Hudson Williams could have stayed in the comfortable lane that Heated Rivalry built for him. He was the breakout star of one of the most-watched shows of 2025–26, a global heartthrob with a fanbase that turns Toronto streets into parties and a Canadian Screen Award for Best Lead Performer already on his shelf. The obvious move was another romance, another charming lead, another variation on Shane Hollander.
Instead, he chose Yaga—a show where he plays a missing fishery heir and his murdered lookalike, spends an episode as a castrated corpse on a morgue slab, and shares a “big” scene with Carrie-Anne Moss that she’s been teasing for months. It’s a deliberate pivot away from the role that made him, and it’s the clearest signal yet that Williams is building a career, not a brand.
Here’s what his post-Heated Rivalry trajectory reveals about where he’s going—and why Yaga is the right next step.
From Shane Hollander to a Dead Body on a Slab
The contrast is almost comical. In Heated Rivalry, Williams played Shane Hollander, a closeted Japanese-Canadian hockey star navigating a decade-long romance with his fiercest rival. He won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Lead Performer in a Drama Series at 25—the youngest winner ever—for a performance praised for its sensitivity and its portrayal of an autistic character. The show became a phenomenon, generating think pieces, fan edits, and a level of scrutiny that followed him to Paris, where he was chased to his apartment by autograph hunters.
In Yaga, he plays two characters: Henry Park, a young fishery heir who goes missing, and Logan Casey, his lookalike roommate whose naked, castrated body is discovered by a private investigator in the second episode. The role required him to lie on a slab in full prosthetic makeup for an extended shoot. “What a terrific guy, because he can’t go to the bathroom once that baby’s on,” director David Frazee told Entertainment Weekly. “It was entertaining, but not a complaint out of that dude.” His co-director, Rachel Talalay, added: “And then, I wanna say, the next day, [he’s] off to Paris Fashion Week.”
It’s a role that trades on none of the Heated Rivalry mystique. It’s dark, unglamorous, and physically demanding. It’s exactly the kind of choice an actor makes when he wants to be taken seriously rather than simply adored.
Why Yaga Was the Right Follow-Up
Yaga is not a safe project. It’s an eight-episode half-hour drama based on Kat Sandler’s 2019 play, a modern detective reimagining of the Baba Yaga legend set in a fictional coastal town on Vancouver Island. It premiered on Crave in Canada and AMC+ in the US on October 23, 2026, with a cast that reads like a who’s who of Canadian talent: Carrie-Anne Moss, Noah Reid, Clark Backo, Sheila McCarthy, Megan Follows.
The role was split into two characters before Williams was even cast—Sandler and her team needed “more suspects and a fuller town”—but the timing worked out. “It was really amazing kismet that he was available and wanted to come and play in the woods with us,” Sandler told CBC News.
Carrie-Anne Moss, who shares that much-teased “big” scene with him, was effusive. “He’s lovely,” she said at New York Comic Con. “And what more can I say? He’s a lovely guy. He’s talented.” When asked if she had any advice for him, she told CBC: “He doesn’t need it. He’s doing great.”
The reviews have been mixed—IndieWire argued his “creepy dual roles can’t save a witchy mystery that’s not creepy enough”—but the consensus is that Williams himself is the reason to watch. He’s not coasting. He’s stretching.
The Writer: A Movie About an Ex-Hockey Player
Williams isn’t just expanding his acting career. He’s expanding his creative output.
He’s currently writing his first feature film—and it has an uncomfortable parallel to Heated Rivalry. “One character is an ex-hockey player,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “We were like, ‘But if we have this hockey player and then you’ve done a hockey show…'” He admitted the team considered other sports, but the character “just made way more sense being an ex-hockey player. It’s almost like you have to bust through the prison of your own mind.”
Before Heated Rivalry, Williams wrote and directed short films—Soakers, Buttons, Inside Augustine Mendoza’s Quotidian Apartment—often collaborating with friends on minimal budgets while supporting himself as a server at the Old Spaghetti Factory in New Westminster. He described that period to The Mirror as “paycheck to paycheck,” but also as formative. “I loved it. That was how I paid my rent.”
The feature is still in development, and his team declined to elaborate on the plot. But the impulse is telling: he’s not waiting for roles to be written for him. He’s writing his own.
The Slate: Eight Upcoming Projects and Counting
Williams’ IMDb lists eight upcoming projects. The most significant:
Heated Rivalry Season 2 — currently filming in Canada. Williams has been candid about the challenge of returning to Shane Hollander after the world had already decided who Shane was. “Am I doing a Shane impression?” he recalled thinking after his first scene back. “I was like, ‘Oh I’m losing you, I’m losing you.'” He credited showrunner Jacob Tierney with making the set feel “as tiny as it was in season one.”
Apparatus — a thriller from Canadian writer-director Sofia Banzhaf, starring opposite Dylan O’Brien. Announced in March 2026.
Tyrant — a culinary thriller starring Charlize Theron, Julia Garner, Demi Moore, and Omar Apollo.
The Altruists — a Netflix series starring Julia Garner and Anthony Boyle.
He’s also walked his first fashion show in Milan, wielded the Olympic torch alongside Heated Rivalry co-star Connor Storrie, and made his late-night talk show debut. The range is deliberate. The hockey show is the anchor, but it’s not the whole ship.
The Risk: Fame at a Scale That Reshapes Memory
The most revealing thing Williams has said about his post-Heated Rivalry life is about memory itself.
“It’s weird that our memory of playing season one isn’t just our true memory of showing up and doing the scenes,” he said at TIFF. “It’s having watched them cut together. It’s fan reactions. Our memory isn’t ours, it’s everyone’s. It has been abstracted and twisted and it has become this weird amalgamation of a memory.”
That’s the paradox of his position. He became famous for playing a character, and now the character has colonized his own recollection of playing him. Yaga is an escape from that—a role so different that it can’t be absorbed into the Heated Rivalry narrative. It’s a reset, not a sequel.
Whether it works depends on whether audiences will follow him into the dark. The early signs are encouraging: Yaga debuted to strong viewership, and the discourse around his performance has focused on his range rather than his abs. But the show is also a test of whether his fanbase is loyal to him or to the fantasy he embodied.
Hudson Williams
is not trying to be the next heartthrob. He’s trying to be the next actor—the kind who writes his own material, takes roles that scare him, and refuses to let a single breakout define him.
Yaga is the first step in that project. It’s messier than Heated Rivalry. It’s darker. It requires him to play two characters, one of whom is a corpse. And it’s the kind of choice that signals a long career rather than a moment.
“He doesn’t need advice,” Carrie-Anne Moss said. “He’s doing great.”
She’s right. The question isn’t whether Williams can survive leaving Shane Hollander behind. It’s whether Hollywood is ready for what he does next.
