Hi and welcome to K Let's Talk, the podcast where we break down
storytelling across books, television and film with a
special love for book to screen adaptation.
Here we talk about craft, character arcs, structure,
dialogue, visual language, and the creative choices that shape
how a story lands. If you like thoughtful,
conversational, deep dives into the stories you can't stop
thinking about, you're in the right place.
Let's talk. Hello everyone, welcome back to
the podcast today. I am very excited to record this
episode. It's going to be a very long
one. I have written multiple pages on
the character of Yuna Hollander from Heated Rivalry, Shane
Hollander's mother, and a character that I have seen a lot
of discourse on since the show aired.
And people who have read the book, people who haven't read
the book, they all have varying opinions on Yuna and her
relationship to Shane. And all of it I find very
interesting. And I wanted to do sort of a
deep dive into my interpretation of her character, my feelings
about her parenting style, her dynamics with Shane, her
dynamics with David, how Shane is very much influenced directly
by Yuna. And so understanding Yuna allows
you to understand Shane better and all of those things We're
very wordy. So I figured I would sit down
and record my thoughts and put it into a formal podcast episode
for people to listen to if they are so interested.
So understanding Yuna's arc, I think it's important to
recognize that we get context from the source material, which
is the the book Heated rivalry. Then we get the context provided
in the show and the scenes that you is in during the show.
And then the third element that I consider is where as a viewer
and someone who is partaking in both the book and show medium,
you can draw inferences and fill in gaps based on what we do know
and the concrete evidence we do have.
And so I certainly have done that with my interpretation of
her character. That is not to say that my
opinion is the only one that has merit.
I think that you can interpret all of these characters through
your own lens and that's what makes them so compelling.
So my interpretation admittedly has a lot to do with my personal
experiences in the sport of hockey and a lot of the
parenting that takes place in the sport of hockey or in sports
in general. But again, I'm drawing from both
the book, the show, and then using my own experiences to fill
in some of the gaps that that show up here and hopefully build
a broader picture of the character.
So Yuna Hollander has largely built her son.
She is the architect of Shanes life by the time we meet him in
episode 1, and she understands better than anyone that given
her race and Shanes mixed race background that Shane has to
work twice as hard to be half as visible.
And she understands that his talent alone cannot protect him
from being looked at under a microscope and held to different
expectations. She knows that his hockey
excellence does not and will not insulate him in the same way,
especially in a sport like hockey which is so white.
And that would have made her grateful that he has his
father's last name, something that Shane mentions to Rose in
episode 4. And he states quite candidly
that his last name did offer him protection from the kids who
were bullying and teasing his other Asian teammate.
So it's no surprise that one of the ways that Yuna loves Shane
is by anticipating the world around him and trying to outpace
it. And she is trying to manage his
anxiety by eliminating obstacles and hurdles that might trigger
it for him. That would present like absolute
protection, but ultimately would lead Shane to not be able to
manage his own emotions and anxiety fully, which we do see
play out on screen. Yuna's belief system is based on
the notion that control equals safety, which is exactly what we
see Shane embodying throughout this entire series.
Yuna handles Shane's anxiety by taking action, by planning, by
solving problems, and we see David approach it differently.
He is much more steady, quiet, stable.
He encourages Shane to talk about his emotions and work
through them, and that's something that is a mirror to
how Ilya helps Shane within their dynamic as their
relationship develops. But by doing that, Yuna largely
makes herself an almost indispensable to Shane.
He relies upon her for so many facets of his life, and that
makes her role as mother synonymous with management quite
often. And so when Shane's career takes
off, she would be clocking out of her first job as mom and
clocking into her second, which would have been building Shane a
future that she knows will last longer than his career as a
professional athlete. That means putting the right
opportunities in front of him, setting him up for long term
success. She has planned that through the
brands that he works with, through the contracts that he
signs. And since Shane is largely a
shy, quiet, sometimes awkward at times young man, she took over
that responsibility and that representative part for him,
which puts her largely in control over the way that Shane
is pitched and presented to the world around him from the time
he's quite young. What you know doesn't see is
that in constructing Shane's safety, she has also constructed
a very specific framework for him to operate within.
One with very clear rules and a lot of fear that he would feel
around it. Because it's a framework that
feeds into the need for unparalleled discipline for a
don't rock the boat, keep your head down type of attitude.
