Tierney: 'Heated Rivalry' Season 2 Enters 'Much More Serious' Territory
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- Jacob Tierney told a BookCon panel Saturday that "Heated Rivalry" Season 2 moves Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov into "much more serious territory," with the first season's "hotel-room-adolescent-sex stuff" now "largely gone" but "still lots of flirting and lots of sex."
- Michael Goldbach has been brought on as co-writer for Season 2, with the team aiming to get new episodes out "sooner rather than later" amid the Crave/HBO Max series' booming first-season popularity.
- Season 2 is primarily based on Rachel Reid's "The Long Game," the sequel to "Heated Rivalry" in her "Game Changer" novel series — a book Tierney nicknamed "Sex Scenes From a Marriage" and pointed to a major Shane-and-Ilya fight as one of his favorite moments to adapt.
- Tierney confirmed parts of Reid's "Role Model" — which follows hockey player Troy Barrett and social media manager Harris Drover, not the main couple — will be folded into Season 2, saying Troy is "a really damaged guy" on the show and that the writers are "digging into that even harder."
- Tierney framed the tonal pivot in Bergman-esque terms, asking: "what do you do after the rush of danger is gone and now you have to live in a relationship where you still aren't communicating properly, much as you would like to?"
Why it matters: For fans of Crave/HBO Max's breakout hit, the tonal shift means the show's central couple — played by Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie — moves from forbidden-hookup fantasy to the harder dramatic work Reid built toward in her novels, with a co-writer added to speed up production. Tierney's decision to weave in "Role Model" also signals Season 2 expands the ensemble beyond Shane and Ilya, giving the Troy Barrett character a darker arc than the book might suggest.
