If you spent the last few weeks yelling at your TV because Heated Rivalry turned you into an emotional puddle, same. The Crave/HBO Max series has quickly solidified itself as the queer TV moment of the year, turning Rachel Reid’s beloved hockey romance novel into a full-blown cultural phenomenon.
But like any book-to-screen adaptation worth its salt (and Twitter discourse), Heated Rivalry plays a smart little game of “same, but different.” Showrunner Jacob Tierney told Collider that while the series “isn’t a beat-for-beat copy”, it still carries the same pulse: “They get to be happy.”
So, what exactly changed from page to screen? Let’s debrief over some metaphorical cottage wine.
Episode 1 — Rookies
The pilot wastes no time announcing that this isn’t going to be a line-for-line adaptation, and honestly, that’s why it works.
The Face-Off commercial becomes Ilya’s idea
In Rachel Reid’s book, the CCM shoot is just business: both Shane (Hudson Williams) and Ilya (Connor Storrie) are signed, so they show up. On TV, Ilya is the one who engineers the whole thing, which adds a quiet level of pining without any clunky “secretly obsessed with you” dialogue.
Scott Hunter’s makeover and early spotlight
Book Scott is blond and blue-eyed; TV Scott rocks “tall, dark, and handsome” energy courtesy of François Arnaud. He’s also much more visually tuned in to whatever weird magnetism is happening between Shane and Ilya from the jump, which sets him up as a key player long before his own episode.
Same rooftop words, different rooftop vibe
The post–MVP awards rooftop confrontation keeps much of the book’s dialogue but dials the tone way up. On the page it reads quieter and more melancholy; on screen it simmers with anger and frustration, which makes the eventual emotional payoff between them feel bigger.
Shane’s parents and his identity
The show expands Yuna (Christina Chang) and David’s (Dylan Walsh) roles dramatically, especially Yuna’s. Instead of just being a sporty, supportive hockey mum, she’s more of a pushy “uom-ager”, and the series folds in Shane’s experience as an Asian Canadian, including microaggressions from the hockey world that don’t really surface in the novel.
The elevator run-in and YouTube rabbit hole
Two moments are completely new: Ilya awkwardly sharing an elevator with Yuna on his way to Shane’s room, and Shane explaining his YouTube “unlikely animal friendships” obsession to his dad. Both are small, but they round out the characters and echo the “rivals who shouldn’t be friends but are” dynamic at the heart of the story.
Episode 2 — Olympians
By the second episode, the show is already doing the thing Tierney likes best: using new scenes to show what the book could only tell us in internal monologue.
Svetlana’s upgraded backstory
Svetlana still has a long history with Ilya and remains a casual hookup, but the show shifts her from being the daughter of a former hockey player to the daughter of a Russian minister. Her political-adjacent upbringing gives their dynamic a slightly different texture, while keeping her blunt, hockey-literate pep talks intact.
Delayed first time, bigger emotional payoff
In the book, Shane and Ilya first have sex at Shane’s Montreal apartment in early 2011. In the show, Ilya’s flight is cancelled, they miss that early encounter entirely, and their first time is pushed to 2013, still at Shane’s place.
More overt focus on consent
One of the most widely praised tweaks is how clearly Ilya keeps checking in with Shane during their first sex scene, asking whether he’s okay. It’s totally in character with the Ilya of the books, but the show foregrounds it in a way that signals care and emotional safety without making a big speech about it.
Bathroom scene turned emotional pivot
The post–MLH Awards bathroom moment, which leans a bit more on horniness in the novel, becomes a more emotionally honest, vulnerable exchange here. The added lines and Hudson Williams’ performance — “the face of someone who is hopelessly in love, but just hasn’t admitted it yet,” as one fan put it — mark it as a real shift in their relationship.
Texting as inner monologue
The series uses unsent texts to replace pages of internal narration. After a hotel hookup in Las Vegas, Shane types “We didn’t even kiss” and never hits send, which says everything about how much he’s feeling and how determined he is not to say it out loud.