Which mirrors that of hockey culture for sure, but also is
representative of his Asian background as well.
And he would be trying to chase this standard his whole life.
And every time he would reach one peak, another goal within
his career or socially would be presented to him.
And that would be compounded by the fact that the image created
for him falls within a very masculine, straight archetype
that hockey has always pushed within its culture.
And so as Shane would be going through this process of self
discovery that we see playing out in the show, that would
become a standard that Shane knows he will always fall short
on. Shane being lonely or isolating
himself could be viewed as OK, so long as it makes Shane feel
regulated and he says it's helping him with his
performance. And so him isolating, not being
able to form close friendships with people, those behaviors
would all seem like necessary constructs for him to survive
and feel safe. And so for Yuna, that's all
she's ever wanted for Shane is for him to feel and be safe.
So by the time we meet Shane in episode 1, Yuna is involved in
every decision that he makes. She knows everything going on in
his life, everything that matters to him, or so she
thinks. In the first scene where Shane
and Yuna and David are having lunch, we can see how Yuna and
David are positioned as Shane's primary and only support system
that's shown visually. He's centered in the frame
between them. And he starts to talk excitedly
about YouTube. And Yuna pivots the conversation
to hockey while David tries to encourage Shane to talk about
something that he's been doing in his free time outside of the
sport. And this scene effectively
showcases their differing approaches to parenting Shane.
So where David tries to talk to Shane about anything but his
hockey career, Yuna always dives head first into it.
We can also see in that scene how Ilya is framed as a threat
by Yuna, since he is Shane's rival and Ilya is someone who
increases risk with the way he talks, with the way he's
positioned himself against Shane in the scoring race, with the
way he's perceived as a ladies man.
And so for Yuna, hating Ilya is partaking in that narrative,
yes, but it would also feel like a form of protection to try and
keep Shane and his image away from this person who embodies
everything Shane is not and is trying not to be.
Like outside of the business end of things.
If Shane ever implied to her that he had been triggered by
Ilya, then naturally Yuna would take that and run with it.
At the MLH Awards, we can see how David is much more relaxed
in that awards environment, while Yuna is standing and
conversing with people there, and it's showing us how she's
always an extension of Shane wherever they go.
You can infer that she is talking to this person about
him, trying to put him in a better standing somehow,
discussing the season or next season, and that sort of
pressure is like a pressure cooker for someone like Shane
because he'd be wondering what is being said about him as a
player and what he would need to adhere to or accomplish next.
He is also so young at this point in the story, so it is not
abnormal at all for Yuna to be trying to make sure that Shane's
career is starting off in a way that best positions him for the
rest of his career. We see that while Shane is at
the Olympics, Yuna is texting Shane, reminding him that he
needs to be wearing his Reeboks again.
So even though Yuna's not on our screen here, that pressure that
Shane would be feeling to maintain the standard that Yuna
is pushing on him, it's obvious she texts him is everything goes
OK. Don't forget to wear your
Reeboks when he's in another country competing for the
Olympics. And that's what she's worrying
about, and so therefore Shane has to worry about it too.
When Shane chooses to ignore her text and send a message to Ilya
instead, it's one of the few times we see Shane's priorities
shifting away from appeasing his mother, and it shows us that
he's growing up and he's becoming his own person
independent of her. But her being in a managerial
role as well as his mother blurs a lot of the lines in that
relationship development. In the opening montage of
Episode 4, we see Yuna on set with Shane during a commercial
shoot for an orange soda brand, and this scene in particular is
a really great metaphor for Shane's persona not aligning
with him as a person. And we know that Shane almost
exclusively drinks ginger ale, so aligning himself with this
brand is strictly for the contract and the paycheck, and
less about choosing a brand that aligns with who he really is and
what he represents. Yuna managing his life in this
way and putting him into all of these advertising opportunities
is another example of how Shane has very little control over his
personal life. But that it's not entirely due
to Yuna herself. Because Shane still has not
learned how to say no at the this point or how to create a
boundary. And so it's easy to pin Yuna as
this career driven mom manager, but Shane is also not willing to
risk disappointing her so she would not know that her behavior
is affecting him negatively because Shane has never said as
much to her. During the second scene where
David, Yuna and Shane have lunch in episode 4, Shane is not
acting like himself because this is coming on the heels of the
tuna melt scene and Yuna notices this immediately.
