Heated Rivalry showrunner Jacob Tierney has teased a much more intense second season, saying the next chapter in Shane and Ilya’s story will move into “much more serious” and “dangerous” territory.
The Canadian creator appeared alongside author Rachel Reid at BookCon 2026 in New York this weekend, where the pair discussed the adaptation of The Long Game, Reid’s 2022 sequel to her 2019 novel Heated Rivalry.
For Tierney, the shift in tone is one of the biggest creative challenges of the new season.
“It’s different. It really is different,” he said. “And the challenge, from an adaptation standpoint, is you’re in much more serious territory.
“There’s still lots of flirting, and there’s lots of sex, but it’s this kind of danger. This kind of ‘hotel room, adolescent sex’ stuff is largely gone.
“And so it presents really new challenges.”
Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie are set to return as Shane and Ilya when filming begins later this year, ahead of season two’s planned 2027 premiere.
The Long Game picks up a decade into the couple’s relationship, with the pair still not fully public. Ilya has changed teams in order to be closer to Shane, but the deeper emotional realities of sustaining a long-term relationship now come more sharply into focus.
“Part of the reason you start off with Heated Rivalry, as far as adapting goes, is because you want to get to The Long Game,” Tierney said.
“Because The Long Game is an emotionally sophisticated book that takes this couple seriously.”
He added that while the show continues to draw from the wider Game Changers universe, Shane and Ilya remain its emotional centre.
“What I’ve always said about this show is there are a lot of books… Game Changer is in Heated Rivalry.
“I think you guys all know by now… Obviously parts of Role Model are going to be in [season 2], to the great surprise of absolutely nobody.
“But Ilya and Shane are the heartbeat of this series, of my show. It’s always going to be about Ilya and Shane. That is what is the trajectory that runs through it as their world expands.”
Tierney also pointed to one of the central tensions in The Long Game: what happens once the adrenaline of secrecy and danger begins to fade, and a couple is left confronting the harder work of an adult relationship.
“What do you do after the rush of danger is gone and yet now you have to live in a relationship where you still aren’t communicating properly, much as you would like to?” he said.
“You can say you love each other, but as adults know, there’s so much more than that to make a relationship successful. And that is what they’re learning.”
Season two will also expand the world around the central couple with the introduction of Troy Barrett and Harris Drover.
The pair are central figures in Reid’s earlier novel Role Model, though their story unfolds during the same broader period as The Long Game. Troy is a hockey player traded to Ilya’s new team, the Centaurs, while Harris works as the team’s social media manager.
Tierney suggested the adaptation would lean into Troy’s emotional complexity rather than smoothing it over into a lighter romance arc.
“In Long Game you are like, okay, we’re here to ground this in something that feels very real,” he said.
“And the same thing with Troy and Harris, right. I think there’s an easy, facile way of looking at Role Model as it’s very grumpy/sunshine, it’s very apple orchard.
“It can drift into things that you want. But Troy is a really damaged guy. And Troy is quite damaged on the show.
“I would say we are digging into that even harder. Because that’s what’s interesting and that’s all there in those books.
“That’s why it’s such a fertile playground for me as a creator to have fun.”
Tierney also revisited earlier hints that The Long Game might ultimately be spread across more than one season.
When asked whether the adaptation could stretch into a third season, he kept things teasingly vague.
“It’s a lot of book,” he said, while acknowledging he would likely get himself “into a lot of trouble” if he said much more.
Meanwhile, Rachel Reid also offered an update on Unrivalled, her next Heated Rivalry sequel, which is due for publication in 2027.
“I have a little bit of regret deciding to write a book at the same time, but I am excited,” Reid told the panel.
“I’m in a place where the whole world seems to care about what happens next to these characters or has thoughts about them.
“But I’m still determined to try to just stick to what I have always done when I was writing: just kind of pretend that I’m just writing for me and hope other people like it.”
Heated Rivalry is streaming in Australia on HBO Max, with season two currently set to premiere in 2027.
The news team for Gay Nation love tips from our readers. Got tips or a news story that you would like published? Go here to tell us something.
Visit the Gay Nation store Now
