season 2 should start with a cold open of troy barret being at his lowest, absolutely most awful behaviour. give me a five minute compilation of him cheering at dallas kent throwing slurs, of troy insulting fellow players maliciously, of them tormenting ryan price in the plane. and gimme glimpses of troy feeling conflicted, him avoiding his own eyes in the mirror, looking uncomfortable when dallas uses the f-slur but keeping his mouth shut. yes, I want to see him confronting dallas and calling him out later. but must importantly give me the absolute worst of troy, give me the ugly side because it is fucking important not only for his story but also for shane's and ilya's and we should see it right in the beginning.
we leave s1 in a kind of bittersweet but overall happy bubble. scott hunter is out and gets mostly positive resonance; shane and ilya are in love, even tho there a lot of obstacles in their ways but its all soft and glowy right. it could be so easy, the mhl suddenly becoming that happy queer friendly place, every player is supportive of their teammates, everyone gets their happy ending - so aside from their rivalry narrative, why are shane and Ilya even so worried of coming out? it kind of looks like fairytale doesn't it.
because it is definitely not. hockey is still a wildly homophobic sport, with decades of toxic masculinity, and troy's story shows us exactly that. s2 should definitely show us why it is still such a struggle for athletes, especially shane and ilya, to come out when there are teams that are still so openly and maliciously cultivate homophobia. yes, scott's coming out changed a lot for the better but it's far from good. we see that in the book that even many of his teammates don't come to celebrate with him. we see this later in the metro's abominable reaction to shane. dhowing how bad it still is in the toronto team right in the beginning creates the necessary contrast to the (lovely!) softness of the ending of s1 and shows the reality of the world shane and ilya live in (which is of course still better than our reality due to romance novel rules but yk) and it sets the tone for some relevant struggles ilya and shane face during The Long Game.
also, i really do like troy and I love his redemption arc but without seeing how bad he once was, his story wouldn't hit that hard, ngl. I really hope the long game gets two seasons and at least over the course of the first half, we see troy's and harris story. While Game Changer got it's own episode basically, I think it would work best if Role Model would get weaven into the plot of the second season / first half of tlg. of course shane and Ilya are the main story but I think it would work best showing bit and chunks of troy's character development here and there, how he build his relationship with harris and also his friendship with ilya.
so yeah in short, pls jacob give me 5 min straight of asshole Troy frist and then cut to Shane and Ilya and the rest of the gay mhl avengers working at the irina foundation.
