In the course of its speedy rise, sexy hockey present “Heated Rivalry” has escaped the criticism lobbed at many different sex-forward shows to turn out to be tv’s naughty North Star. But how?
Tyler McCall, a journalist and novelist whose erotic fiction activates the warmth for customers of the audio app Quinn, has her theories about how the present, which follows a pair of hockey gamers on opposing groups who fall into mattress collectively (and ultimately, in love), has completed what its contemporaries can’t.
For too lengthy, McCall mentioned, “the sex scenes we’ve seen in film and on TV have felt gratuitous because they’re intended more to seem sexy than actually being sexy” and never “true to how sex happens in our real lives.”
Enter Ilya and Shane. “Heated Rivalry” follows them from the ice to the showers to the numerous lodge beds they share, with the nudity and inventive blocking their graphic intercourse scenes require. But these intercourse scenes work for younger viewers, who’ve gained a status for being much less considering intercourse, due to all of the craving in between, McCall mentioned. The intercourse that follows is a crucial launch for his or her pent-up want each time they reunite.
(“Heated Rivalry” was produced for the Canadian community Crave however within the US airs on HBO Max, which shares mother or father firm Warner Bros. Discovery with NCS.)
“Heated Rivalry” has turn out to be a “fascinating case study into Zoomer sexual psychology,” mentioned Chelsea Reynolds, an affiliate professor at Arizona State University who leads its Center for Media & Communities and research the way in which younger individuals react to intercourse within the media.
The present’s monumental recognition amongst Gen Z-ers challenges assumptions that their era is disinterested in having intercourse and seeing it depicted onscreen. Reynolds thinks that hysteria over a “sex recession” amongst American younger adults needs to be taken “with a grain of salt,” asserting that younger individuals “do have a tremendous appetite for sexual content — they just want the sexual relationships that are portrayed to be healthy and to be consensual and to be ongoing.”
“I think that may show us as a society that Gen Z isn’t sexless or asexual, like some news stories paint them to be, but rather that they’re just more cautious and more practical about approaching sex and romance as a package,” Reynolds mentioned.
On the entire, Gen Z isn’t having a lot intercourse. A 2024 report from the CDC that in contrast excessive schoolers’ threat conduct in 2013 and 2023 discovered that 32% of excessive schoolers in 2023 reported that they’d had intercourse. A decade earlier, that proportion sat at 47%. Even fewer highschool college students — round 21% — in 2023 mentioned they have been sexually energetic on the time.
But they’re nonetheless sexy. They’re not turned off by all intercourse onscreen; they only need it to really feel actual and romantic. They need love, however they’re not doling it out to simply anyone.
Considering the world occasions that transpired whereas Zoomers have been coming of age, it’s onerous to fault them for exercising additional warning round intercourse, Reynolds mentioned. Many of them have been in highschool and faculty when the Covid-19 pandemic started, she famous, when it was particularly dangerous, health-wise, to casually hook up and discover sexually. And with out the abortion protections of Roe v. Wade, plus the legislative assault on LGBTQ well being care, plenty of Zoomers simply don’t think about the potential pleasures of intercourse price dangers like STIs or undesirable pregnancies, she mentioned.
That mentioned, Zoomers aren’t avoiding intercourse fully, however they do need it to occur inside a dedicated relationship. A survey from a Kinsey Institute social psychologist and the relationship app Feeld found that 81% of Zoomers “have fantasized about monogamy.”
That eager for love is maybe “Heated Rivalry’s” best enchantment for younger viewers starved for love, Madison Huizinga, a 25-year-old culture critic, mentioned.
“Weirdly, I feel like Gen Z is more trad than they’re given credit for,” she mentioned. “I don’t think it’s necessarily that they’re having less sex. I think they’re just having more intentional sex and creating more intentional relationships with people, not to dunk on millennials.”
Katie Haan, an intimacy coordinator and widespread intercourse schooling advocate on TikTok, mentioned she’s observed that her Gen Z followers are additional considerate concerning the intercourse they need.
“Even the kinds of sex that some older crowds may categorize as careless are approached with more communication and mutual respect than previous generations,” Haan mentioned. “Gen Z isn’t afraid to ask for what they really want.”
Plenty of shows widespread amongst Zoomers function plenty of intercourse and nudity, like “Euphoria” and the Spanish Netflix hit “Elite,” however these scenes have been widely criticized as gratuitous. That’s as a result of Gen Z is “pretty good at spotting inauthenticity” in onscreen intercourse, mentioned Tyler McCall, the novelist and journalist.
Many Gen Zers don’t look after a lot of the onscreen intercourse they encounter: 48.4% of respondents in a 2025 UCLA survey (which included members of each Gens Alpha and Z) said they felt that there was “too much sex and sexual content in TV and movies.”
But the intercourse on “Heated Rivalry” is enjoyable — it’s consensual, deeply gratifying for each events and a type of connection, Reynolds mentioned. On “Euphoria,” in the meantime, intercourse is sort of all the time entangled with habit, abuse and trauma, and options nudity that many viewers discover gratuitous.
Jean Twenge, a psychologist whose e book “Generations” investigates the variations between Gen Z and older age teams, attributes Gen Z’s tendency to be turned off by most intercourse in media to rising up amongst “ubiquitous pornography” and the shadow of the #MeToo movement, which uncovered acts of sexual misconduct by highly effective males.
“They’ve seen enough pornography online and want a different portrayal of sex when they watch a streaming series,” Twenge mentioned.
Huizinga feared “Heated Rivalry” can be “’Euphoria’-esque” earlier than she lastly watched it — a flashy try and “draw in viewers through shock value, gratuitous imagery and sex,” she mentioned.
Her sisters lastly satisfied her to provide it a attempt over Christmas. And regardless of its often corny dialogue, the present’s central romance and the benefit and lightness of the characters’ love virtually instantly received her over, she mentioned.
“It shows a younger generation of people who may not have had their first sexual experience or their relationship experience — you can maybe have it all — like, you can have this hot, exciting encounter, and then it can become something sweet and special and romantic, as well.”