Heated Rivalry star François Arnaud opens up about getting emotional after seeing the Stanley Cup kiss 

Heated Rivalry is set to wrap up its first season with the final episode next week, however, the penultimate episode of the Canadian queer drama has managed to rock the Internet. The episode premiered with a perfect IMDb score, leaving behind Emmy-winning shows such as Severance.

The show has been perfectly building up with a determined ferocity towards the climax of the fifth episode, and the kiss between Scott and Kip in the final moments was the most deserved climax for this build-up. François Arnaud, who plays Scott on Heated Rivalry, opened up about his emotional experience of watching that scene for the first time.

Keep reading to find out more.

Heated Rivalry star François Arnaud opens up about the "epic" moment at the end of Episode 5

Heated Rivalry will wrap up an extremely heartfelt season with its fifth and final season, but the penultimate episode and the kiss that Scott and Kip share in the final moments have managed to take over the hearts of the audience.

The Canadian drama's narrative follows Ilya Rosanov (Connor Storrie) and Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), two closeted hockey players who are rivals on the rink but find themselves attracted to each other off the rink. However, Episode 3 of the story took a little turn off the rails when it focused on François Arnaud's Scott, another closeted hockey player, and Robbie G.K.'s Kip, an openly gay man falling for each other. However, that episode and their story end in pain as Scott, who isn't ready to step out of his closet, decides to stop putting Kip in a position where he has to shrink himself back into a closet.

The end of Episode 5 finds Scott and his team winning their hockey match and the championship as Kip watches from the stands. It is in that moment of loneliness in celebration, when Scott looks around to find nobody to celebrate with. The culmination of these feelings led him to proclaim his identity, his sexuality, and his love for Kip in front of everybody watching as he kissed him on the rink. In a conversation with Vulture, François Arnaud explained:

"It’s a moment where everything comes to a culmination for him. He sees everybody else on his team sharing immense joy and pride with their loved ones, and he just has loneliness. He’s both galvanized by the win and exhausted. He wants to take that full breath. It’s all happening so fast in his head, and there’s tremendous fear that he decides to conquer. Life isn’t fu**ing worth living if I can’t share it with that person."

Talking about the moment, François Arnaud explained in a conversation with Variety that he was also extremely emotional when he first watched that moment in all of its glory:

"Seeing it afterwards with all the people added with CGI, I felt like I was watching this at a real hockey game. It was like, ‘Fuck, this is epic.’ "

The moment turned out to be an inspiration for Ilya and Shane as well, as Ilya had also been struggling with the repercussions of anybody finding out about his feelings for Shane. Through Scott and Kip's moment, Ilya finds himself taking a reassuring step towards Shane and agreeing to an off-season getaway to his cottage:

"They see the possibilities for themselves. It becomes this reassuring aspect. That’s why Scott and Kip’s book in the original books is called ‘Game Changer.’ That’s really what he does for them. He changes the game."

Heated Rivalry will premiere its season finale on December 26 on HBO Max and Crave.

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