"Heated Rivalry tracks three hypercompetitive National Hockey League players as they pursue secretive same-sex relationships. The show-a Canadian production now streaming in the U.S. on HBO Max-has become the No. 1 fixation on gay social media, generating an endless stream of posts that revel in its soft-core-porn aesthetics: sculpted jocks, locker-room eroticism, and prolonged sexual tension (and, finally, fairly graphic sex) between men whose sexual identities remain, at best, closeted and, at worst, explicitly denied."
"In a scene staged shirtless and postcoital, Ilya interrogates Shane, the man he has been sleeping with intermittently for years (the show jumps around wildly in time), about whether he has ever pursued women. The exchange is framed less as a declaration of bisexuality and more as a ritualized disavowal of queerness, an insistence that sex between men need not signify anything beyond the act itself."
Heated Rivalry follows three hypercompetitive NHL players engaged in secret same-sex relationships while streaming on HBO Max. The series has become a fixation on gay social media, driven by sculpted athletes, locker-room eroticism, prolonged sexual tension, and eventual graphic sex between men whose sexual identities are often closeted or denied. The narrative alternates timelines and centers two couples: Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, and Scott Hunter and Kip Grady. Scenes interrogate whether male-on-male sex implies sexual identity, framing questions of bisexuality as ritualized disavowals and positioning heterosexuality as the fallback.
Read at Slate Magazine
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