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A closeted Russian hockey star was written as a fictional love interest. In today’s Russia, he is being treated like contraband hope.
Heated Rivalry, a Crave/HBO Max series built around an enemies-to-lovers romance between Canadian player Shane Hollander and Russian star Ilya Rozanov, has surged into global pop culture in recent weeks.
What has startled observers is where the show appears to be landing hardest: inside Russia, where LGBTQ+ visibility is increasingly punished by law and where Western streaming services largely operate in fragments, if at all.
The claim sounds counterintuitive until you look at the mechanics of modern fandom under repression: people watch anyway, they talk anyway, and a character who feels honest becomes a symbol, whether authorities want him there or not.
A Russian Audience, Watching Without Permission
Out.com reports that Heated Rivalry has become a meaningful hit among queer Russians despite having no official legal distribution inside the country.
The spark for that reporting is an essay by Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar in Vanity Fair, where he describes the series’ Russian fandom as unusually intense and deeply personal.
Zygar points to the show’s rating on Kinopoisk, a major Russian film and TV platform often compared to Rotten Tomatoes, where Heated Rivalry is listed at 8.5, ahead of titles like Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, both at 8.3.
Zygar frames the number for what it likely represents: not a nationwide measurement, but a loud signal from a self-selecting audience that sought the show out on purpose.
That distinction matters because Russia is not an open entertainment market for queer storytelling anymore. The audience is there, but for many viewers, reaching the story involves piracy, private sharing, and deliberate risk-taking.
Why Ilya Rozanov Feels Real to Russian Viewers
The show’s Russian lead, Ilya Rozanov, is written as a man trained to survive by being unreadable: emotionally guarded, disciplined, and careful with intimacy. For Western viewers, that can read as familiar romance tension. For queer Russians, Zygar argues, it resembles a lived script.
In his Vanity Fair essay, Zygar says he recognizes Ilya immediately, and not just as a character. He describes growing up in a society where coming out felt impossible and where homosexuality carried social ruin long after Soviet laws criminalizing it were gone.
His most provocative claim is not about television. It is about psychological recognition. In a country where public role models were rare, especially in sports, an openly queer narrative centered on a Russian protagonist is not simply escapism. It is an alternate map of what adulthood could look like.
The Crackdown That Turned Queerness Into “Extremism”
Russia’s anti-LGBTQ legal framework has been tightening for more than a decade, but the past few years have pushed it into a harsher phase.
- In 2013, Russia passed a federal “ propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations ” law aimed at restricting what minors can see or hear.
- In 2022, the state expanded that ban to effectively cover adults as well, widening the scope of what can be treated as illegal “propaganda” across media and public life.
- In November 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court labeled what it called the “international LGBT movement” as “extremist,” a step condemned by major human-rights bodies as a sweeping threat to association and expression.
Human Rights Watch warned the extremist designation jeopardizes virtually any form of LGBTQ+ rights activity, since “extremism” in Russia can trigger severe legal consequences and broad enforcement discretion.
The UN’s human rights chief similarly warned that the ruling could lead to bans of groups and associations, with people who engage them facing criminal exposure.
Enforcement Is Not Theoretical, It’s Active
What makes the moment particularly tense is how quickly the legal climate has moved from threat to practice.
In May 2025, Reuters reported that a Russian court fined Apple 7.5 million rubles (about $93,500 at the time) for violating Russia’s “LGBT propaganda” law, without publicly detailing the specific content involved.
In January 2026, The Moscow Times reported that authorities pressed administrative charges against executives at major Russian streaming services for alleged violations of the “propaganda” laws, citing reporting by Mediazona.
Human Rights Watch has also tracked what it describes as a rising toll after the extremist designation, including convictions tied to alleged participation in the so-called “International LGBT Movement.”
The pattern is consistent: enforcement pressure is not restricted to activists and organizations. It reaches platforms, content distributors, and anything that can be framed as public visibility.
A Love Story Shaped by Geopolitics
Sports have become one of the cleanest case studies in how Russia’s policies ripple beyond its borders. Out.com points to NHL Pride night backlash in 2023, when some Russian players refused to wear Pride warm-up jerseys, and some teams cited safety concerns connected to Russia’s legal climate.
That episode exposed an uncomfortable reality for international leagues: even symbolic gestures can collide with state power when athletes and their families remain vulnerable to retaliation.
In that context, a drama about a closeted Russian hockey star is inherently political even if the writers did not set out to make it so. The show has been received as entertainment in many places, and as a risky mirror in others.
Queer Culture as Shared Contraband
Zygar’s core argument is blunt: queer Russians are finding ways to watch Heated Rivalry because the series offers something their public life tries to erase, a visible narrative where a Russian man is allowed to want love and still be human afterward.
Out.com leans into the same point: the more the state constricts representation, the more meaning audiences attach to the act of seeking it out.
It is easy to dismiss a fandom spike as internet noise. The legal environment makes that harder. When a government defines LGBTQ+ presence as “propaganda,” then escalates it into “extremism,” even a streaming romance can become a quiet referendum on who gets to exist publicly.
What the “Russia Loves This Show” Narrative Gets Wrong
The most important caveat is methodological: a high rating on a popular platform is not proof of broad cultural acceptance. It can reflect a concentrated, motivated audience. It can reflect fandom behavior. It can reflect community clustering.
Yet the point still stands even with skepticism applied. A self-selecting group choosing queer content, rating it highly, circulating it informally, and discussing it in a hostile environment is itself news.
Russia’s LGBTQ+ crackdown has pushed visibility into smaller rooms and darker corners. Heated Rivalry did not create those corners, but it has become one of the stories people are carrying into them.
