Heated Rivalry Episode 4: “Rose” — A Devastating, Delicious Return to Shane & Ilya’s Story

Episode 4 of Heated Rivalry is finally here, and oh boy, there’s a lot to unpack. No, like seriously, a lot. We’ve been counting down the days for a new episode to drop, but now that it’s here, we’re somehow even more feral than before. We knew this one was going to be big, but Episode 4, Rose, wastes absolutely zero time reminding us why this story has us by the throat.

After last week’s detour into Scott Hunter’s (François Arnaud) backstory—a necessary and genuinely important pit stop—Episode 4 gets us right back on track with the saga of Shane (Hudson Williams) and Ilya’s (Connor Storrie) love story. And honestly? This week’s return to our two idiots’ emotional spiral is a welcome (if devastating) homecoming.

But before we jump into everything that goes down in Rose, we need to talk about something crucial: the adaptation itself. Jacob Tierney has been doing a terrific job translating Rachel Reid’s story from page to screen. Book-to-screen adaptations always come with sacrifices—pacing changes, structural shifts, scene rearrangements—but Tierney has made every single choice feel purposeful. 

Since the very first episode our jaws have been on the floor, because even when changes happen, they’re either minimal or push the story exactly where Reid always intended. That’s no small feat, and with only two episodes left this season (and yes, we will absolutely take that Season 2 renewal as an early Christmas present, thanks), we feel firmly in the best possible hands.

So credit where credit’s due: this man is killing it with this show. We’re two seconds away from launching a Change.org campaign demanding he be granted exclusive rights to adapt every queer story from now until the end of time. The consistency! The emotional precision! The way he understands exactly what queer audiences want without watering down a single thing! 

But maybe we can revisit that campaign once he’s done adapting this entire universe. Until then, we’ve got ground to cover and gays to analyze—so chop-chop. Enough chit-chat—let’s talk Episode 4, Rose.

Episode 4: “Rose” — Love, Lies & the Slowest Realization in Queer Hockey History

Episode 4 picks up after the events of Episode 2, but instead of lingering, the show launches us into a two-year montage that brilliantly tracks the rhythm of Shane and Ilya’s lives and builds a strong contrast between their worlds: one polished and tightly managed, the other chaotic, lonely, and increasingly weighed down.

We see the summers of 2014 and 2015 unfold in parallel: Shane in Montreal, being the picture-perfect golden boy with sponsorships, training sessions, commercials, and an immaculate public image; Ilya in Russia, juggling training, partying, and the growing weight of caring for his ailing father (Yaroslav Poverlo). Each year they drift apart for the off-season, doing their own thing, only to fall back into the exact same routine as soon as hockey season returns. They hook up. They pretend it’s casual. They get closer. It’s almost comical how predictable they’ve become.

By the time we reach summer 2016, though, the energy shifts. Yes, they’re still separated by oceans, but now their phones might as well be lifelines. The routine doesn’t feel so routine anymore; something new is brewing, slow and whisper-soft, and it unsettles them in ways neither is ready to name.

When the hockey season rolls around again, we find Shane in Montreal; not at the rink, but at the Biodome on what’s clearly a day off, with Hayden (Callan Potter) and his kids. The contrast is sharp: Hayden is married, a dad, grounded. Shane is single, the star player, but clearly stuck between the life he has and the one he secretly wants.

Soon enough, Shane and Ilya find themselves in the same city again, Boston. So naturally, Shane sneaks out to “meet a friend,” and Hayden immediately clocks that he’s going to see “Lily”—the woman Shane has been texting, the one Hayden thinks he knows all about. What the show does brilliantly here is parallel this with Svetlana’s (Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova) scene earlier in the episode where she asks Ilya how serious things are with “Jane”. Both she and Hayden are inching closer to the truth, both convinced they understand exactly who their best friends are falling for, and both so, so close to putting two and two together without quite landing on the right equation. It’s delicious.

Anygays… What follows is one of the most intimate sequences the show has delivered: the sex, yes, but mostly the aftermath. It’s the kind of lived-in tenderness that changes everything. Because the sex is hot, but it’s what comes after that truly shifts the ground beneath them. Ilya asking Shane to stay; the tuna melt; the easy teasing; the soft smiles; the hockey talk; the quiet domesticity that feels suspiciously like a life. Lines that once seemed so clear begin to blur, and boundaries they swore they’d never cross start to disintegrate.

Then Ilya’s father calls, snapping the moment in half. For the first time, we see Ilya’s stress, his vulnerability, and how much he’s been carrying by himself. Shane doesn’t understand Russian, but he pretty much guesses who is calling. When Ilya returns from the call, Shane gently asks how his dad is doing. Ilya freezes, surprised, and asks if Shane speaks Russian. Shane admits he only knows the word for father, and he guessed the rest. 