He is tighten his body, shorten his responses and it's the first
time we've ever seen Shane behave in this way with his
parents. And it's because of Ilia, yes,
but also in part due to the pressure that Yuna helped
create. She's telling him about the
Rolex deal, the expectation that he be in the box for Wimbledon.
And for the first time, Shane is expressing that he might want to
do something for himself with his limited free time over the
summer. He only gets two weeks off and
he might not want to check a box and be the face of diversity and
inclusivity. And this is an important
conversation because his mixed race background doesn't come up
a lot in the book, but here they allow him to comment on it and
how it feels for him. And so Yuna does what she always
does, which is tries to adjust the system that Shane is
existing within. She suggests he loosen up with a
glass of wine, try to be more flexible with his schedule, to
deviate from his training schedule.
But in her doing that, she breaks a rule she taught him to
rely on. Because even though Shane
doesn't know he's autistic, routine and predictability are
now essential to Shane. It feels destabilizing when the
person who built the rules, which is Yuna, suddenly acts
like they don't matter. And even though she wants to
encourage Shane to have a life outside of hockey and fill it
with exciting opportunities that he has earned, what comes out
instead is a joke about sitting beside a Swedish Princess and it
lands wrong for reasons she can't quite fully understand
yet. But we can see in that scene
that Yuna and David both sense something is off.
But for Yuna, it would also feel like Shane is slipping away and
further retreating into himself. And that might scare her more
than she'd be willing to admit. Because Yuna tries to almost
bait Shane into going to Wimbledon by saying that he
would be seated next to this Swedish Princess and she is
putting his desire to not attend 2nd to the persona he's trying
to uphold. And the scene does double duty
because it can be later interpreted as another moment
where David and Yuna would likely pick up on the fact that
Shane doesn't seem to have much interest in women when they
mention them to him. When Yuna tells Shane, I don't
want you to lie, that's not who you are, she means that because
as far as she knows, Shane has always been painfully honest in
every aspect of his life. He's never given her any reason
to believe he's not been honest with her, and this would be the
first time where she may question that.
But the dialogue here is important because also for the
first time, Yuna's responses are implying that she might be
wondering if the system she shaped Shane in might be hurting
him too, which would be unbearable to her.
Then Shane has a girlfriend. He meets Rose Landry, they
immediately start dating. And so for Yuna and David, Shane
would suddenly have a girlfriend who happens to be a famous
actress. And this would likely feel like
confirmation that all of the work Shane put into his career
and into himself has worked, and all the ways she guided him,
too. Because he is this thriving,
loved, successful boy in all the ways the world understands,
which is all she's ever wanted for him.
And you can imagine that. The conversation where Shane
shares the news about Rose would have likely been one of
necessity before the tabloids reported their romance all over
the Internet and all over the news.
So Yuna would have been informed of the story before she was
informed of Rose existing as a person of importance in Shanes
life. That would largely imply that
while they were getting to know each other, Shane did not share
that with his mom and Yuna used to be the person he told things
to 1st. So she would be starting to
adjust to a new norm where her 20 something year old son has
his own life and his own relationship that he doesn't
always share with her. For Yuna, as Shane's mother, she
would want the person dating him to continue to pour into him the
same way that she and David have.
Yuna and David have been the only people to pour into Shane
like that until he's seen abruptly dating Rose Landry, who
is a person they don't know beyond her social status and
celebrity and likely never meet. And this change in their roles
would have likely been jarring for Yuna to realize that Shane
does, in fact, have a life outside of her and David, after
he has spent his entire life in their orbit and under their
constant supervision. David, transversely, would have
probably been thrilled. And by this point, supervising
and caring for and organizing Shane's life is largely Yuna's
identity. So if that pattern started to
shift, it would feel destabilizing to her.
Because, like Shane, she likes patterns, she likes
predictability, she likes control.
It's similar to how Shane is destabilized whenever Ilya's
patterns start to shift. What's often forgotten about, I
think, is Shane's accident and how it would have affected both
Yuna and David. And we know that they would have
gone to the hospital to be with him.
And we know that they would have seen him there on those drugs
the same way that he was with Ilya, which is completely
unfiltered and unguarded. And in the show, Shane tells the
medic on the ice, tell him I'm OK, He'll worry.
