Heated Rivalry season two is moving into production, Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams are back together in Toronto, and now another queer romance is officially joining the ice-hockey phenomenon.
After weeks of speculation, Crave has confirmed that openly queer actor Justice Smith and Canadian star Charlie Gillespie have joined the second season as Harris Drover and Troy Barrett, characters introduced in Rachel Reid’s Role Model.
Smith and Gillespie will join Storrie and Williams in leading roles when the runaway queer hit returns in 2027.
For fans already losing their minds over seeing Storrie and Williams reunited in Toronto ahead of filming, the announcement gives them even more to obsess over.
The pair became breakout stars following the extraordinary success of season one, playing professional hockey rivals and secret lovers Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander.
Recent photos of Storrie and Williams together in Toronto quickly circulated online as production prepared to begin, prompting plenty of excitement from viewers who had spent months waiting to see the actors reunited.
And now Shane and Ilya will not be the only couple demanding our attention.
Meet Troy Barrett and Harris Drover
On 7 August, Crave officially announced that Smith will play Harris Drover, while Gillespie will take on the role of Troy Barrett.
Both characters are central to Role Model, the fifth instalment in Reid’s Game Changers series.
Troy is a professional hockey player whose life is thrown into turmoil after he cuts ties with a former teammate and friend accused of sexual assault.
After being traded to the Ottawa Centaurs, Troy finds himself isolated, miserable and attempting to rebuild his reputation and sense of self.
Enter Harris.
Harris Drover is the Centaurs’ warm, charming and openly gay social media manager, whose friendship with Troy gradually develops into something considerably more complicated.
Anyone who has read Role Model will know their relationship becomes one of the Game Changers universe’s most beloved romances.
Series creator Jacob Tierney and executive producer Brendan Brady said Reid had created “two beautifully layered characters in Harris and Troy who you can’t help but root for”.
Their addition also confirms that season two will expand beyond Shane and Ilya’s central storyline, incorporating material from both The Long Game and Role Model.
Shane and Ilya enter The Long Game
Of course, the heart of Heated Rivalry remains Shane and Ilya.
Season two will continue their relationship through material from The Long Game, Reid’s sequel to the original Heated Rivalry novel.
The story finds the couple still deeply in love but increasingly frustrated by the demands of keeping that love hidden from the hockey world.
What once felt like a thrilling secret becomes considerably harder to maintain as the years pass.
Ilya, in particular, begins questioning how long they can continue building separate public lives while sharing such an important private one.
That gives season two a more emotionally complicated question to explore: how much are Shane and Ilya prepared to sacrifice for hockey before protecting their careers begins damaging the relationship they have spent years building?
Tierney has previously made clear that the television adaptation will not simply reproduce Reid’s novels scene by scene.
Season one already expanded moments that happened away from the page, and the second season is expected to continue that approach, potentially putting audiences inside emotional events readers only heard about afterwards.
The fandom has been asked to behave itself
The return of Storrie and Williams to Toronto has also demonstrated just how dramatically life has changed for the two actors since season one.
Their recent public appearances attracted enough attention that the team behind Heated Rivalry issued a request asking fans to respect filming locations and allow the cast and crew to work.
“If you happen to come across one of our filming locations, please give our cast and crew the space they need,” the production said, adding: “We promise it’ll be worth the wait.”
Fair enough.
The first season transformed Storrie and Williams from relatively unknown actors into international stars almost overnight, and production will now be taking place under considerably more scrutiny than before.
Are they secretly filming season three too?
Then there is the latest mystery.
Dylan Walsh, who plays Shane’s father David Hollander, recently caused another round of fan speculation after appearing to suggest considerably more episodes were about to be filmed than expected.
In a Cameo video recorded for a fan, Walsh said he was preparing to return to Canada for filming.
“Getting ready to go back up to Canada and shoot some more episodes,” he said. “So, I think we’re doing 12 this time.”
Season one consisted of six episodes, and Tierney had previously indicated that the second season would also contain six.
So what does 12 mean?
One possibility is simply that the second season has grown.
The considerably more exciting fan theory is that seasons two and three could be filmed back-to-back.
For now, however, Crave has not announced a third season, nor has it officially confirmed a 12-episode second season. Walsh’s comment is intriguing, but until the streamer says otherwise, consider this one firmly in the speculation pile.
When does Heated Rivalry season two arrive?
Tierney announced earlier this year that Heated Rivalry would return in April 2027, with filming scheduled to begin in August 2026. Crave’s latest official announcement gives the slightly broader release window of spring 2027.
Storrie and Williams will return as Ilya and Shane, with Smith and Gillespie now officially joining them as Harris and Troy.
Between The Long Game, the arrival of another fan-favourite queer couple, the reunion of Storrie and Williams and mysterious chatter about potentially filming 12 episodes, it is becoming increasingly clear that Heated Rivalry is getting much bigger in its sophomore outing.
Season one turned a secret hockey romance into one of queer television’s biggest sensations.
Season two now has the unenviable job of following it.
Judging by the fandom’s reaction before cameras have even properly got rolling, nobody seems interested in keeping their expectations on ice.
