottage” serves as a metaphor for that escapist fantasy. Such escapism has a place, certainly, within genre fiction. We might ask though, if such fantastical escapism is all the cottage has to offer us? What if we view “the cottage” not just as representing idealized escape from the world, but as defiant hope for what the world might become?  It is worth noting that the promise of escape and a fantasy where he and Shane can be hidden from the world is not initially enough to get Ilya to accept the temptation of “the cottage.” Shane in his delightfully drug-induced state (as we have no doubt seen enacted by stuffed animals and household objects thanks to the wonders of TikTok) tries to lure Ilya not to return to Russia for the summer but come to his secluded cottage: “We’ll have so much fun. It’s so private. No one will know … We could have a week or even two. Completely alone. Together!” While Storrie portrays Ilya’s hesitation quite clearly, the book is able to go deeper into Ilya’s fear of accepting Shane’s invitation. Up until this point, Ilya and Shane have stolen only moments together. Ilya has at long last accepted the depth of his feelings (even confessing them to Shane, albeit in his native Russian). Despite this, Ilya does not believe any real future with Shane is possible. He hesitates to accept the prospect of this extended time together because he does not know how to return to the scarcity of what they can have moving forward. Ilya is actually prepared to end his relationship with Shane altogether because the pain of a clean break feels more endurable to him than the pain of longing for an impossible future.  So what gets Ilya to the cottage? The original “Game Changer,” Scott Hunter. Without a doubt one of the best scenes in the show happens after Scott wins the 2017 Stanley Cup for the New York Admirals. At this point, Scott has been in a secret relationship with his boyfriend Kip for years (in the show’s timeline). After hoisting the long-desired cup over his head, Scott watches—alone—as his teammates’ wives and children pour onto the ice in celebration from the stands. Meanwhile, the love of Scott’s life sits far removed among the crowds. Scott realizes that hiding his love from the world is no longer enough for him. He calls Kip down onto the ice, where they share a kiss that can only be described as triumphant defiance. As Scott and Kip embrace, the camera circles them, cutting away to show Ilya and Shane each watching from their homes in wonder and confusion. Caught up in this moment, Ilya calls Shane with his declaration of coming to the cottage.  The background musical sections throughout Heated Rivalry are worth a whole separate series of reflections. Setting Wolf Parade’s “I’ll Believe in Anything” to underscore this moment, however, was a particularly inspired move by Teirney. Choosing to believe the world can be different than what it is in itself is often a leap of faith. Acting on that hope—and indeed believing we deserve that better world—is where change happens. Ilya’s decision to accept Shane’s invitation to the cottage is not about realizing he loves Shane or he is willing to risk two weeks of privacy. Accepting that invitation—declaring “I’m coming to the cottage”—means that Ilya is willing to risk that the world might be different than he has let himself believe.  The defiant hope that ends Heated Rivalry’s episode 5 is inarguably inspiring. Hope is not an abstract ideal, though. Living into hope does much more than giving us as individuals the courage to seize opportunities for ourselves we had not thought possible. Living into hope is transformational in a way that we might call contagious. Scott declares his love for Kip and kisses him in front of thousands of people because he has decided for himself that he is tired of living in the shadows and that he does, in fact, deserve sunshine. That choice, however, catches on. Unknown to himself, Scott inspires Ilya to hope for more in his own relationship and seize the opportunity before him. Book readers of the Game Changers series will know that Ilya goes on to become something of a Nick Fury for other queer players in the NHL. He makes appearances throughout the other books, encouraging others to pursue relationships and, eventually, recruiting other players to coach at the charity hockey camp he and Shane run in the summers. While Unrivaled, the final book of Rachel Reid’s series, is not yet out, the synopsis certainly suggests we will see this community come together to withstand the bigotry and homophobia of the hockey world. The series is called “Game Changers” for a reason.  It is important to note that Jacob Tierney is a gay man who has adapted a work written about gay male characters originally written by a woman. Without doubt, his identity impacts the hopeful vision of what the world might look like in his TV adaptation. Speaking of triumphant and emotionally cathartic kiss between Scott and Kip, Tierney noted in a recent interview: “I mean, this was—you know—this was the point. This was to give people this moment that you don’t get when you’re a kid. You don’t get this.” Indeed, we might argue that far from simply being “smutty” the explicit content in Heated Rivalry serves as an unapologetic, defiant embrace of sexuality and intimacy on behalf of the queer community.   