And the medic says to Shane, his father will be getting a phone
call. And Shane corrects him and says,
not him, Ilya. And this is how we as the
viewers would be able to identify that Shane's priorities
are shifting because where it was always his parents first,
Ilya is now at the top of the list at that point in the story.
And Shane is deeply layered. And much of the time, he is
masking himself from the world, trying to fit into the framework
that Hockey and Yuna have created for him and set for him.
And so when he's on these painkillers, it peels away the
layers that he would have learned to build around himself.
And he would have been behaving very childlike around Yuna
again, like he was when he was small and he didn't need to have
such a hard exterior. And no doubt that would make
Yuna feel obviously immensely protective of him and
reminiscent of him as a child. But she would also likely grieve
how guarded he is now comparatively.
This version in the hospital is the version I think she wishes
he could have been when talking to them at lunch in episode 4.
Someone who's able to loosen up and enjoy things more.
And Shane hasn't been this way for years, and that would be a
hard realization for Yuna to grapple with.
It would also push her and David further into wanting their son
to find happiness with someone, whether that be Rose or someone
else. And we see that in the book and
in episode 5 when Shane talks to Rose and tells her that his
mother has been asking about them and whether or not they're
going to be getting back together.
When the nurse would have mentioned that Ilya, Rose and
all visited Shane in the hospital, you know, would only
register that as a data point. It would be important to know
and acknowledge, but it wouldn't be meaningful to her yet.
And she has still bought into the narrative that her son and
all Of Montreal has maintained throughout his career, which is
that Shane doesn't like him. And in the book, after Shane and
Ilya met in the World Juniors in 2008, Shane had actually got
back into the car with his parents.
And when they asked him how Ilya was, Shane told them he was kind
of an asshole. And so Yuna has really never had
any reason to believe otherwise, as compounded by the way Ilya
has this personified version of him.
In direct opposition to Shane in every way, and something Shane
himself has never pushed back on or corrected her on either, is
that they are rivals. So by the time we reach episode
5 and Scott Hunter comes out very publicly and absolutely
undeniably, Yuna has suspected that her son, who is often alone
and no longer dating Rose and keeps distance with his
teammates and largely keeps to himself, may be gay and beside
her on the couch The entire time he's been home since his injury,
he has been lost in his phone texting someone, and when asked,
he defaults to Hayden. But Hayden has four children.
She would know that he cannot be texting Shane all day and night.
So when Scott kisses Kip and that kind of moment on screen
happens, it would rearrange everything in Shane's life.
And Yuna knows that because Shane is a professional hockey
player. This is the first professional
hockey player to come out in this way and to come out at all.
And so Yuna has been thinking maybe Shane could be gay.
This is a big deal. So when Shane runs out of the
room to take the call, Yuna would acknowledge that something
is happening without her. He is removing himself from the
room so that she and David cannot overhear him and he
keeping something private from them.
She doesn't know what that is. She doesn't know what Shane
thinks or feels about the situation because he is sharing
less and less with them, and that would likely be painful for
Yuna. When Shane then arrives at their
cottage with Ilya, Yuna is put in this sort of role reversal
with David because she's the one Shane is nervous to confront.
She's the one Shane is bracing for impact with, and she's the
one who initiates the conversation and asks, tell us
what exactly? She also is the one that looks
at Ilya with this extremely defensive, protective demeanor
because Ilya again is perceived as a threat.
When Shane tells his parents that he is gay and that Ilia is
visiting him, Yunas internal narrative is likely flooded with
questions. Why didn't he tell me?
What did I do, What did I say? How did I not see this?
Why did he not think he could tell me?
Her immediate response is but you hate him.
And Yuna is not asking this literally.
She is trying to validate her own behavior within their
revelry. Her reality is now totally off
base. Everything she thought about her
son's own career is now suddenly flipped on his head because so
much of Shane's career has been central to this rivalry with
Ilya. So when Shane double S down and
tells his parents that he's in love with Ilya Rosenhoff, Yuna
is trying to wrap her head around this moment.
And it has less to to do with Shane being gay and more to do
with her not knowing that this rivalry was manufactured and
then having to reframe Shane's entire hockey career.
