SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from “The Cottage,” the Season 1 finale of “Heated Rivalry,” now streaming on HBO Max.
“Heated Rivalry” finally took its hockey lover boys to the cottage, and everything has changed.
In the Season 1 finale of HBO Max’s smash-hit romance, Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rosanov (Connor Storrie) settled in for two weeks at Shane’s remote cottage, and immediately made a pact. For the first time in their more-than-a-decade-long history, they would use their uninterrupted alone time to tell each other the truth about how they feel. No more burying their emotions or expressing them in a language the other can’t understand –– no matter how beautiful Ilya’s Russian revelation was in Episode 5.
It didn’t take long for them to make good on that promise. Ilya teased Shane about maybe marrying his best friend, Svetlana (Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova), or another woman so as not to blow their cover. But then he admitted he had a problem –– none of those women were Shane. Shane, in turn, pulled an all-nighter churning out a plan for them to slowly ease the world into the idea of their relationship, starting with Ilya joining the Ottawa team to be closer to him in Montreal, and then they would co-found a charity to start melting the supposedly frigid animosity between them. It was a long-game plan, but the mere mental gymnastics of trying to set up their future together moved Ilya to tears, and left him coughing up those three words–– “I love you.” Shane immediately reciprocated it with lightning-fast urgency, obliterating one of the last barriers between them.
Hudson Williams, Connor Storrie, Dylan Walsh and Christina Chang
Courtesy of Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max
From there, the tenor of their cottage getaway changed, and ultimately felt more romantic than ever. That is, until Shane’s dad, David (Dylan Walsh), walked in on them kissing and fled before his son could explain. Shane had put off telling his parents about being gay or loving his archrival. But now, Shane and Ilya both went to see David and Yuna (Christina Chang) to break the news. It was a tough pill to swallow, but not because they don’t approve of their son. Rather, it completely shatters his hockey-loving parents’ 10-year-plus belief they hated each other. Instead, they finally see two young men, who have been crazy about each other since rookie year (or rather, the summer before!), now sitting at the Hollanders’ dinner table as a couple. Ilya even comforts Shane in a moment of panic by calling him his boyfriend, a simple but monumental step for Hollanov, as the internet has dubbed them.
Season 1 ends as the boys drive back to their refuge away from the world, staring down a beautiful sunset that hides everything that waits on the other side of their cottage chapter, which will play out in an already-ordered Season 2. That’s a little different from the conclusion of Rachel Reid’s book, on which the series is based, in which they launch their foundation to lay the groundwork for the future. However, series creator/writer/director Jacob Tierney wanted something more romantic for his final shot, just in case the series didn’t become the phenomenon that it has.
“I wanted to leave the viewer with what the book left me with emotionally, which was the warm, fuzzy feeling of them getting to be happy together,” Tierney tells Variety. “I thought of doing something with just a bit of elegance, and there’s a simplicity to the two of them in a car, driving off into the sunset, and not over a cliff. That was all I ever wanted out of this story.”
Below, Tierney tells Variety about how he pulled the much-anticipated cottage episode together; whether fan-favorite couple Scott (François Arnaud) and Kip (Robbie GK) will play a bigger role in Season 2 — and why he thinks women have gravitated toward this unabashedly queer love story between two men.
There are some things that happen at the cottage in Rachel Reid’s book that aren’t here in the finale. Shane and Illya playing against each other in Shane’s hockey training facility, and a pretty explosive oral sex scene that could have been an homage to the beginning of “Queer As Folk.” How did you figure out what would make the cut for your version for this chapter for Shane and Ilya?
I wanted to make sure we were still on the same journey with them, and still learning things about them. If we are talking specifically about the sex scenes in the book, they’d eaten ass in Episode 2, so I didn’t really feel like I needed to hit that hard here. I wanted to make sure that we were still watching this change and evolve for them, and the sex that we were seeing this time around was more intimate, playful and sweet. And as evolved as it could be, particularly from the stuff that we were seeing in Episodes 1 and 2. Ultimately, the stuff that mattered to me at the cottage was the stuff that continued the journey of understanding them and their relationship. There was no set agenda. It ended up being the stuff I remember from reading it, if I’m being honest.