Side note: the technological inconsistencies have scratched my brain in the wrong way. I’m hoping we can sort that out next season. Here’s an explanation if you have no clue what I’m talking about:
Episode 3 — Hunter
Episode three is where the adaptation makes its boldest swing, and fans have absolutely noticed.
A full Scott-and-Kip takeover
Scott and Kip only exist in the background of Heated Rivalry the novel, but they get a full episode in the show. Jacob Tierney essentially “speedruns” Reid’s Game Changer — the first book in the series and Scott/Kip’s story — in one 45-minute hour, which some fans loved as a backdoor pilot and others found frustrating given the season’s short six-episode count.
Shane and Scott’s on-ice fight, not Ilya’s
In Game Changer, the big on-ice blow-up is between Scott and Ilya; Scott decks him and cops a five-minute penalty after one chirp too many. The show reassigns that moment to Shane and Scott, with Scott needling that Shane is starting to sound like Ilya — not as a compliment. It suddenly makes Scott feel like one of the first people clocking that something is going on between those two, and it shows how quickly Shane shuts down when someone gets close to the truth.
Shifting Scott and Kip’s timeline
The Scott/Kip romance is pulled forward: they meet in 2014 instead of 2017. Fans have speculated this is to better line their story up with Shane and Ilya’s arc, especially given how pivotal Scott and Kip’s public moment at the end of Game Changer is for what Shane and Ilya eventually do in the Heated Rivalry book timeline.
Episode 4 — Rose
By the time Rose Landry (Sophie Nélisse) shows up, the show is deep into expanding side relationships and identity threads that only skim the surface in the novel.
Shane and Rose’s first real talk
The show adds new early dialogue between Rose and Shane where she asks what he was like at eight, prompting him to describe being one of the only Asian kids on his hockey team. It builds on the earlier microaggressions we’ve seen and quietly establishes a foundation of trust and honesty in their friendship.
The club dance triangle
Instead of Shane dancing only with Rose before she moves to the floor with Miles (Devante Senior), the series has Shane, Rose and Miles dancing together — with Miles practically right on Shane’s neck. Fans have read it as either a visualisation of his confusion around sexuality or a sign that, even with two hot people all over him, he’s still mentally with Ilya.
More of Ilya’s family calls
The book mentions Ilya’s phone calls with his father but rarely lets us hear them; the show puts one of those conversations on screen. Watching his whole body language change — tense on the phone, then easing when he sits back down with Shane — doubles the impact of how safe Shane has become for him.
“Lily” and “Jane” don’t stay secret
The code names in each other’s phones are more of a private gag in the book. The show has multiple people — including Svetlana and Hayden (Callan Potter) — notice and question who “Lily” and “Jane” are, which feels more realistic and ramps up both men’s paranoia.
Episode 5 — I’ll Believe In Anything
Episode five is where the show leans all the way into emotional intimacy and I was not prepared!
Ilya’s phone call from Russia, fully translated
In the book, most of what Ilya says to Shane over the phone after his father dies isn’t translated from Russian; we only get his internal commentary that he’s “pretty sure I’m in love with you, and I don’t know what to do about it”. The series instead lets us hear the confession itself. He tells Shane that Svetlana loves him and he loves her, “but not like I love you”, then adds that “all I want is you. It’s always you… I am in love with you, and I don’t know what to do about it.” I WAS SOBBING!
Dinner with Svetlana and Alexei
The dinner in Russia, including Ilya punching his brother Alexei (Slavic Rogozine) for insulting Svetlana, is a TV-only invention. It ties into the season-long effort to flesh out Ilya’s life beyond the rink and shows how deeply protective he is of the few people he trusts.