And her love and support of Shane is very clear here because
we see her touching his shoulder when she gets up from the table
more than once. She very calmly tells him that
this is something they might have been suspecting for a
while. But in this scene, Yuna would be
revising every memory, every assumption, every conversation
she has had with Shane about Ilya.
She'd be replaying every game he ever played against him in her
head. And the show makes a really
important change to the dialogue here, because in the book, Yuna
is the one who says, we know you pretty well, Shane here.
By giving that dialogue to David, it's almost reaffirming
the way Yuna would be feeling, which is that she had devoted so
much of herself to making sure that his life was insulated and
protected and as successful as possible, and yet not knowing
this part of him would feel like failure to her.
Her focus being on building that framework had made her blind to
things, but it had also made Shane so afraid of disappointing
her that if he were to venture outside of that framework, she
would be discouraged or upset. And if Shane has been living a
lie, then Yuna must believe she is in some way the architect of
of it. So Yuna goes into distraction
mode, getting up from the table, getting everyone to drink.
And it shows us how she distracts herself whenever she's
overwhelmed with emotions. And we have seen Shane do this
when he's overwhelmed as well. And she puts her hand on his
shoulder again as she walks past him because again, this is more
about her than it is about Shane.
But he doesn't know that. And so over the course of their
conversation at dinner, Yuna would be trying to figure out
how she can control things and make them easier for Shane.
And her first instinct is always going to be protect him and in
his legacy, the legitimacy of his career and also the
narrative of the rivalry because fans and their two teams and the
media have relied upon it for years.
And so she starts to stress test Shane.
Because if Shane had ever softened the way he played
against Ilya or the outcome of certain games had been affected
by him being in love with Ilya, then Shane's career could be
reinterpreted entirely and his success would be brought into
question. And those questions are a way
for her to audit and retroactively reassess Shane's
career in her own mind. But for her to imply that he
would have let Ilya win would be very cutting, because like Yuna,
Shane is built on excellence and discipline, and so the
implication that he is not those things because he loves Ilya
would be deeply offensive. Winning is fundamental to her
identity, and Shane got that from her.
And Yuna also knows that the parameters Shane is existing
within are unthinkably challenging.
Hockey culture has a long standing and narrow idea of what
being a hockey player is supposed to look like.
One that no doubt she had courage Shane to abide by and he
was already a step behind being Asian Canadian in a
predominantly white sport. Hockey is considered a blue
collar sport. It is largely inaccessible and
before Shane's ever drafted, he does not fit the mold of a
hockey player prototype. They are stoic.
They are tough. They are emotionally restrained.
It's why he meditates. It's why he does yoga.
It's also understandable that he becomes very emotionally
restrained the older he gets and the further into hockey he
advances. It's also why he follows strict
regimes and diet. He is the captain of the oldest
team in the league with a decades long rivalry with
Boston, and Ilya sits as the face of that team.
Shane is the face of the franchise, and as captain, his
leadership would be called into question anytime that team
underperforms. And Yuna knows that any player
that ventures outside of the lines of the franchise and the
league's expectations would receive backlash.
But a player on Montreal? The captain Of Montreal being
gay is already a venture outside those lines, but being in love
with the captain of Boston is a whole other thing entirely.
And in hockey, the fans feel like they are owed a lot from
their teams. Fans who would have invested
emotionally, financially to attend these games Between them,
who have generationally given into that long standing Boston
and Montreal rivalry with one another, who followed these
teams throughout their lives, they would feel like they were
duped. The idea that the 2 captains and
central figures within that rivalry did not share in the
same emotional reality as the fans would feel destabilizing
for a lot of them. I think learning that a core
belief as a fan was actually performative would lead them to
go back and rewind, watch old games and look for signs or
reinterpret moments like the All Star game kiss or moments of
sportsmanship that might be now seen as deceptive.
They would start watching interviews and analyzing body
language under a microscope and Yuna would know because Yuna is
one of those fans. She says at the beginning of the
show that hockey is one of the ways that she learned to feel
Canadian. It's given her a community and
an identity to align with. And much like how Scott in
episode 3 expressed that hockey became his family when his
parents died, the culture of the sport facilitates that.
The culture she bought into and brought her son into and built
him up within can now be the exact thing that can hurt him
the most. And it already has.
And so has she. And she let those biases make
her blind to her own son and judge the man that her son loves
in a way that she is beginning to see as totally unfair.
