“Heated Rivalry” is not simply a new TV show; it’s the next target of gay man fetishization by women. Released on HBO Max, the show exploded with popularity in a matter of weeks. The first episode aired on Nov. 28, 2025, and ended with the season one finale on Dec. 26, 2025; however, by early 2026, the series had already surpassed 600 million minutes of streaming. Online, the popularity continued with edits of the main characters, thirsty tweets and viral videos of young women sharing the show with their grandmothers. On Instagram, the “#heatedrivalry” has over 163,000 posts, with TikTok boasting more than 520,000 for “#heatedrivalry” as well as over 42,000 for “#heatedrivalryedit.”

“Heated Rivalry” is based on one novel in Rachel Reid’s “Game Changers” six-book series, with each book centered on different men-loving-men (MLM) relationships in hockey. MLM romance is a popular genre of romance books, especially fetishized by women and in fan fiction. On Archive of Our Own (AO3), there are almost 7,000,000 pieces of fan fiction tagged under MLM — almost half of the total works on the website. 

The fetishization issue is amplified when converted to a visual medium. Steamy scenes that were once limited to readers’ imaginations became an accessible reality between two conventionally attractive male actors. 

Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) were large contributors to the popularity and subsequent fetishizing behavior that surrounded “Heated Rivalry.” The characters’ — and actors’ — physical traits, attractiveness and sex appeal became the draw of the show for many: it’s reduced to the “hot gay hockey” show, or known for “the bottom, [who] has a really great a**, [and] the hot bisexual Russian [who] has the kind of a** that the Catholic Church used to pay twinks to carve marble about,” as TikTok user @eliza.isnt.funny described. 

As a TV show, “Heated Rivalry” is lacking on a few narrative fronts — chiefly tension, conflict and writing — and isn’t groundbreaking enough to justify such an explosive reception. The pacing of the episodes spans over several years, and it’s clear that Shane and Ilya’s relationship is on-and-off throughout the plot, but the show portrays the passing of time with frequent blocks of text on-screen, such as “Summer 2014” or “six months later.”

While the point of the timeskips is to show the audience the inconsistency of the relationship, it isn’t effective for the slow-burning build and tension. The audience doesn’t see what happens in their time apart, and as a result, the distance doesn’t feel as real since it resolves just a few scenes later with immediate intimacy. 

The issue with building tension isn’t solely from timeskips, however. Another flawed aspect of the show is how conflict is portrayed, especially in the first four or five episodes of the show. Conflict is introduced but not developed.

The most glaring example of this is present in episode 5 titled “I’ll Believe in Anything.” Shane and his “girlfriend,” Rose Landry, have a conversation discussing his closeted sexuality; this scene was almost a well-executed emotional breakthrough for one of the main characters, as Shane started to admit his conflict to someone else, but it abruptly ended with a jarringly sexual line about him being a bottom. It ruined the otherwise tender moment and felt like a line from fan fiction. The girlfriend/jealousy subplot — as with others in the story — began and ended within the span of a singular episode, contributing to the sense of incomplete tension and conflict resolving too quickly. 

Additionally, the writing feels sloppy and underdeveloped, similar to a fan fiction. The main characters called each other by their last name — a common fan fiction fantasy — and fulfill the tropey dynamic of “bratty top” and “sub bottom.” Dialogue is repetitive, as Ilya overuses the word “boring,” and Shane curses like a sixth grader discovering the f-word. The show also wastes unexplored aspects, such as Ilya’s apparent hypersexual coping mechanism, which could’ve made the narrative more complex and engaging.  

Women fetishizing MLM romance has been a recurring pattern in society, from fan fiction and yaoi to popular TV shows. Sex is not only viewed as attractive, but also erases the structural issues that come with heterosexual intimacy. Fans praised Ilya for asking for consent during sex because — although the bare minimum — it represents a dynamic that many heterosexual relationships lack. 

There is a broader issue to be seen here: the fetishization goes beyond just fantasizing and romance media. Women often infantilize gay men and treat them like a toy or accessory, especially under the “gay best friend” label.

“I have had a number of female friends who view me as ‘the gay best friend,’” Cole Coyner ‘26, president of Buena High School’s Gender Sexuality Alliance club, said. “In those [friendships] … if I express even a little bit of interest in somebody, it becomes a huge deal. Not because they want me to get with the person, but because ‘aw, it’s so cute that my gay friend is interested in a guy,’” he said. 

It’s understandable why audiences watch “Heated Rivalry,” a cheesy romance with attractive actors, a bingeable runtime and a quick TV show to entertain without much thought. However, the overall reception surrounding the show feeds into the constant fetishization of gay men, amplified by the series’ explicit nature. Although representation for gay relationships is important, “Heated Rivalry” is treated like fan-fiction incarnate, sacrificing plot, character development and writing for views from a female-gaze dominated audience.