Jacob Tierney says the second season of Heated Rivalry is expected to arrive in April 2027, but he is not promising that the show will burn through all of The Long Game when it does. The creator said the new run may stop short of the full plot of Rachel Reid’s sixth and longest Game Changers novel, leaving room for more of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rosanov’s story later.
“Who said I’m doing it all? There’s a lot of material,” Tierney said in an interview, signaling that Season 2 could be only part of the adaptation plan. He also suggested that some storylines involving Shane and Ilya could carry into a subsequent season, making the long-anticipated return less of a final chapter than a step deeper into the relationship that has driven the series.
The timeline matters because The Long Game picks up directly after the events of Heated Rivalry, following Shane and Ilya beyond the first stage of their relationship. Tierney said he wanted to take that material seriously from the start. “When I talked to Rachel for the first time about Heated Rivalry, I wanted to take this seriously because I think that’s what this material deserves,” he said. He added that what drew him in was “knowing where it was going with The Long Game.”
That commitment is also shaping who is helping him tell it. Tierney brought in Michael Goldbach as co-writer for the upcoming season, praising him as “legitimately one of my favorite writers.” Goldbach, who wrote North of North, was described by Tierney as someone who “writes with so much heart and humor, and he’s so smart,” while also knowing “where you’re supposed to zag.”
Tierney has been unusually direct about the tone he wants. He called The Long Game “like sex Scenes from a Marriage,” a comparison that fits the balance he says the adaptation will keep: serious, but not static. He said the relationship will move through “ups and downs” and through the kind of self-examination that comes with living as a queer couple in public and in private.
He also made one thing clear about the destination. However long the road takes, he said the journey will end happily. For viewers waiting on Season 2, the question is no longer whether Shane and Ilya’s story continues. It is how many chapters Tierney and Goldbach decide to hold back before they let it finish.