And she asks so many hard questions of Ilya, of their
timeline, of his intentions with their relationship, because she
wants reassurance, but also because she's desperately trying
to defend her own reality. When Shane and Ilya are
answering David's question about how they plan to keep doing this
until they retire. And Yuna says, Oh no, that's
sad. This is her saying the quiet
part out loud. Shane tells her that they can't
just come out and announce it, which is him setting a boundary
or a rule with his parents and also with Ilya by trying to
manage the risk just like Yuna does.
It's only when Shane and Ilya both admit to themselves and to
Yuna and David that they've only ever been in love with one
person, which is each other, and have been doing this quietly,
secretly, since they were 18 years old, that Yuna's emotions
win over her and she has to leave the table and go outside.
Because Yuna has done nothing but love her son and support
him. And yet it has led to this
outcome where he's been hurting for nearly a decade and could
not go to her for comfort or for help.
And this backlash is also something that she cannot
insulate Shane from. And that reflection could very
quickly become self loathing because she has let him down and
made him feel unsafe to confide in her.
And despite her best intentions, there has been deep damage
caused by her actions and it would be harder to rectify those
emotions because none of that damage was intentional.
In fact, she had gone out of her way to prevent this very thing
from happening to her own son by the outside world.
And so when Shane says I tried, that breaks her.
Because Yuna has always valued effort and sacrifice and
discipline. And now she sees that the
greatest effort her son has ever made was not on the ice, but in
living a self sacrificing life that keeps everyone else around
him comfortable and puts him last.
It wouldn't be until Shane tells Yuna that he really did try.
That she would understand the depths of that damage.
And that her demands of discipline and mental toughness,
resilience and fitting into this mold would have boxed him in his
own mind so deeply that he was afraid to share himself fully
with himself and his own parents.
And that their unit of three that has been so foundational
for all of them did not feel like a safe haven for him to
retreat to when dealing with these very real fears that he
has had of being gay in a sport that does not invite it.
And this is, I think, in some small way, what helps Yuna to
let go of the idea that loving Shane has to mean shaping him
and trying to control so many areas of his life.
Loving him now means listening to what he needs and then
executing on that. And so she jumps into planning
mode because that is what she does when there is a problem.
It's what she's always done. It's also what Shane does and
did with Ilya in the same finale episode.
But now when Shane course corrects her at the table and
tells her that he doesn't want to come out yet and that he and
Ilya just want a future, Yuna is willing to meet him where he is
and not force Shane to where she thinks he should be.
Then you think about the fact that Ilya Rosenov is in her
house, eating her food, drinking her husband's vodka and existing
in front of her not as a persona or an abstraction, but as a real
person who loves her son, who is claiming that his career comes
second to his love for her son. And she would then watch Shane
slipping into a panic attack and Ilya calms him very quickly and
easily. And it would be a display of the
very deep trust and emotional security and safety that Shane
has found within Ilya. And she would be watching Ilya
understand Shane's anxiety spiral.
And when David and Yuna prepare to intervene, we see Yuna freeze
like Shane so often does. Which to me would imply that
perhaps in the past, anytime Shane might have been anxious
before, Yuna was not the one to provide that type of comfort, or
at least not comfort him in this particular way.
And that is not to say that she was wrong in that I think Yuna
tried to manage Shane's anxiety externally by controlling as
much of the world around him as she could, rather than go into
the anxiety with him and help him come out of.
Whereas Ilya loves Shane from within his anxiety, he doesn't
try to change Shane to fit within the world around him.
He reframes and reshapes the world around Shane so that he
can breathe inside of that anxiety.
This relationship between Ilya and Shane has been happening for
near a decade, and this is not a face.
This is not confusion. Ilya admits he's never loved
anyone else but Shane, and Shane has reciprocated that.
Ilya has committed to being with Shane, moving his whole life.
He's in love, they're in love. And David and Yuna have only
ever wanted that for their son. And they would want to sing that
from the rooftops and proudly support and proclaim that this
is who their son actually is and this is the partner that he's
chosen. And I think that that's obvious
that they, they are so happy that Shane has finally found
someone who loves him like they do and wants to take care of
him, but they can't share that with the world yet.
David and Yuna's secret is necessary still, and I think
that's what helps Yuna understand clearly that Shane
was hiding to protect the one relationship where he has felt
understood, and that included hiding from her.
