‘Heartstopper’ is growing up: inside the teen drama’s “more adult” new episodes

Heartstopper is back but it’s not quite the show you remember. Whereas the first two seasons generally operated in the space on a Venn diagram where wholesome overlapped with winsome, season three is darker and harder-hitting. Now 16 and 17, the main characters are drinking alcohol instead of milkshakes and swearing like normal teenagers – well, dropping the odd “shit” or “fuck”, anyway. Heartstopper probably isn’t ready yet for self-styled “ally” Imogen (Rhea Norwood) to tell a queer pal that they’re “serving cunt”.

It’s an evolution rather than an overhaul: while the animated doodles that illustrate romantic moments are used more sparingly, Heartstopper still unfolds to a sparkling indie-pop soundtrack featuring Billie Eilish, Beabadoobee and Romy. There are starry guest appearances from Bridgerton‘s Jonathan Bailey as an Insta-famous author and Hayley Atwell as a supportive family member – a sign of its place at the top of the Netflix pecking order.

Along the way, the show really doubles down on its full-spectrum LGBTQ+ representation by showing one character embracing their non-binary identity and another grappling more fully with being asexual. “I think it’s growing up with the characters – sadness and sex was what we were told this season would be about,” says Joe Locke, who plays sweet, sensitive Charlie Spring, one half of Heartstopper‘s central couple.

NME is speaking to Locke and his co-star Kit Connor, who plays Charlie’s sporty boyfriend Nick Nelson, at Netflix’s glossy London office near Oxford Street. The room we’re in is corporate-looking and a little spartan, but outside there’s a sofa accessorised with a cute Heartstopper cushion – a sure sign it’s one of the streamer’s priority shows. It’s “more fun” for them to do interviews together, O’Connor says, because this way they can “bounce off each other” instead of “just having me talk shit, basically”.

We’re meeting two months ahead of season three’s October 3 premiere – a concession to their busy schedules. Locke has another big show to promote, Marvel’s WandaVision spin-off Agatha All Along, which launches on September 18, a week before O’Connor makes his Broadway debut in Romeo + Juliet.

“I was excited to make them more adult this season”
–Joe Locke

O’Connor was the more experienced actor before Heartstopper – he made his screen debut at eight and played a young Elton John in 2019’s Rocketman – but the show has turned both 20-year-olds into stars. “I do sometimes feel like my life kind of began when I started filming season one,” O’Connor says. “It’s how I define my life, [which] was very different before Heartstopper.” Because the show is based on a popular webcomic and graphic novel series – the brainchild of Alice Oseman, who is also the TV show’s writer-creator – anticipation was feverish as soon as the duo were cast.

When season one premiered on Netflix in April 2022, it drew near-universal praise for its heartwarming portrayal of a queer romance that isn’t soured by stigma or shame. Though the show didn’t shy away from showing homophobic bullying or the toxic potential of being stuck in the closet, it was fundamentally hopeful and uplifting. The season ended with Nick coming out as bisexual to his understanding mother, who was played in a mic drop cameo by Olivia Colman, whose appearance was kept secret ahead of the launch.

We first spoke to Locke and O’Connor shortly after season one’s premiere but before it was renewed for a further two seasons. At the time, Locke said “it’s quite easy for us to talk about a future season” because Oseman had road tested potential storylines in her graphic novels. “And in them, Charlie deals with an eating disorder and his mental health, which I think would be quite interesting to look at,” he added. The actor’s hunch was accurate: in season two, which followed in August 2023, Charlie confided to Nick that he has an eating disorder and a history of self-harm.

Still, if Charlie’s mental health issues felt like an increasingly noisy peripheral presence before, they’re very much the main dramatic thrust of the new season – especially in its first half.  “We’ve been planting the seeds of this storyline since season one, so it’s really nice now to be able to tell the story properly,” Locke says. In episode four, easily Heartstopper‘s most harrowing to date, Charlie’s condition worsens so dramatically that he checks into a clinic. “Staying in the clinic was not my plan,” Charlie tells us in a voiceover, “but I should count myself lucky that my parents can even afford it.”

Netflix are keen to keep the storyline’s specifics under wraps, so all we’ll say is that it plays out in a way that feels appropriate for the new, more grown-up Heartstopper. Oseman’s writing, always tender and empathetic, takes on new depth. “Alice wrote the script so delicately that it did a lot of the heavy-lifting,” Locke says modestly. “But then as an actor, I made sure to have a lot of conversations with Alice, the director and other people [involved] about how to tell the story respectfully: not shying away from it, but also not triggering anyone”.