One of the most impactful added scenes in the series takes place between Shane and his mother after Shane’s parents discover his romantic relationship with Ilya. While Shane is racked with guilt over years of hiding and lies about his secret relationship, it is Shane’s mother who tearfully apologizes: “I’m sorry I didn’t make you feel like you could tell me.” Tierney’s vision of how a parent should react to discovering an adult child’s closeted sexuality may be idealized compared to how such a situation all too often plays out. At the same time, isn’t that idealized conversation what we want the world to be? Isn’t that how a parent should respond?  Similarly, we might look at how Tierney strengthens several of the side characters from the source material (notably the women). While Rose’s role in both the book and the series is largely responsible for Shane finally embracing and coming to terms with his sexuality, Tierney gives significantly more agency to Svetlana, who goes from being a semi-regular friend with benefits situationship with Ilya in Boston to a childhood friend from Russia. Svetlana perceptively notes Ilya’s long-term texting relationship with “Jane”, and she clearly indicates she is aware of “Jane’s” true gender. Svetlana pushes Ilya to take steps forward in emotional intimacy with “Jane”/Shane, first in the ill-fated tuna melt encounter, and later in nudging Ilya to acknowledge the depth of his feelings. In another critical moment, Scott Hunter finds himself challenged by Kip’s friend Elena who confronts him about hiding Kip away as a “dirty little secret.” There is a fair criticism to be made of Elena’s challenge to Scott on Kip’s behalf – no one should be pressured to come out before they are ready. No doubt, though, Teirney intended the words he wrote (which differ slightly from the book) to carry the very true, hopeful message that Kip “deserves sunshine … and so do you.”  Tierney is quite intentional in linking the sunshine we all deserve to the themes of hope and possibility of the cottage itself. Numerous commentators have rightly pointed out the contrast in lighting between the first episodes of the series and the finale at the cottage. Shane and Ilya share their first hook-up in a darkened hotel room. When they finally reunite in Shane’s cottage, Ilya makes a point of opening the blinds to Shane’s bedroom, allowing themselves to experience sexual intimacy in open daylight. The fact that Tierney so blocks both scenes almost identically allows the contrast in lighting to be even more apparent. While the cottage constitutes removal from the distractions and barriers to their relationship, the cottage is also where Shane and Ilya are able to embrace concrete possibilities for their future. Shane wakes Ilya up in the middle of the night with his ten-year plan for how they might one day be in a relationship. Ilya takes the risk of confessing his love for Shane—in English this time! Once Shane and Ilya have acknowledged their feelings, Tierney offers us the beautiful scene of the two of them by the lake as the sun rises in front of them. The light of the cottage is the light of one day no longer hiding but living in the sunshine.  Media like Heated Rivalry may be escapist fantasy at its core, but at its best it is a fantasy of the world that so many of us wish we were living in. Rather than lamenting the current state of the world, it’s worth asking: what is the world that we want to see? What is our role in bringing that world about—either by claiming defiant hope for ourselves or fighting for a better world for one another? We end season one of Heated Rivalry riding off into the future with Shane and Ilya, after they face the revelation of their relationship to Shane’s parents. The cottage has not magically solved their problems. They are still closeted publicly and their future will hold oncoming challenges. Nevertheless, the cottage has given them the courage of their love for one another—not to mention acceptance from Shane’s parents. The cottage has given them hope beyond the (perceived) security of secrecy.  As we move further into 2026 and away from the original air date of Heated Rivalry, a running joke among the fandom is how long we will stay in the collective Heated Rivalry psychosis. How long do we keep “re-heating” (a great term for just continuing to watch the series on repeat). When will it be time to leave the cottage and return to reality? Perhaps the answer is that we shouldn’t leave the cottage. Perhaps our job is actually to expand the cottage and work to make the world a place where the escape to the cottage is no longer necessary.[end-mark] The post Take the Fire Out From the Wire: Imagining a Future in <em>Heated Rivalry</em> appeared first on Reactor.