Heated Rivalry fans finally have new Shane and Ilya footage to obsess over. The season 1 DVD and Blu-ray comes with three never-before-seen deleted scenes and a blooper reel of Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie goofing around on set, and the clips were all over social media within hours.
The disc is only half the story, though. Creator Jacob Tierney has just released a book of annotated scripts, and it lays out everything that got cut along the way – including a version of the show where Ilya came face to face with Shane’s parents a whole episode earlier.
Their very first conversation was written to run up to six times longer, and rain stopped the original coming-out scene mid-shoot, so Jacob rewrote it on set. Two fan-favorite hockey players from the books got benched too, though not for good.
What’s On The Heated Rivalry DVD
According to Out, the standard DVD and Blu-ray include three deleted scenes. One is a longer cut of the night a teenage Shane introduces himself to Ilya, who’s smoking outside the rink.
The aired version keeps the key beats, but the extended take lingers on how amused and charmed Ilya is by Shane’s awkward attempt at small talk.
Another catches a tipsy Shane talking to his dad on the night he’s named Rookie of the Year. The third hasn’t been widely described yet.
Then there’s the blooper reel, which is exactly what you’d hope: Hudson and Connor being silly between takes.
Alliance Home Entertainment is handling the release in North America, with an official street date of October 20, but Out reported on October 15 that the discs were already out and the scenes were spreading online. There’s still no UK release date.
“In many ways, the DVD release felt like the natural next step,” Jacob and producing partner Brendan Brady said in a statement when the discs were announced.
Their First Meeting Was Supposed To Be Six Times Longer
The book is called I’ll Believe in Anything: The Making of Heated Rivalry Season 1. It came out from Little, Brown on October 13, and it runs 368 pages, with the scripts for all six episodes plus notes from Jacob and Brendan on everything from costumes to intimacy choreography.
The biggest surprise is right at the start. The show’s opening scene in Regina runs about a minute on screen. In an excerpt shared with TODAY, Jacob reveals it was written to run as long as six minutes, filmed exactly as scripted, and then cut down in the edit.
The full version is much chattier. Shane asks whether Ilya’s parents came to the tournament, then offers that it must be hard to be away at Christmas. Ilya’s deadpan answer: “Christmas is later in Russia.” Shane keeps going, bringing up the weather and the fact that next year’s event is in his hometown of Ottawa, while Ilya smirks at how nervous he is.
Jacob writes that he wanted Shane to have “a bit of awkward-dad energy,” and wanted viewers to watch Ilya go from suspicious to playful in a single conversation.
The script also had a lobby scene just before it. Shane walks through the arena with his parents, Yuna (Christina Chang) and David (Dylan Walsh), and his mom brushes Ilya off as just an OK player.
When Shane insists Ilya is very good, she tells him she thinks he’s better, and that Montreal does too. It would have been a neat bit of foreshadowing, but it didn’t make the cut either.
Ilya Was Going To Meet Shane’s Parents In The Hospital
On screen, Ilya’s big moment with Yuna and David comes at the end of episode 6, after Shane comes out. The script had them crossing paths an episode earlier.
In the episode 5 hospital scene, a drugged-up Shane invites Ilya to his cottage. According to TV Insider’s breakdown of the book, Ilya was then supposed to walk out into the hallway and straight into Shane’s parents.
He tells them he’s only there out of “professional courtesy,” asks them to reassure him that Shane is OK, and starts to leave. Then he turns back and asks them to let him know if there’s anything he can do. Yuna is confused. She and David exchange a look.
That look would have planted a seed in Yuna’s head a full episode before Shane told her anything.
The scene was never filmed. Jacob writes that they ran out of time and didn’t have the location or the money. And he’s not sure he misses it. “That scene felt like gilding the lily, if I’m being honest,” he told IndieWire.
The hospital scene lost a few lines of its own, too. Jacob cut part of Shane and Ilya’s exchange about going away somewhere because Hudson’s performance was doing so much on its own that the extra dialogue wasn’t needed.
Rain Rewrote Shane’s Coming Out
Episode 6 has two huge emotional moments, and Jacob handled them in opposite ways. The “I love you” at the cottage plays out slowly over several scenes. One of his favorite additions there was simply Shane and Ilya on the couch, both on their phones, like any other couple.
Shane coming out to his mom went the other way. Jacob told IndieWire that it started raining before they could finish shooting it, and he realized the version on the page wasn’t working. “When two actors are that good, and it’s not working, it’s my fault,” he said. He rewrote it from roughly the halfway point, cutting down how much the characters talked around the subject.
The scripted version had Yuna apologizing for loading Shane up with endorsements and for deciding somewhere along the way that he had to be perfect, before telling him he already was. The aired scene says it with much less.
Some of the moments fans quote most weren’t scripted at all. Ilya’s “gimme kiss” pout, his “I’m sorry” when he breaks down in front of Shane, and Shane’s hiccuped “bet-ter” in the hospital all came from the actors. Jacob told IndieWire that by the cottage shoot, he was telling them, “These are your characters now, you can make decisions for them.”
Even the dinner with Shane’s parents changed on set. The script had Ilya taking Shane’s hand under the table when he says he’s only ever been in love with one person. In the final cut, they touch feet instead, a callback to their joint press conference years earlier.
Shane Was Building The Cottage All Along
In the show, viewers first see the cottage when Ilya watches a TV special about Shane. The script planted it much earlier, in the episode 4 montage.
Shane and his parents were going to look over a plot of land by a lake with an architect. Later, he’d stand on his dock watching the house go up. In the last beat, the family walks through the finished place and Shane takes photos to send to Ilya, then stops himself and texts his teammate Hayden instead.
“It was always a pipe dream of mine that he was building the cottage the whole time,” Jacob writes in the book. They couldn’t afford to show it mid-construction.
The dock didn’t survive either, because the real cottage didn’t have one. “Rock it is!” Jacob joked in his notes.
On the page, Ilya pulls Shane into the lake instead of just splashing him. And the backyard fire where Ilya opens up about his mom was supposed to burn real wood, until that proved too hard and the crew switched to propane.
Two Book Favorites Got Benched For Season 2
Readers of Rachel Reid‘s Game Changers novels will want to know who almost showed up early. Jacob told IndieWire that Ryan Price and Eric Bennett were both originally going to appear in season 1. Ryan ended up mentioned only in passing, and Eric was cut entirely.
Eric, the New York Admirals goalie who leads Reid’s Common Goal, was supposed to share a moment with Yuna at the awards reception, just before Shane joins Ilya on the roof. Jacob’s explanation for holding Ryan back: “There’s a time and a place for this.”
That time is season 2. In August, Percy Jackson and the Olympians star Daniel Diemer was cast as Ryan, with Shaheen Jafargholi as Fabian Salah. Season 2 mainly adapts The Long Game, the sequel to Shane and Ilya’s story, while Reid is still writing the couple’s next book, Unrivaled, due in June 2027.
The Collector’s Edition Has Even More
Fans who want more extras get a second option on November 24, when Alliance releases a 4K Collector’s Edition in VHS-style packaging, complete with collectible art cards, a double-sided poster and a hockey puck stress reliever.
It adds behind-the-scenes featurettes called Shoot Your Shot, Jacob’s introductions to “Rookies” and “The Cottage,” and interviews with Brendan and Rachel.
Crave is aiming for a spring 2027 premiere for season 2, and Jacob and Brendan have pointed to April. Until then, fans have three deleted scenes and 368 pages of Jacob’s notes to keep them busy.