The overall goal, Locke says, was to “keep the show [feeling like] Heartstopper while also telling the story properly, which was quite a tricky thing to balance”. A similarly deft tonal shift is required in the season’s second half, in which sadness takes a backseat to sex. Charlie and Nick are contemplating whether to make their relationship a physical one, as are their friends Tao (William Gao) and Elle (Yasmin Finney). It’s a particularly difficult decision for Elle, a young trans woman, because she’s only just started feeling connected to her own body.

This is bold new ground for Heartstopper, which shied away from anything sex-related in its first two seasons. Given that many of the characters were only 15 in season one, this was probably the only option for a show aimed primarily at a young adult audience. Until now, Heartstopper always felt a bit like Sex Education‘s innocent, younger sibling. “I was excited to grow the characters up and make them seem more adult in this season,” Locke says today.

“I was just talking to Joe about this before,” O’Connor adds, picking up the conversational baton as he glances across at his co-star, who’s sitting right beside him. “But we’ve both grown up a bit since season one. We don’t look quite so teenage anymore, so I think it’s just a very natural progression.” O’Connor says the way sex is discussed in the show is “still subtle” and “true to Heartstopper“, but also feels “important because feeling comfortable, feeling ready, that’s a big thing for young people”.

Both Locke, who hails from the Isle of Man, and O’Connor, who was brought up in suburban south London, have come of age with Heartstopper. They were 17 when season one launched, so they began their adult lives as the newly famous stars of a breakout Netflix show. “I can be quite awkward if you can catch me off-guard in the street or something,”  O’Connor says. “My favourite,” Locke says, chipping in, “is when someone says: ‘Are you famous?’ Because I’m not gonna be like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m really famous.'”

“We don’t look quite so teenage anymore”
–Kit O’Connor

When Heartstopper premiered in 2022, its positive but authentic LGBTQ+ representation felt refreshing. Essentially, it obliterated the “token gay mate” trope by giving us a mixed friendship group where queer people were in the majority. The knock-on effect, perhaps, was that its stars were almost expected to become overnight role models. Locke spoke eloquently about parallels between Charlie’s coming out journey and his own, but O’Connor wasn’t yet ready to share his own sexuality.

Soon he found himself unfairly dragged into the thorny conversation about whether straight actors “should” be taking on queer roles. In October 2022, after some fans accused him of “queerbaiting”, he wrote on Twitter (as X was then known): “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.” He has since said: “I would have preferred to do it another way.”

Today, both actors say they’ve worked hard to draw boundaries between their public and private selves. “I don’t like it when people find pictures of my parents or siblings somewhere [on the internet] – that’s a line for me,” O’ Connor says. “I’d love to be one of those people who brings their mum to awards shows – not that I go to many – but it’s not something I’m comfortable with.” Locke says he deletes “hundreds of Instagram and Facebook requests” from fans hoping for a more intimate glimpse of his home life.

Revealingly, when NME asks which questions they hate being asked in interviews, O’Connor says: “Anything slightly probing.” Locke, who is drier and maybe a little more spiky than his castmate, adds with a glint: “If I’m in an argumentative mood, I quite enjoy the probing ones. I quite enjoy fighting back a little bit.” What would put him in an argumentative mood? “A lack of sleep,” O’Connor replies affectionately. “Well, [being with] me and a lack of sleep.”

Still, the pair are already such seasoned interviewees that they have no trouble talking around the issue of a potential fourth season. “It’s kind of the unknown for us,” O’Connor says. “There are so many moving parts and everyone’s so busy,” Locke adds. “For now, we’re just kind of trying to enjoy what we have made. Every time we go back [to Heartstopper], it’s like, ‘Well, this could be it.'”

It would be a shame if Heartstopper doesn’t return for a fourth season. Because it debuted at the tail end of the pandemic, it could easily have become an instant throwback – a kind of cosy lockdown comfort blanket. But the new run really reaffirms its relevance with mature and often very moving storytelling. “I hope people come away with the idea that two heads are better than one,” O’Connor says. “This season is saying: Don’t try to go through things on your own – it’s always better to ask for help.”

‘Heartstopper’ season three is released on Netflix on October 3

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