Amber Glenn & Lena Lemon’s Lesbian ‘Heated Rivalry’ Video Is the Sapphic Retelling We Deserve
This is the Heated Rivalry lesbians want.
If you ever looked at Heated Rivalry and thought, “I wish we had a version of this about ice skating and women,” your wish has (sort of) been granted.
On Monday, HBO Max released a “love letter” to the hit hockey show from Olympic figure skating champion Amber Glenn and influencer Lena Lemon in the form of a short—but seriously impactful—enemies-to-lovers style video. And yes, it is set to “All the Things She Said.”
The video has racked up over 226,000 views on Instagram in less than a day, and the comment section is absolutely flooded with people demanding a proper series with this premise.
“Okay order up 6 episodes or something, we’re ready,” reads one of the most liked comments. Another viewer remarked, “now this is the heated rivalry i’d watch.”
“The yuri on ice we were all hoping for,” a third person agreed.
PROMO? Bitch give me this, I don’t wanna see those men! I WANT THE WOMEN!
— RatzieXO (@RaTziexo) July 1, 2026
OMG??? finally this song being used for yuri, as it was intended
— aisha⸆⸉☁️ (@everaishamore) June 30, 2026
Despite framing this as being promo for Heated Rivalry, what it actually reveals (and which we already knew) is that audiences are still clamoring for sapphic stories—and specifically, sapphic stories that aren’t just perfectly respectable, healthy relationships in a PG-rated setting.
Heated Rivalry getting the creative freedom, promotion, and viewership that it did should be a huge win for queer storytelling, but it’s yet to be seen whether Hollywood executives get the memo. In fact, so far, the lesson Hollywood seems to have taken from Heated Rivalry’s success is “people like hockey.” Now we’re left with a slew of heterosexual hockey stories on the docket while queer fans sit here pointing at a 70-second promo video screaming, “THIS IS WHAT WE WANT.”
While it’s an important distinction that Heated Rivalry was actually made for Canadian streamer Crave and merely distributed by HBO Max in the U.S., if HBO Max really wanted to step up their game, they would jump on this opportunity to give us the toxic lesbian rivals show of our dreams. Just promise you won’t cancel it after one season, please.