Rose’s “Mystique” moment
Rose chatting to Shane on the phone while being painted blue for a superhero project — with a red wig hanging in the background — is a playful nod to a Mystique-type role. It’s not from the book, but it keeps the show’s sense of humour intact even in an otherwise emotionally heavy hour.
Svetlana quietly seeing the truth
The series deepens Svetlana’s character by having her gently acknowledge that Ilya doesn’t love her the way he loves “Jane”, and Russian dialogue implies she knows “Jane” is a “he”. She doesn’t pressure him or judge him, which positions her as one of the very few people who can hold his full truth without making it about herself.
Episode 6 — The Cottage
The finale is where Tierney’s adaptation philosophy is the clearest.
Why the book’s press conference ending was cut
In the novel, Shane and Ilya come out publicly via a carefully planned press conference that launches the Irina Foundation, a joint charity named after Ilya’s mother, with Yuna tapped as director and treasurer. Tierney initially wrote a similar ending but scrapped it, telling Collider, “I don’t think the last four minutes of a TV show is the time to give you logistical information about the way a charity organisation is going to work. I think books work differently than shows.”
Yuna and Shane’s completely new, devastating scene
The big addition here is the private moment between Shane and Yuna after he comes out. “Mum, um… I need you to know that I did really try,” Shane tells her. “I tried really hard, but I just can’t help it. I’m sorry.” Yuna stops him: “You have nothing… nothing to apologise for. I’m sorry that I made you feel like you couldn’t tell me. I’m so, so proud of you.”
Tierney told Collider that he rewrote that interaction twice while they were shooting because he knew it had to land emotionally. “There was way more dialogue, and then I was like, ‘I hate everything,’” he said. “When I kind of reduced it to its bare bones… it was when he said, ‘I really tried.’ I don’t have kids, but that would hit me. That would hit me really, really hard.”
In a post-finale interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Tierney explained that he thought about parents a lot while writing the show. He wanted “a spectrum of parents” across the series — from Kip’s dad, to Scott’s lack of parents, to Ilya’s complicated upbringing, to Shane’s more intense, high-pressure household — to lay the groundwork for what readers know comes later in the book universe.
Dialling down the cottage sex
Where the book has, frankly, a lot of sex at the cottage, the show pulls back and spends more time on the quieter, domestic moments: shared bed space, long conversations, sitting together in silence. Fans were initially sad to lose a certain dock scene, but most have embraced the choice to lean into emotional vulnerability rather than try to match the book’s explicitness beat-for-beat.
Dishwasher tablets become a phone charger
The infamous “David asks to borrow dishwasher tablets and accidentally catches them” moment from the book is tweaked into a request for a phone charger in the show. It’s a tiny change, but one that’s already become a meme in the fandom, partly because it’s a winking nod to readers who were waiting for the tablet line.
Iconic line, slightly rephrased
Similarly, the televised version of Shane and Ilya’s love confession changes the book’s “Does it fucking kill you, too?” into “Does it feel like agony for you, too?” Some book fans miss the original phrasing, but most agree the sentiment is intact.
End credits as a final love letter
Tierney told Collider he deliberately designed the credits to play over Shane and Ilya’s drive so viewers would be less likely to hit “skip”. “I wanted to give us movie credits,” he said. “I wanted everybody, all the actors, the crew, to see their names… I really wanted to make sure that I could put our credits up in a way that was engaging enough for an audience to keep watching.”For anyone who didn’t sit through the earlier credits, this final sequence also forces them to watch the names of everyone who built the show that’s just emotionally wrecked them — a tiny but thoughtful structural flex.
Scott’s speech as a universe signal
The finale also adds Scott’s full MLH Awards speech, intercut with shots of Kip and friends watching at the Kingfisher bar. It’s not in the Heated Rivalry book, but it cleverly positions the show’s universe as bigger than one couple, while still keeping Shane and Ilya as its emotional centre.
Okay so season two when?
The post 28 Ways Heated Rivalry Changes The Book, From The Face-Off Ad To That Cottage Ending appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
