What Men Can Learn from ‘Heated Rivalry’
HBO Max's hit series about queer hockey players offers plenty of lessons on consent, masculinity and breaking free from the patriarchy.
(Editor’s Note: This story contains mild spoilers.)
There’s a six-episode season of hockey smut on HBO Max that’s taking over the culture right now. In just two months since its premiere, Heated Rivalry has become the most talked-about show online, with its two formerly unknown leading men, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, being launched into the stratosphere and treated like rock stars by fans and A-list celebrities alike. But a tiny Canadian show about two rival closeted queer professional hockey players who fall in love against all odds is—against all odds—shifting the culture. When zero players in the National Hockey League are openly queer, this hit show is making space to say that these aggressively homophobic spaces must change, that queer people belong everywhere and that everyone will be better for it.
While women have been a major driver of this show’s seemingly overnight success due to their overwhelming consumption of the romance genre in general, Heated Rivalry is a show starring men, about men, written and directed by a man, Jacob Tierney, with plenty of lessons for men to reap.
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