With shriveled, brittle leaves and surprisingly warm weather, the arrival of fall helped us to ease back into our academic lives. In addition to pumpkin patches, apple picking, and delectable foods, this past fall has also brought us the highly anticipated season three of hit Netflix show Heartstopper.
Heartstopper is a coming-of-age tale following two queer male protagonists falling in love. Meet Nick Nelson — the shy, kind-eyed, rugby player played by Kit Connor— and Charlie Spring — the over apologetic, smiley drummer played by Joe Locke. Watch with reverence as they explore the joys of first love and the intricate complexities of being in love, openly queer, and high schoolers.
The idiosyncratic story debuted in 2019 with Heartstopper: Volume 1 selling over one million copies to date. Since then the series’ author, Alice Oseman, has made history by selling a whopping 60,012 copies in the first three days of Heartstopper: Volume 5. Her series broke a record in the United Kingdom, making Oseman the fastest selling graphic novelist in the UK.
While the novel was popular, the first season of the TV adaptation, released in April 2022, surpassed expectations and became an instant hit. Netflix cataloged a total of 53,460,000 hours within the first three weeks of debut. Both season one and two of Heartstopper stayed in Netflix’s top ten list in the first three weeks of release. The latest season received 4.5 million views in the first three days of release and was number four on Netflix’s viewing stats at its debut.
Heartstopper grapples with questions many teens ask themselves: Who am I? And, do I like myself? However, the show is notably distinct from other modern teen shows such as One Day at a Time, Ginny and Georgia, or Never Have I Ever that have soared on Netflix billboards. Most center around straight protagonists surrounded by quirky queer best friends and sassy gay side characters. Few shows unequivocally star queer characters like Heartstopper.
‘Heartstopper’ Over the Seasons
The first season of Heartstopper is all about romance. Creators of Heartstopper captured first touches, hugs, and later kisses as these boys slowly realized they were never meant to be friends. This was illustrated with little doodles in the otherwise non-animated show. In certain scenes, there are cartoon-like hand drawn sparks to look, accompanied with sound effects of lighting a match. One of the more creative ideas the creators had was the modern love letters — text messages. An iconic scene in season one shows Nick and Charlie in a split screen as they text each other for the first time. Viewers can watch as Charlie writes out his impulsive thoughts in a message, deletes it, types out another, deletes it, then types out some glossed-over variation of what he thinks and sends it, waiting anxiously for the response. Season one is mostly fluff (which is the biggest appeal for many) with some underlying tensions. We learn of Charlie’s toxic relationship with a classmate, and Charlie’s coming out story (which consists of being harassed by his classmates for his sexual orientation). We also follow Nick on his gay awakening as he discovers that he can’t get a certain guy out his head. Nick struggles to come to terms with his newfound identity and simultaneously starts to fall for Charlie. At the end of the season, Nick and Charlie are officially boyfriends.
Season two advances Nick’s journey with himself. Both characters are learning the intricacies of navigating an all boys high school dynamic, coping with reactions from their fellow students to their self-identification, finding themselves, and the all consuming power of first love. Nick takes big leaps with his identity, coming out to his family and the school. Charlie admits to self-harm, and the season closes with an almost “I love you.”
Season three came out on October 3rd, 2024. The show came as comforting and welcoming as a lover’s embrace, except this time it dealt with heavier topics. Charlie starts curling into himself, ridden with anorexia, anxiety, depression, and obsessive compulsive disorder. After a toxic relationship and being heavily bullied at Truman High School, Charlie Spring’s mental health has degraded. The darker aspects of what it means to be queer is aptly depicted in the most recent season. While the season has some bright spots, with a notably watershed buildup to the “I-love-you’s,” the season is definitively less cutesy than the previous two. The Nick and Charlie in season one are not the same ones in season three. They are more sure, free, and confident. They carry their peers’ abhorrence and pressing curiosity. They are cautious, crucified, and courageous. But most of all, they are young adults in love.
The show has evolved from a cutesy teen drama to a gut wrenching, reduce-you-to-tears, sometimes difficult to watch (but still terribly addicting) mature piece of film. Season three has dramatically metaphorized the characters to capture a less romanticized, more authentic depiction of what it means to be queer in the UK.
What ‘Heartstopper’ Represents
As innate as yin and yang, with success came criticism. The friendly, redhead actor, Kit Connor, portraying Nick Nelson faced the brunt of it. Following the release of Season 1, fans criticized Connor for playing a queer role as, what they assumed to be, a straight man. In response, Connor tweeted “Back for a minute. I’m bi. Congrats for forcing an 18 year old to out himself. I think some of you missed the point of the show. Bye.” Although many fans were quick to apologize and many rallied in support of the actor, the damage was done. Heartstopper is a show of acceptance and love, yet people have found a way to make it about exclusion and hate.
In the UK today, hate crimes towards the LGBTQ+ community have dramatically risen over the last five years. Hate crimes against trans people have increased by 11% from 2022 to 2023 with the withdrawal of support from the British government. Violence due to perceived sexual orientation was 112% more in 2023 than the previous five years. Heartstopper is not an exaggeration or baseless fictional story: Nick and Charlie represent thousands of people in the UK who’ve had similar or worse experiences.
Controversy over the show continued after season one. Fans complained about Connor’s physique, claiming that he wasn’t as muscular as Nick Nelson was drawn in the graphic novel. Connor, who heavily trained to build up muscle for season two in response to this backlash, later commented on how this affected his mental state. In a 2023 interview with a reporter at Vulture, Connor said he was, “feeling [that] I wasn’t completely equipped to play the role. That wasn’t a good way of thinking, but I was a teenager. I still am.”
Even Oseman herself has faced scrutiny as an asexual (meaning having no attraction to others) romance writer with others questioning her superficially at odds career and personal life. Another way to see it is that Oseman’s personal identity allows her to create a gay romance without romanticizing the queer experience.
Ultimately the message of the show is one of an optimistic future and progress to be made in how our society treats the LGBTQ+ community. Decorated queer U.S. Navy veteran Dan Misch in his guest essay in NBC news remarked on this, stating, “The show has led to a cathartic release of repressed anxiety, and it reveals the emotional damage caused by any number of traumas associated with being LGBTQ. It is a communal grieving for the young gay lives we’ll never get to have.” Indeed, Heartstopper is so much more than a teen drama. It is a rejoicement of the real queer love that has blossomed in the midst of public odium.
In a bitter world where we must make every effort to remember those lost to others’ hate and fear, Heartstopper represents something beguiling: hope. To watch Heartstopper on Netflix (subscription required), click HERE.
The show has evolved from a cutesy teen drama to a gut wrenching, reduce-you-to-tears, sometimes difficult to watch (but still terribly addicting) mature piece of film. Season three has dramatically metaphorized the characters to capture a less romanticized, more authentic depiction of what it means to be queer in the UK.