What's Next For Hudson Williams After Heated Rivalry? New Role of Connor Storrie's Co-Star Revealed

Hudson Williams did what every breakout TV star is expected to do next: he stayed visible. But rather than jumping ship to a rival platform, the Heated Rivalry lead is doubling down on the Canadian streamer that helped make his name.

According to Variety, Hudson Williams has signed on to star in Yaga, a new mystery thriller for Bell Media-owned Crave. The eight-part series is being billed as the platform's first original half-hour drama and arrives hard on the heels of Heated Rivalry, the hockey romance that quietly turned into a global streaming success and a late acquisition win for HBO Max in the US.

For Crave, keeping Williams in the fold is more than a neat bit of casting continuity. It is a statement about how the service wants to grow—using familiar faces from a buzzy hit to front a riskier, genre-bending project that it can sell at home and abroad.

Hudson Williams Swaps Ice Rinks For Ancient Magic In Yaga

Yaga is adapted from a hit stage play by Canadian writer Kat Sandler, who will serve as writer and showrunner on the television version, Variety reported. The series is described as a small-town mystery thriller that reimagines the Slavic myth of Baba Yaga, trading hockey arenas and locker rooms for coastal fog, missing heirs and hints of the supernatural.

Williams joins an ensemble that gives the project an immediate international hook. Carrie-Anne Moss, still best known for The Matrix, co-stars alongside Schitt's Creek actor Noah Reid and Letterkenny's Clark Backo. Production is already under way, with David Frazee and Rachel Talalay co-directing, but Crave has yet to say where the show is shooting or when viewers can expect it to land.

The official logline, published by Variety, puts Reid's character at the centre of the story. Yaga follows Rapp, "a private investigator who arrives in a small coastal town to investigate the disappearance of a young heir to a powerful fishery, Henry Park (Hudson Williams). He finds himself at odds with an apprehensive local detective, Carson (Clark Backo), a charismatic university professor with a taste for younger men, Katherine (Carrie-Anne Moss), and a labyrinth of enigmatic suspects, secret lives, and ancient magic."

On paper, Williams' Henry Park is the missing person who sets the plot in motion rather than the sleuth driving the investigation. Even so, the role keeps his name high on the call sheet of a Crave original just months after Heated Rivalry introduced him to audiences well beyond Canada. That earlier series, also cited by Variety, followed a romance between rival ice hockey players and "put Crave Originals on the radar" after HBO Max snapped up US rights in a last-minute deal and then pushed it hard on the platform.

Bell Media clearly thinks there is value in that momentum. Justin Stockman, the company's vice president of content development and programming, presented Yaga as part of a deliberate tilt toward distinctive scripted projects.

"Featuring a truly exceptional cast, this series marks another exciting collaboration with Blink49 Studios," he said in a statement carried by Variety. "We're thrilled to bring Kat Sandler's bold vision to Crave with this first-ever half-hour drama, and to continue setting the bar for genre-bending, unexpected storytelling."

Why Yaga Matters For Hudson Williams And Crave

There is a certain inevitability to the move. After a breakout in a steamy, sport-adjacent romance, the next logical test for Hudson Williams is whether viewers will follow him into stranger territory. Yaga gives him exactly that: a lead role in a format shift for Crave—its first original half-hour drama—wrapped around an offbeat mythological premise.

For the streamer, the gamble is more strategic. Crave and parent company Bell Media are operating in a marketplace dominated by global giants but also by regional competitors trying to prove they can originate shows that travel. Leaning into a Baba Yaga-inspired thriller fronted by a returning star suggests they are betting on recognisable talent plus high-concept genre as a way to punch above their weight.

Sandler, whose play forms the basis of the series, is under no illusion about the leap she is making from theatre to television. "'Yaga' has evolved from myth to stage to my first greenlit series, reclaiming the wicked witch and reshaping her as an incendiary feminist antihero for our time," she said, according to Variety. "It reflects the kind of storytelling I love: propulsive, accessible, dark, funny, and unapologetically bold. I'm incredibly excited to bring Crave's first-ever half-hour drama to life alongside longtime collaborator Mackenzie Donaldson, Front Street Pictures, Blink49, and Bell Media."

That language—"genre-bending", "feminist antihero", "singular and fearless voice"—is doing more than selling one show. It is the vocabulary of a company trying to convince writers and producers that Crave is a home for ambitious projects, not just safe domestic fare.

The corporate backdrop matters here too. Variety noted that Bell Media invested in Blink49 Studios in June last year. Since then, the two have partnered on scripted series including Don't Even, Late Bloomer, Sight Unseen and The Trades, as well as docuseries Queen of the Castle. Yaga fits neatly into that pattern, with Blink49's Mackenzie Donaldson, Andrew Miller and Moss on board as executive producers and Charles Cooper producing.

Donaldson, Blink49's vice president of scripted television, did little to play down the ambition. "'Yaga' is the kind of ambitious, genre-smashing storytelling we're proud to support," she said. "Bringing Kat Sandler's singular and fearless voice to the screen for the first time is a thrill. This is a story that is truly unique and unmistakably hers – fresh, contemporary reimagining of a classic myth brought to life by an exceptional cast and creative collaborators."

Hudson Williams Vehicle Yaga Aimed At Global Buyers

Crave and Bell Media are not keeping Yaga to themselves for long. Variety reported that international distributor Sphere Abacus will take the series to next week's London TV Screenings, one of the spring's key shop windows for finished shows and projects still in production.

In a nod to the realities of global scheduling, Sphere Abacus plans to offer Yaga in its original half-hour format and re-cut as four one-hour episodes. That dual approach is designed to make it easier for broadcasters and streamers—many of whom still program primarily in hour-long blocks—to slot the show into existing grids without too much disruption.

So far, no overseas deals or partner platforms have been announced. Crave has also not confirmed whether Yagawill roll out simultaneously in multiple territories or follow the more traditional, market-by-market route. Episode runtimes have not been detailed beyond the "half-hour drama" label, and it is not yet clear whether the international cut will differ materially from the Canadian original.

What is clear is that Hudson Williams is again attached to a Crave title being primed for export, rather than a domestic-only play. After Heated Rivalry demonstrated that a Canadian-originated drama fronted by relative newcomers could find an audience on a major US streamer, Yaga becomes the next test case—this time with a mythic hook, a more stacked ensemble and a built-in sales push.

For Williams, that means his next act after Shane Hollander is not a pivot away from the platform that launched him, but a deeper entanglement with its brand of high-concept, character-led drama. Whether audiences make that journey with him from ice rinks to ancient magic will be the question Crave, Bell Media and their buyers in London are now quietly betting on.