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Courtesy of Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max
By the end of the episode, they have learned to better communicate with each other. Not perfectly, but previously sex was their only means of doing that. Does that mean you envision less sex in Season 2, and more sitting on the couch scrolling their phones and touching toes now that they can use their words more efficiently?
Oh, the touching toes! I love that scene. You know, Rachel talks a lot about the promise that I made to her to take her characters seriously. She takes them very seriously in “The Long Game,” and that doesn’t mean there’s no sex. There’s quite a bit of sex in “The Long Game.” But I think it functions differently in the second book, and that’s just what I want to do. The journey of this show, no matter how long it goes on for, will always be centered around the relationship between Shane and Ilya. Sex will always be a big part of it, like it is with any romantic relationship. But it’s really about continuing that progress of what happens after that first blush of love, what happens after you decide you’re in love and how do you sustain it? That’s a very adult question: “We love each other, and now what? Does that mean everything’s easy?” No, it does not. There’s loads of challenges that get thrown Shane and Ilya’s way. Beyond what’s in the books, I really don’t have an agenda besides that I love this couple and I love these characters, and I want to just hang out with them more and watch them grow more and watch them become better for each other.
Since you loved the touching toes scene, was that something you planned ahead of time or was it a choice you and Hudson and Connor made in the moment while filming?
No, that was planned. What I really wanted to be part of the cottage episode was that, when you’re in a relationship, you’re just doing things like being on your phones at the same time. I want them to live in the real world, and to do those little things that people do when they are in a relationship, because Shane and Ilya are. They can’t always be fucking. God knows, that’s just exhausting! I just wanted to capture little normal couple moments and I don’t think I’m the only one in a relationship who occasionally sits on a couch scrolling on our phones separately and then showing our partner what we are seeing.
It certainly shows how far they have come since their fleeting hotel meetups. But there is still a little bit of Reid’s book that you don’t cover in the finale. In the book, months later they announce Shane’s big plan to start a foundation together, the first step in chipping away at their rivalry until they can come out as a couple. But your season ends with them riding home from Shane’s parents’ house in the car, just holding hands and laughing. Do you see Season 2 starting with that announcement, or was this your end to the first book?
Well, books are so different from TV and I didn’t know if I was even going to get to make more of these. As much as I care about their charity and what they’re going to do, I don’t know that we need a bunch of exposition at the end of a season of TV like this. I wanted to leave the viewer with what the book left me with emotionally, which was the kind of warm, fuzzy feeling of them getting to be happy together. I thought of doing something with just a bit of elegance, and there’s a simplicity to the two of them in a car, driving off into the sunset, and not over a cliff. That was all I ever wanted out of this story.
Part of the balancing act of the storytelling for me was always that you get this big moment with Scott and Kip in the last episode. It is this massive rom-com public declaration of love, and what I love about Shane and Ilya’s story is that you get another version of that kind of happiness, which is this small moment with the two of them just being allowed to be in love. That was the sweetest ending I could come up with for them, for now.
Speaking of Scott and Kip, there has been such an enthusiasm for them, maybe more than some people expected. Last week’s episode, which ended on Scott bringing Kip out on the ice to announce their relationship, now shares the top spot on IMDb’s list of the highest-rated episodes of television of all time. Does that encourage you to include more of their story in Season 2, or do you foresee keeping this format of seeing them when they intersect with Shane and Ilya?
This will continue to be Shane and Ilya’s story, and Scott and Kip will continue to intersect with them on occasion. But just because “Heated Rivalry” is Shane and Ilya’s story doesn’t mean that precludes potentially doing stuff with Scott and Kip outside of that specific show. We optioned all Rachel’s books, and part of the reason we did that was because, obviously, these characters appear throughout all the books. There’s a real richness to a lot of the stories there, and fans will know that Scott and Kip feature very strongly in “Common Goal.” They are all over the place. I don’t know exactly what we’re going to do yet, but there are places we could go with them that I would definitely be excited to explore.
Courtesy of Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max
In the finale, we get a scene with Shane and his mom, Yuna, after he comes out. This is a bit of a change from the book, where the conversation is entirely between Shane, Ilya, Yuna and David. Why did you give Shane and his mom this separate moment?
