Heated Rivalry, the new smutty gay hockey show available to stream with an HBO Max subscription, has exploded in popularity since it premiered in November. The response from fans has been overwhelming, and some of the episodes' ratings on IMDb confirm it is near perfect. However, one timeline detail has been nagging me, and I’m glad this Heated Rivalry actor finally cleared it up.
Season 1 of Heated Rivalry is a book-to-screen adaptation of Rachel Reid’s romance novel of the same name. Those familiar with the larger Game Changers series know that Heated Rivalry is book 2, and book 1 tells Scott and Kip’s story, Game Changer. If you’ve finished Heated Rivalry already, you know events of Scott and Kip’s relationship happen during Hollanov’s eight-year timeline. They play a direct role in Shane and Ilya’s story, which is why Episode 3 catches us up on Scott and Kip’s origins as a couple.
However, when it came time to overlap the timelines in post production, Scott’s actor, François Arnaud, told Sirius XM’s Smith Sisters the producers hit a snag:
The way that we shot it, there was a fuck up in the timeline. A lot of it was really well conceived, but the juxtaposition of the two story lines—they didn't really know how they were going to cut from one to the other. So, we shot it thinking it was six months between [Kip's] birthday and the Cup, and now it's three years.
I guess I’ll believe in anything because the first time I watched the end of Episode 5, I didn’t even notice a timeline mishap. I was too busy jumping up and down in my living room. At that point in the series, there had been so many time jumps, I figured I must have missed something while watching it. I love that Connor Storrie (Ilya) and Seth Meyers poked fun at it on Late Night, because Heated Rivalry truly flies through the years at a wild pace:
Let’s be real, nothing compares to Hollanov’s eight-year-long situationship, but in the context of the show, three years between Kip and Scott breaking up and reuniting on the ice is CRAZY. I had so many questions: Had neither Scott nor Kip moved on? Had they been in contact at all during those years? Did Scott invite Kip to the game out of the blue?
Plus, in the book, Game Changer, Scott and Kip resolve their problems much faster and are back together by the time that final game happens and they kiss on the ice.
While I’m glad this timeline gap was cleared up, these questions still remain unanswered. Unfortunately, filming had already wrapped when they noticed this problem. To keep continuity, the Canadian Sniper actor says the producers had to edit his MLH speech in the last episode to fit the new timeline:
In Episode 6, there was a line, and they locked the cut, so it was definitely on my face where I say, 'Fear is a powerful thing, but this year I found the one thing that is more powerful. It was this year, I found the thing that is more powerful, but it couldn't be this year.
Ah, the magic of post. The editors did a good job, though I couldn’t even tell there was a line missing in the final cut of the speech.
I do understand why they decided to leave in the altered timeline, though. Six months would have made way more sense for Scott and Kip’s relationship timeline, but not for Shane and Ilya’s. At the end of the day, Heated Rivalry is Hollanov’s story, sometimes at the expense of Scott and Kip’s.
However, I would like to see more of the Admiral's captain and his smoothie king in the already confirmed Season 2, and I’m glad author Rachel Reid feels the same. Scott and Kip, in the words of Ilya Rozanov, “Stay. I’m not done with you yet.”
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