Why Shane and Ilya from Heated Rivalry Can’t Be Compared to Other TV Couples

They say comparison is the thief of joy. However, comparison can also spark conversation and debate and connection from person to person, fanbase to fanbase. Be that for better or for worse!

Nowadays, it seems that any time a new queer TV couple comes on the scene, there is a deluge of “they are so them,” putting the couple side by side with another queer television couple. Opinions fly, fans become outraged at how wrong they think that comparison is, or overjoyed that someone else sees what they see.

The latest version of these comparisons has emerged with Shane & Ilya in the scorching hot new series Heated Rivalry.

Comparing Shane & Ilya to couples such as Ian & Mickey from Shameless, Nick & Charlie from Heartstopper, or Brian & Justin from Showtime’s Queer As Folk may work at surface levels, but once you start digging in, there’s no way you would ever say these couples match each other.

Comparing Shane & Ilya to Ian & Mickey from Shameless

You put Shane & Ilya next to Ian & Mickey from Shameless, and some of the ties are obvious.

They come together in fits of passion, hiding from the rest of the world for fear of what their secret getting out would do to them. During text conversations, they communicate using girls’ names.

They pass room numbers and slink away in the dead of night because, as dangerous as this is and as much as it would damage their careers, they can not stay away from each other. It’s a pull that is too strong to resist.

Ilya Rozanov and Mickey Milkovich both have horrible fathers who damage their self-worth and who represent some of that fear for their lives.

Ilya’s father is the biggest pressure in his life. Being drafted number one was not good enough; he was still lazy. Being Captain of the best team in the league was not enough if they lost even one game. Being Captain of Team Russia wasn’t enough because they didn’t medal.

Ilya being in love with his biggest competition — the man his father reminds him he can not lose to — is simply not an option.

Maybe Ilya would come out in a bar fight and scream how much he loves touching Shane just to spite his father. But, he would also never do anything that put Shane or their secret in danger.

Where Mickey Milkovich, as a young man, bent towards his father’s will, Ilya grew away from it; he existed in spite of it. Mickey, the grown man, eventually comes around to this way of life as well, but he leaves a trail of prison and heartbreak behind him on the path.

These couples also differ in the language of violence as communication. Ian and Mickey lean into the violence that they are accustomed to, taking swings at each other when they can’t find the words to express how they feel. It’s how they were brought up; it’s all they know.

By comparison, Shane & Ilya would never raise a HAND to each other outside of a shoulder check in the rink. The very idea of it is unthinkable.

Comparing Shane & Ilya to Nick & Charlie from Heartstopper

Shane & Ilya, in that respect, do in fact harken more to Nick & Charlie from Heartstopper.

Outside of their heat and steam, they are soft young men, living out their high school romance with one another. You can practically see the cartoon sparks shooting out of their hands as they pass the water bottle back and forth in the gym, when they bump their feet together under the table at a press conference, or when they blush as they text one another for two solid years.

They even have the similarities of mental health struggles and perhaps some disordered eating that needs to be addressed. But there is a level of danger associated with Shane and Ilya’s coming out that Nick & Charlie would never reach.

Comparing Shane & Ilya to Brian & Justin from Queer As Folk

There is also the temptation to stand Shane and Ilya next to the queer television building blocks that are Brian & Justin from Queer As Folk. That particular comparison very much has to do with Heated Rivalry’s overall sexual presentation. The way this show embraces gay sex on television in the way Queer As Folk once did is a rarity we don’t get to see that often.

Ilya certainly has the confidence of Brian Kinney. Shane and Justin Taylor also share the wide-eyed, uncontainable emotion when they look at this man that they love. Each couple also uses their sexual communication as their point of connection, but they are like two different dialects of the same language.

Justin Taylor is an artist. He’s a young man when you meet him, and he is still a young man by the end of the series. Because did any of us really know anything between the ages of 17 and 22?

In this way, he and Shane are similar. They come to us fresh-faced, wide-eyed, and completely blown away by the beautiful man who catches their eye and makes their sex drive go crazy.

Where they differ is in drive and ambition. Shane Hollander is one of the best Hockey players in the world. He knows it, he lives it, it’s part of his being. Justin Taylor is an artist, a little aimless, and only really having a long-term focus on the man that he loves.

Justin adapts well to Brian’s world of casual sex and outward queerness. Shane doesn’t find joy in the casual hookup. And he is absolutely, completely terrified of his biggest secret being revealed to the world.

Brian Kinney uses sex like a sport. It’s a hunt, a challenge, and he is the conquering king. In the book Heated Rivalry, we learn that this is Ilya’s perceived reputation, but it’s not entirely true. He has Svetlana and one or two regular women whom we never meet. But once he finds Shane, that pool of regulars dries up rapidly.

Where Kinney and Rozanov are similar is that when it comes to Brian’s draw to Justin, Brian can’t help himself. He can’t stay away, no matter how much he tells himself he should. He will tell himself he doesn’t do relationships, that Justin is too young and needs to leave him alone… right before they end up in bed together.

Ilya knows that his heart is getting too involved. That this thing with him and Shane is getting too dangerous. But come the next Montreal game, he’s finding Shane in whatever Hotel room, secret apartment, wherever Shane will have him.

Comparing Shane & Ilya to Buck & Eddie from 9-1-1

One of the things that draws fanbases to put queer couples side by side like this is, frankly, the distinct lack of canon, deliberate queer couples that we have to choose from. We can’t help but think they all fit together because we are trying to collect as many as we can as fast as we are given them.

Ships that exist purely in the minds of the fans and never in the content of the show sometimes get lumped into these comparisons, too.

There is a lot of crossover of the 9-1-1 Buddie (Buck & Eddie) fandom to the Heated Rivalry space, and that has led to some Buddie/Hollanov side-by-sides.

Frankly, these ones don’t stand up to snuff the way the cannon ship ones do. The whole idea of Buck & Eddie as a pairing exists purely in the minds of the fanbase. Not that it’s not obviously being written in that way – but it’s something the show has yet to let canonically happen — and the jury is out on if they ever will.

We have seen Buck get a little jealous and out of his head when Eddie gets a new friend, and it does lead to him discovering his own bisexuality.

But Buck & Eddie would never stare longingly at each other across a crowded nightclub while Tatu’s “All The Things She Said” uses their lyrics to tell us exactly what is going through their mind.

If they aren’t kissing on the mouth and going through aching trials and tribulations on the actual television screen, they will simply never be Shane & Ilya. Eight years of queerbaiting fanbases and eight years of yearning within canon are vastly different circumstances that we shouldn’t confuse with one another.

There’s simply no comparison.

Despite similarities to couples we have seen before, and despite this being a queer men’s love story, it’s abundantly clear by this point that we have never seen a television couple quite like Shane & Ilya from Heated Rivalry.

Heated Rivalry and its loyalty to the source material have blown the doors off of what we know of queer TV.

And my word, isn’t that an incredible thing?

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