Warning: This story discusses plot points from Rachel Reid’s Game Changers novels, including The Long Game and the synopsis of Unrivaled.
Heated Rivalry fans may be getting a lot more than one new season.
HBO Max hockey romance is filming its second and third seasons back-to-back, with a standalone Christmas movie to follow, Deadline reports.
According to the Deadline report, both seasons run six episodes each and are expected to wrap in late November or early December, with the film shooting in December ahead of a planned cinema release in December 2027.
The twist is who the movie is about. Deadline’s sources say the holiday-themed film will not feature Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) or Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), and will instead centre on season one’s other couple, Scott Hunter (François Arnaud) and Kip Grady (Robbie G.K.), with other familiar characters appearing.
Nothing beyond season two is official. A representative for Crave, which commissions the series, told Deadline there are “no projects to confirm”.
Season two is still on track for a Northern Hemisphere spring 2027 premiere, with April considered likely, according to Deadline. HBO Max Australia, which streams season one locally, has already secured the rights to season two, Bell Media confirmed in December.
Why Scott and Kip? Blame a Christmas short story
The Scott and Kip angle has sent book readers straight to Reid’s back catalogue.
Reid wrote a short story titled Merry Christmas, Scott and Kip!, which follows the couple’s first Christmas together, and outlets including Screen Rant and Bleeding Cool have speculated it is the likely blueprint for the film.
Scott and Kip’s romance comes from Game Changer, the first novel in the series, which creator Jacob Tierney folded into season one as a standalone episode. Arnaud told Entertainment Weekly last year that Tierney pitched the pair as “the emotional pendant of Shane and Ilya”.
What season 2 is adapting
Season two will primarily adapt The Long Game, Reid’s 2022 sequel and the sixth book in the series, which picks up roughly three years after Heated Rivalry as the couple’s secret becomes impossible to keep.
Speaking at BookCon in New York in April, Tierney confirmed parts of Role Model, the fifth book, would be woven in too. “Ilya and Shane are the heartbeat of this series, of my show,” he said, according to TVLine.
The casting backs that up. Charlie Gillespie and Justice Smith were announced in August as Role Model’s Troy Barrett and Harris Drover, while Daniel Diemer and Shaheen Jafargholi will play Ryan Price and Fabian Salah from book three, Tough Guy.
Book fans had been waiting for Ryan. Shane and Ilya discuss the Toronto enforcer in a throwaway season one scene, which readers flagged at the time as a deliberate breadcrumb.
The big fan theory: Is season 3 Unrivaled?
Which brings us to the question everyone is asking. If season two is The Long Game, what is season three?
The most popular theory, pushed by outlets including Elite Daily and Screen Rant since January, is that season three will adapt Unrivaled, Reid’s upcoming seventh book and the third centred on Shane and Ilya.
Harlequin’s synopsis picks up with the pair out, married and playing on the same team, as a podcast-led backlash divides the hockey world. “A line has been drawn, and the hockey world is divided,” the blurb reads.
Reid told Matthew Francis in a January interview she was “not doing anything awful to them”, according to TV Insider, and said at BookCon that Troy and Harris would feature heavily. “You’re going to see quite a bit of them in Unrivaled,” she said.
The complication is timing. Unrivaled was due on September 29 but was pushed to June 1, 2027, after Reid told fans in a February Instagram video that the demands of the show’s success, along with worsening symptoms of her Parkinson’s disease, had eaten into her writing time, the Associated Press reported.
If season three really is shooting now, the show could be filming Unrivaled before readers can buy it. That is not impossible: Reid is a consulting producer on the series, posted in August that the manuscript was finished, and told TV Insider she would be spending “a lot of time on set” for season two.
The rival theory: season three gives Troy and Harris, and Ryan and Fabian, room to breathe while Shane and Ilya’s story catches up to the page.
So is Unrivaled the last book?
Retailers certainly think so. Booktopia and Barnes & Noble both list Unrivaled as “the highly anticipated final book” in the Game Changers series.
Reid herself is less definitive. Harlequin’s own press release did not use the word “final”, TV Insider noted, and when Jenna Bush Hager asked on the Open Book with Jenna podcast in February whether this was the end for Shane and Ilya, Reid demurred.
“I don’t want to say last,” she said. “You know, I thought The Long Game was the last book, so you never know.”
“I try to write these books as if they could be the last book,” Reid said, adding she has “an idea of where they are, say, 10 years later”.
Reid had earlier scrapped plans for a different seventh book before pivoting back to Shane and Ilya.
For now, Australian fans have a long runway: the Madman cinema marathon on December 5, season two on HBO Max in 2027, Unrivaled in bookshops from June 1, 2027 and, if Deadline’s sources are right, a Christmas movie the following December.
Heated Rivalry season one is streaming on HBO Max in Australia.
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