Yuna is such a crucial character in the story. I know it’s not always on display in this season, but as fans of the books know, Yuna is such a big part of both Shane and Ilya’s lives moving forward. In trying to take this stuff seriously, I wanted to show complicated, interesting adult relationships here, and that includes the parents. It was just really important to me for Shane and Yuna to have a conversation. They needed to have a moment together. They’re obviously very close. They’re obviously very similar, and his mom has very similar blinders that he does. So there’s something really important about reminding people that even though we can hurt each other in these relationships, and they can be difficult, there is love and allyship there as well. Sometimes, it just requires a little conversation.
The queer community is understandably hooked by this show, but there has also been an intense embrace from female viewers, specifically straight women. Why do you think that is?
I think that’s a very complicated question, and there are a lot of answers to it. Women love these books. These are books written by a woman. These are books largely consumed by women. So I wouldn’t want to speak on behalf of a female audience, but I think that what women are presented in romance is not always something that interests them in that way. I think that women are also, in real life and in culture, endlessly exposed to sexual violence. Seeing things like this, that are depictions ultimately of male vulnerability, can be very refreshing. From what I’ve heard, from the women who have written to me and Rachel and the boys, there’s a safety in seeing a woman being removed from the conversation. So you’re watching something happen between two men, and there is no fear of violence. There is no fear of things turning into stuff that women have to deal with too much in real life, and don’t want to deal with in their fantasies, and ultimately, this is a romantic fantasy. I think it’s also that maybe romance — which is a genre that women love and write and read and are the primary consumers of — just doesn’t get treated with a lot of respect. Nor do the people that make it, or those that adapt it either. So I think that they are responding to, at least I hope, the fact that we came to it pretty fullhearted, and as fans and as people who want to honor this material and want to honor the genre and make it as romantic as we can. That’s certainly what I wanted to do.
Every week, despite the soaring success of your show, you have had to respond to controversies and people wanting to tear it down. This week, Hudson responded to Deuxmoi’s comments about his personal life, and who he might be dating. But Deuxmoi also said the show has no plot and bad acting. What do you say to opinions like that?
This show wouldn’t work if any of that were true. I mean, it just wouldn’t. Nobody would give a shit about this if the acting was bad, or if there was no story. I think this is a show that actually requires you to pay attention. If you’re glib and you’re on your phone the whole time, or you’re looking to not pay attention, then God bless, and do whatever you want. But you have to be there in the moment if you want to watch. This is a show where there’s a lot of communication between the lines. It’s a lot about behavior. It’s a lot about watching. And if you don’t have the attention span for it or the interest, then I’m gonna be super honest with you. I could give a fuck what Deuxmoi’s criticism is of the show. I literally don’t even know who these people are. I don’t give a fuck what they think about anything. But I understand that, from what I have read multiple times now, people say this is a show that is not a co-viewing experience. You can’t be on your phone. If you wanna get what it’s doing, you have to pay attention to it. It’s definitely made to hold your attention. And if it doesn’t, then that’s a good criticism too. This is not for everybody, and that is A-OK. But I think at a certain point, the show speaks for itself, and the reaction to it speaks for itself, and there’s no way that these boys would be on the receiving end of the attention that they’re getting if they weren’t good. The papa bear in me does not like comments like this, obviously, because I know how hard they work. I think they’re fucking amazing. But we also live in a time where everybody gets their opinion, then they get to put it out on whatever platform they have, and so I get it. Keep doing your thing, Deuxmoi!
Looking ahead to Season 2, you’ve spoken about how you haven’t started writing yet, but is there anything specific you are most looking forward to adapting from “The Long Game?”
There’s so many new characters that are going to be really fun to bring in. But I think that next season will end up feeling different because it’s a more focused book. It takes place over a shorter amount of time. There’s more a sense of getting to know that team in Ottawa that Ilya is going to play for and getting to know Hayden and Jackie more. And there’s more Yuna and David. Hopefully what will happen, like with any good second season in general, is that we will get to enrich the stuff you already know and how those threads began, and then pull on them and really get into it. But I’m also really looking forward to seeing Ilya in therapy. It’s probably a really good thing for him. I know that my therapist has been crucial to getting through the past few months.
This interview has been edited and condensed.