Living through 2025 as a gay person felt like tripping and falling into the darkest possible timeline. We unexpectedly lost some of our icons to MAGA: Carrie Underwood sang at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Sydney Sweeney perplexed us by shilling jeans by way of eugenics. And Nicki Minaj turned out to be a Trump-loving, right-wing mouthpiece.
The tail end of a year that disappointed us in unexpected ways did yield one silver lining: a wildly successful, deliciously horny HBO Max series about two gay professional athletes who can’t keep their hands off each other.
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For those who haven’t had the pleasure of watching yet, “Heated Rivalry” follows two professional hockey players on different teams, Canadian Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Russian Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), as they navigate a steamy secret relationship while also being massive rivals on the ice.
As a liberal gay who loves a good queer film, I have to admit that the show was scandalous, even by my standards. In the very first episode, the main characters are already giving each other sloppy head with a full-frontal POV, and you can see everything except their genitals. This is in major contrast to other recent popular queer shows and movies of the same caliber (like “Red, White & Royal Blue”) that rush through their sex scenes in a way that almost feels infused with anxiety that they’re making their viewers uncomfortable.
I have a theory on why a show as relatively raunchy as “Heated Rivalry” is doing so well now: On TV, queer representation has always been somewhat palatable for straight audiences. We had cultural moments through movies like “Love, Simon” and “Heartstopper,” which all seemed to be trying to say something similar: Gay men don’t just want to have sex; we can also fall in love, just like straight people.
Even with that broadened portrayal of our community, we still ended up here, where support for queer people — especially trans people — is actually decreasing. So, in a way, “Heated Rivalry” feels like a break from us trying to defend the spectrum of our humanity during an administration in which it can be exhausting to do so.
The show is unconcerned with any accidental heterosexual watchers. It’s not trying to work up to the sex scenes, and it’s not trying — at least not at first — to paint Hollander and Rozanov as anything other than lustful. It’s also not trying to hide the messiness of what it can be like to be a queer man navigating toxic ideals of masculinity.
The series is just a sexy breath of fresh air and an affirmation that we’re no longer making gay shows for straight people. Because they obviously didn’t deserve it.
Of course, there are people who have their qualms about the show. “I Love LA” star Jordan Firstman called the sex scenes “unrealistic,” and one critic pointed out that the characters don’t always feel fully developed. I fully get the critiques; the gay sex that happens is between two conventionally attractive, straight-passing queer men.
But François Arnaud, the Canadian cast member who responded to Firstman’s criticism online, also had a valid point when he asked: Is there only one way to have “authentic” gay sex on TV? Maybe not all depictions of queer people need to advance us socially and politically. At the same time, we could argue that there is something fundamentally conservative about a show that centers two cisgender, DL sports players who can only have sex in secret.
Whatever you might think about this discourse, you’ve got to give “Heated Rivalry” its flowers for being a gay show that is shockingly unafraid of gay sex. There was something extremely joyful about all the reactions to the show from queer people all over the Internet — some of whom cried while watching it in their childhood bedrooms during the holidays, while others delighted over how such a raunchy show has even been allowed to be shown on a mainstream streaming platform.
If we live in a country that keeps wanting to take things away from us, then we have to hold on to what little we can have for ourselves. Sometimes, that’s as simple as giving ourselves a cultural moment, and “Heated Rivalry” is exactly that.
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