And yes, a large part of it was also to protect himself as he
worked through his feelings and his sexuality, and to protect
his career and the reputation that he and Yuna have spent his
whole life building and shaping and perfecting.
But now he has a relationship that also needs to be protected
so that it cannot be ruined by the outside world.
And that hurts. And Yuna is determined to
protect it too. So when we see Yuna standing on
her steps, planning to meet her son and his boyfriend for dinner
tomorrow at 5:00 and saying that she will text 1st and respecting
his boundary and his request for privacy, it's because she has
made peace with the fact that she is not going to be the
architect of his future now, but his mom, who is following his
lead for the first time and you know, will stumble and she will
fall as she tries to figure out how to best support him and
Ilya. But she is willing to adjust to
that new normal and invites it. And we see her relationship with
Ilya a lot more in the long game.
And that growth is really, really important.
And I hope that Jacob writes some really beautiful scenes
between Ilya and Yuna and Ilya and David, because Yuna and
Shane are so similar that I think Ilya and her can learn a
lot from one another. And we see Ilya and Shane go
through some situations in the long game where Yuna's influence
and support is very important. And so understanding where she's
coming from and how she plays a role in that is going to be
really pivotal going into season too.
I think Yuna's portrayal as a parent who tries their best and
does everything from the utmost position of love and support and
wanting to do right by their child and still having an
outcome where their kid is indirectly hurt by their actions
is a very human experience. And I think that in particular,
the addition of the scene between Yuna and Shane does a
great job of painting that dynamic and and how that very
often is the case with parents and children.
I also think that there are a lot of arguments to be made
about Yuna having a lot of her behaviors stem from her her
Asian background. I think that's a huge component
of it as well. Some people are wondering if
maybe she might be neurodivergent as well, given
that we know that Shane is and that a lot of their behaviors
and ways of thinking mirror one another.
I think, again, the beauty of this character and any character
in any book or TV show or movie is that you can bring your own
personal experience to that character and find elements of
them that you align with or identify closely with.
And I think Yuna is one of those really great examples of that.
I think if you're a parent, you can identify with the way she
parents. If you were a kid, you can
identify with the way she parents because it might feel
familiar to you. I know that for me as an
athlete, having a parent that really emphasizes your career
and how you present yourself and how you show up to your sport
every day, that's very, very common in competitive sports.
I think pinning her against someone like David as her
partner in life is a really great parallel to Shane and
Ilya, because I really firmly believe that Ilya and David are
very, very similar to one another.
And the show does a great job of fleshing that out more than the
book does. But on the whole, I think that
the relationship that Yuna has with Shane informs Shane as a
person. And so when you know that he is
molded in this pressure cooker environment, but the pressure
cooker environment is entirely based, John Yunas desire to give
Shane the best life he can possibly have because she loves
him so very deeply. It gives everybody the ability
to have a lot more grace for her and understand that life is
going to be that Gray area where you can do right by someone and
still have opportunities to hurt them, even if it's not on
purpose. The important thing is that both
Yuna and David are represented as very understanding parents
who are willing to listen to Shane and do what he needs of
them. They're very accepting,
supportive kind. I think the show representation
of them only amplifies what's already there in the source
material as well. And that's important because we
model culture off of art, and shows like this are really
fundamental in putting conversations like those in
front of our screens and inciting broader conversations
with our own peers and family members as well.
Also, the relationship dynamic between Yuna and David, because
I think that the show and the book flips a lot of the norms on
their head with the two of them. Yuna breaks a lot of gender
norms and so do the other female characters in the show, and I
think that that's an important discussion to be had.
Yuna is the hockey fan and David is not the typical hockey dad.
And I think that that's. Really brilliant, especially as
a hockey player. I deeply appreciated that
change. Please let me know your thoughts
in the comments. I think she's a really
compelling character and a really pivotal part of the story
for someone who has so such little screen time, She makes a
huge impact on on the way that this story plays out.
And I think that that's the sign of a really well written, fully
fleshed out character is with what limited time they have on
our screens, they leave a very lasting impact.
And she certainly does that in this show.
As always, thank you so much for tuning in and talking with me
about this show again and and character development and what
that looks like. And I so deeply appreciate you
listening, and I will. We'll see you all in our next
chat.