‘Heated Rivalry’ Boss Jacob Tierney Reveals Major Book Couple’s Fate in Season 2
What To Know
- Creator Jacob Tierney confirmed that Season 2 of Heated Rivalry will focus on storylines from three books in Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series.
- While promoting his new Season 1 annotated script book, Tierney addressed book character Eric Bennett’s fate.
- Tierney emphasized that only stories intersecting with Shane and Ilya’s journey will be included.
The framework of Heated Rivalry Season 2 just became a little bit clearer, thanks Jacob Tierney. The creator of the TV adaptation has addressed how many books — and, as a result, how many couples — from Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series will come into play in Season 2. One, it seems, will be left out.
Tierney dropped a number of Season 2 details while promoting his new book, I’ll Believe in Anything, which consists of Heated Rivalry Season 1’s annotated scripts, at the Brooklyn Paramount on October 11. Moderator Andrew Rannells asked Tierney about how many new characters are coming into the fold in Season 2, which is primarily based on Shane (Hudson Williams) and Ilya’s (Connor Storrie) sequel book, The Long Game.
“A lot of them, they’ve been announced, but yeah, we have Troy and Harris from Role Model. We have Ryan and Fabian from Tough Guy. And we have their worlds. We have the people that orbit them and intersect with the main story,” Tierney explained.
Notably missing from Tierney’s list are Common Goal‘s Eric Bennett and Kyle Swift. The former character hasn’t been included in any Season 2 casting announcements, though Matthew Finlan brought Kyle to life in the third episode of Season 1. Kyle is close friends with Kip (Robbie G.K.) and works at The Kingfisher bar that their group frequents.
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“Not everybody — please don’t yell at me yet. I hear it, but I’m not talking about that yet,” Tierney said, responding to a audience member who called out that they wanted to see “Benny,” aka Eric, in the show. Eric is a 41-year-old goaltender for the New York Admirals. As he nears retirement and navigates his recent divorce, Eric explores his bisexuality for the first time with grad student Kyle.
“Does Benny intersect with Shane and Ilya?” Tierney continued, addressing the fan directly. “No, he does not.”
Rannells quipped that Tierney is allowed some artistic license in the adaptation process, which prompted the show creator to add, “No, it’s not license. It’s all in the books. Anyway.”
It’s true: Common Goal doesn’t intersect much with Heated Rivalry or The Long Game, taking place between the two books. Kyle and Eric only make one brief appearance in Role Model, which overlaps timelines with The Long Game, when Ilya and Troy visit The Kingfisher after a game.
Tierney moved on by elaborating on more new Season 2 characters, including the Ottawa Centaurs. “Ilya joins Ottawa and then there’s a lot of people in Ottawa, and that team becomes quite significant,” he said. “It is a much bigger world, and it is crazy because I’ll go like three days without seeing Connor or Hudson, and then they come back and I’m like, ‘Oh right. You two.'”
Discussing the writing process for the new season, Tierney confirmed the number of books that he drew from, seemingly leaving out Common Goal. “The new season, I wrote with my friend, Mike Goldbach, who’s a brilliant writer, and he and I did have a room, if you call it that. And what we did was we just kind of broke these three books apart… to figure out how to structure the show,” he said.
Tierney reiterated that Shane and Ilya’s story throughout Reid’s books are the main one. “My guiding principle was always, we’re following Shane and Ilya’s love story, and so the other stories that come into it, because the world is much bigger now, are stories that intersect with theirs,” he added. “The stories that intersect and kind of add to or effect that world. And so, there’s still a very clear through line for me and it’s a real pleasure to be back there.”
Heated Rivalry, Season 2, TBA 2027, Crave & HBO Max
