‘Heated Rivalry’ and the rise of the queer male heartthrob

Heated Rivalry, the global smash is finally available in India. Connor Storrie, one of its breakout stars, just hosted Saturday Night Live—a very particular kind of American coronation. A mere 12 weeks ago, Storrie was a virtual unknown. Even in the fickle and algorithm-obsessed entertainment industry, the speed of his ascent is extraordinary.

That alone would be a story. But what makes it a bigger story is what his stardom is built on: a bawdy, queer hockey TV romance (based on books by Rachel Reid, who writes “cute smut about hockey”), whose primarily female and queer fandom isn’t just large but also passionately, ravenously participatory. The social media frenzy around Heated Rivalry is unprecedented and alarming in its parasocial intensity. If it is eyeballs modern media is chasing, the show and its refreshingly candid leads have ensured there is a steady supply. This Canadian show made on a relatively small budget has aroused the kind of madness that I, in all my many pop-culture obsessed years, have simply not seen.

Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams are no doubt very good actors—see Storrie’s Russian monologue or Williams’ hospital scene—but what really burnishes their status is their Gen-Z-coded homosocial affection for each other off-screen. They are playfully physical with each other; don’t shy away from making graphic sexual innuendos; and each has a tattoo that says “Sex Sells,” enclosed in hearts no less. Watching these internet boyfriends flirt, banter and gently shift the old rules of male publicity has been more culturally consequential than any single episode, and more than welcome relief in a relentlessly depressing news cycle.

And here is why Hollywood may finally be forced to attempt a recalibration of its imagination of the blockbuster leading man: the demand is not happening despite the queerness, but because of it. A softer, more emotionally available masculinity, even when seen in queer characters, does not appear to “ruin the fantasy” for heterosexual women anymore; in some corners of the culture, it only appears to heighten it. Reid’s audiences are predominantly straight women.

Eric Anderson may have been right all along. His “inclusive masculinity” theory argues that as homophobia’s social penalties decline (and they are declining in the West, by and large), men gain permission to be physically affectionate and emotionally expressive without their status collapsing. In entertainment industry terms, that permission reads as “hot”. It is of course dystopian and disappointing that “a man who communicates” has become an erotic event, but this is the market we have built, and this is what the manosphere has wrought.

For nearly a century, the industry has believed that an openly gay male actor could be acclaimed, beloved and even iconic, but not, in the most commercial sense, a universal object of romantic desire. According to Hollywood, the gay actor could be brave and sensitive but could never be a heartthrob, franchise lead, or box-office insurance. Those labels have always been for the straight/straight-presenting who, to add insult to frankly homophobic injury, would also take on trauma porn queer roles because… Oscar bait.

At the level of mass-market star-making, Hollywood’s self-selected ceiling for bankability thus resulted in generations of gay actors not becoming the stars they ought to have been (Matt Bomer, Luke Evans, Lee Pace, to name a few). Today, Jonathan Bailey is People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive. Andrew Scott is still “Hot Priest” (from TV series Fleabag). Pillion, a “dom-com” about gay bikers, is the latest Rotten Tomatoes Best Romance Movie award winner (beating three other queer love stories and Bridget Jones). Bowen Yang was the undisputed star of SNL until his recent departure. And still, no tentpole Hollywood film with an openly gay male lead.

In this moment arrives Heated Rivalry: the response to it matters as much as the text itself. Is it formally daring? Not really. Is it doing something radically different in terms of storytelling? Arguably not. But what it has managed to do is create gay male leads who are not niche objects of representation politics but mass-market fantasy figures.

Red, White and Royal Blue, a gay romance also based on a hit book, was a huge success, but relatively tame in its approach to sex. Heated Rivalry goes there, and then some.

The “internet boyfriend” phenomenon—one that is driven by women and queer people—signals a change in the nature of the objects of desire. The totems of this trend, like Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Timothée Chalamet—actors who have also played queer characters to great success—are coded as aesthetically soft, emotionally available, and crucially, non-threatening.

Queerness, or even a proximity to it, functions as a culture shorthand for safe, sensitive, and self-aware. This is where Heated Rivalry feels different: the fandom around it is not anxiously protecting a heterosexual illusion. It is often doing the opposite. Queerness is the appeal; gay smut is the draw.

In today’s entertainment economy, it is not simply attention that is monetised—it is repeatable attention. The kind that generates rewatching, fandom communities, subscriptions, merch, algorithmic lift, and free publicity. Few groups are more central to this cycle than women and queer audiences.

Market forces matter here. According to the 2022 Motion Picture Association Theatrical and Home Entertainment Market Environment report, women consistently make the majority of film-going decisions in the US, both in terms of ticket purchasing and household viewing choices. NielsenIQ estimates that “women control about $31.8 trillion of worldwide spending” and that they “will control 75% of discretionary spending in the next 5 years.” Queer audiences are a smaller slice of the pie, but research has regularly shown that they have greater brand loyalty, higher purchasing power and frequency.

Pink spending is increasing across entertainment verticals. GLAAD’s work with Nielsen on gaming audiences has shown that LGBTQ+ identification among gamers is higher than in the general population at 1 in every 5. One can debate the precision of “buying power” metrics but it is impossible to dismiss what advertisers and platforms do with them: they treat women and queer consumers as economically significant and culturally catalytic.

Straight women are the unsung heroines in this paradigm shift, echoing the straight women on the show—each an incredible ally. Could it simply be fetishisation? Possibly. A more generous reading might be that it is its own form of quiet resistance.

It is worth asking blunter questions: what if this is about complete dissatisfaction with the emotional constraints of straight masculinity as it has been traditionally sold, or the rise of the Joe Rogan-Andrew Tate male that has left straight women seeking solace in fantasy? What is masculinity allowed to look like if it is designed for female pleasure rather than straight male aspiration?

If audiences—especially women—are rewarding male tenderness, intimacy and even ambiguity with obsession-level engagement, the industry will not talk them out of it. It will copy it. Hollywood, after all, goes where the money is.

Storrie’s SNL moment is not just about talent or luck or looks. It is Hollywood finally, perhaps reluctantly, recognising a viable profit centre and patting itself on the back for being progressive. Hollywood loves authenticity… if it can make bank.

Heated Rivalry is not a great show, but it is a good show. This is a series about queer sunshine, uncomplicated familial acceptance, meaningful allyship and unabashed gay sex. It is not perfect, but it is a show we need. What we must fight to resist is a repeat of the “wokeness fatigue”. GLAAD’s Where We Are on TV 2025 report has repeatedly warned that increased representation does not automatically translate to increased safety. In fact, periods of heightened visibility often coincide with spikes in queerphobic rhetoric.

If female and queer audiences continue to watch, rewatch, subscribe and evangelise the way they have thus far, the economic logic may hold even as the discourse inevitably curdles. Hollywood must bear in mind who decides what gets watched on a Friday night, who sustains a subscription through a price hike, and it may have the answer to whose side it must choose.

Just follow the money: it’s going where Hollywood pretended it couldn’t go.

Rakesh Sharma is a London-based writer.