Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie attend the premiere of Heated Rivalry at TIFF Lightbox on November 24, 2025 in Toronto. | Harold Feng/Getty Images

Heated Rivalry, the Canadian series streaming on HBO Max based on the bestselling romance novels by Rachel Reid, has taken over group chats, algorithms, and brains. For those who have not watched, it follows queer, closeted professional ice hockey players as they navigate falling in love and all the angst that comes with it. There’s also a lot of sex. So. Much. Sex.

But for all the talk of gay hockey smut, the show at its core is very sweet.

Emma Glassman-Hughes is a writer, reporter, and editor at Popsugar, and she doesn’t think Heated Rivalry is an anomaly. She says the show is successful because it taps into a universal experience: yearning. “I think the people are yearning every which way,” she told Vox. “In a more classic sense, we’ve seen the success of Heated Rivalry and The Summer I Turned Pretty. Both those have blown up and really are good examples of how everyone is just excited right now about the burn of a true crush.”

On the latest episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast, we spoke with........

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