It’s such a small detail, but it lands with devastating tenderness. Ilya’s expression softens; something in him seems to crack open. He pulls Shane closer, strokes his hair tenderly, and suddenly names are slipping out. Shane. Ilya. The walls they’ve built around themselves come crashing down.

They fall into each other again, raw and exposed, but the truth of what they’re doing and what they’re becoming hits Shane too hard. The vulnerability, the closeness, the inevitability of it all sends him spiraling. And when they come down from the high, he panics. He pulls away from Ilya, from the moment, from the truth he can’t bear to face… and then he bolts.

From here, the episode becomes a montage of everything Shane and Ilya won’t say to each other.

Shane goes to lunch with his parents, then gets sucked into an event packed with celebrities, and ends up meeting Rose Landry (Sophie Nélisse)—a beautiful, charismatic, charming, and easy to talk to actress. The connection he has with her is simple in ways the one he has with Ilya could never be, and the show uses this contrast to twist the knife. Before we know it, Shane and Rose are the new It couple. The media goes feral. She’s at his games. She’s wearing his jersey. Everyone’s talking.

And Ilya? He is not taking it well.

Seeing Shane happy—publicly, effortlessly—while he’s drowning privately is brutal. The show really sharpens the knife by intercutting Rose’s bright smile with Ilya’s growing jealousy, frustration, and ache. To be honest the montage of Shane and Rose’s romance looks like Ilya’s own personal hell and although it hurts, we absolutely loved it. Sue us. 

Two weeks later, the tension between Shane and Ilya is still thick enough to skate on. The Metros and the Raiders face off again in Montreal, and neither man is at the top of his game. They’re snappy, distracted, and playing like two people who very much did cross a line and have no idea what to do about it. Shane’s phone buzzes, not with a text from “Lily” (Ilya), who hasn’t reached out since that day, but from Rose. She can’t make it to the game because she’s still filming, but she wants him to meet her and her friends at a club afterward.

Post-game, Ilya is visibly irritated, telling his roommate Connors (Harrison Browne—first trans pro hockey player making a cameo!) that he needs to get laid and dragging him out with more teammates to blow off steam. Of course, because the universe loves chaos, they end up at the exact same club where Shane is with Rose.

Inside, the show turns the knife once again but this time with almost surgical precision. Shane is on the dance floor with Rose and of course Ilya sees him. And things just implode. Shane keeps dancing, trying (and failing) to look like he’s having fun. He’s stiff, uncomfortable, going through the motions of what a boyfriend should be doing. Then he spots the Raiders walking in. And then he spots Ilya on the dance floor.

Ilya is angry, possessive, spiraling, and absolutely done with being the only one suffering. Shane keeps pretending to dance with Rose, but he’s not really there. His eyes are glued to Ilya, whose lips are glued to someone else. It’s messy and the tension is violent.

Shane, overwhelmed, excuses himself to the bathroom. But instead of going straight there, he stops and watches Ilya from across the club. Ilya locks eyes with him and keeps going, touching and kissing the girl like he’s trying to prove a point. The moment stretches forever and everything plays out wordlessly: jealousy, hurt, desire, anger, longing. 

Then the final montage hits, synced to the dying beat of the club music: Ilya alone in his hotel shower, getting himself off while thinking about Shane. Shane in bed with Rose, trying to have sex but thinking of only one person. It’s brutal. It’s cruel. It’s narratively delicious.

And then the episode cuts to black. THE AUDACITY!

We screamed, we threw pillows, we paced around the living room, because WHAT DO YOU MEAN we have to wait one entire week for Episode 5? Crave, be serious. Release the next episode as a human rights courtesy.

With so much covered, Episode 4 proves once again how sharp Tierney’s creative instincts are. The pacing, the emotional gut-punches, the structural choices… it all works. And yes, we’ll say it again: we’re obsessed. This isn’t healthy anymore, but frankly? We don’t care. Who would’ve thought we’d be ending the year under a gay hockey spell of this magnitude?

Anygays, see you next week for Episode 5, I’ll Believe in Anything, aka the episode where these two idiots take yet another step toward admitting what every single one of us already knows they feel.

Until then, we’ll be here screaming, kicking our feet, and rewatching this episode like our lives depend on it. We don’t smoke, but honestly? Might start taking a page out of Ilya’s book after this nightmarishly perfect episode.

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Episodes 1–4 of Heated Rivalry are available to stream on Crave (Canada) and HBO Max (U.S. & other regions). Episode 5 drops Friday, December 19 at 12 a.m. ET.  Follow us on X and Instagram for all queer stuff!

Featured Image: Image Courtesy of Bell Media.