After a tortuous renewal process, the truncated finale of Heartstopper has finally landed on Netflix. Now a film, and titled Heartstopper Forever, presumably to try to differentiate it from the preceding three full television seasons, this made-for-tv movie attempts to adapt creator Alice Oseman’s final volume of their graphic novel into a running time of just under two hours. Given that the primary source material – Volume Six of the graphic novels – runs to some 438 pages, this is quite an ask.
Both Nick (Kit Connor: The Wild Robot; Slaughterhouse Rulez) and Charlie (Joe Locke: Marvel’s Agatha All Along; Kevin) are growing up fast, and thoughts are inevitably turning to their futures – as individuals, and as one half of a couple. Nick’s stressing about university choices, and has no idea what he wants to do with his life. Charlie is stressing about his relationship with Nick, and what “long distance” (in UK terms), might mean for them. And that’s where we left our characters at the end of season three: facing the prospect of Nick going to university in Leeds, a solid five hours away from the fictional Kent town of Truham where Charlie will still be for his final year of school.That sense of time moving quickly is present within the film, and the episodic nature of Oseman’s original comic becomes apparent. We quickly jump through the seasons, with small moments given prominence where they relate to the over-arcing story.
We open back at Truham School, in the autumn term, with Charlie one of the four candidates for Head Boy. It’s plain that Nick and Charlie’s friends group has become a strong support system, with Isaac Henderson (Toby Donovan) and Tao Xu (William Gao) in particular acting as Charlie’s cheer squad. After Charlie’s inevitable victory, we quickly jump to ‘Winter’ as Nick continues to fall apart emotionally. A weekend of self-destructive behaviour reaches its inevitable, and inevitably messy conclusion, with Nick in the local Accident & Emergency department.
From here, Nick bucks himself up through the medium of volunteering at a local dog shelter, and, eventually, after some cheerleading by their friends, they sit and talk about their futures, and how their relationship is actually going to work when they’re at university.
Whilst Nick and Charlie have been riding their emotional rollercoaster, they’ve also been having sex that’s rather more grown up than we’ve seen before. It’s worth remembering that these are teenagers, and that they are, canonically, very horny for each other. It’s not a surprise that the sex scenes have become more involved. Camera angles have still been carefully considered, and you don’t see anything more than either Locke or Connor without their t-shirt on, but the work of Intimacy Co-Ordinator Robbie Taylor-Hunt (Lesbian Space Crime; Count Dykula; Red, White & Royal Blue) has heightened the emotional intensity of these scenes beyond anything we saw in season three.
The supporting characters are facing their own futures, and Oseman, together with show runner Pat Walters (Sweetpea; The Essex Serpent) have had a lot of ongoing character arcs to try to wrap up neatly. Because this is known to be the finale, there’s also a lot of call-backs to previous moments, and on more than one occasion, flashbacks to scenes from the previous seasons, especially season one.
In ‘Spring’ we start to see slightly more of the other characters, but the scenes move rapidly, and if you haven’t either seen the previous television series, or read the comics and the in-universe novellas, this is all going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to fully follow and understand.
We get snippets of possible futures for Isaac, Tao, Tara (Corinna Brown), Darcy (Kizzy Edgell), and Sahar (Leila Khan), whilst Tori (Jenny Walser) and Michael (Darragh Hand) pass on some life-advice to Charlie, as Tori also delivers an ‘Asexuality and Queer Platonic Relationships 101’ to both Charlie and the audience.
Indeed, it’s hard at times to avoid the ‘very special episode’ nature of some of the scenes. Locke has an important moment with Connor, as Charlie tries to get Nick to open up about what it is that’s bothering him. And Yasmin Finney as Elle Argent has a genuinely important speech about the importance of Pride, and how government actions are making life more dangerous and difficult for her, and every other trans person. That speech is framed in a UK context, but it’s all too easy to see how that relates to current government actions in the US too.
The fact that the graphic novel includes an epilogue, and that the source material for this film also includes the novella Nick & Charlie, means that there were always going to be problems with the adaptation – especially because Oseman wrote the novella so long ago that the characters, and their story, have changed significantly since then. This has led to an attempted ‘fix’ for the novella in the comics, and here the film chooses a third path to try to resolve that particular plot strand.
Overall, it’s a spirited attempt at adaptation, although given the starting point for this story, and the overall focus of Oseman’s webcomic original, we do spend most of our time following Nick and Charlie through their fast-flowing year. It tends to leave the whole thing feeling dis-jointed at times, as if there are events which must be happening off-screen and which could have been included in a full television season, which have had to be deleted due to time constraints. There is, at times, a strong feeling that there must be things we’ve missed.
There’s been criticism in the past that there’s very little jeopardy in Heartstopper. Whilst that may seem true from the point of view of older members of the audience, it has to be remembered that the intended audience for Heartstopper is teenagers. We can all surely recall those final years at school, when we were trying to figure out who we wanted to be, what our next steps after GCSEs or A Levels should be, and what our friends would be doing. Those last months of Sixth Form / Year 13 feel like the end of an era. Friends will go to different universities, all over the country. Some will stay in whatever town or city you grew up in. Friendship groups will fracture, and you may rarely, if ever, see again some of the people who have until now been your closest and deepest friends for most of your life. In that context, these characters are dealing with a lot, and Oseman and director Wash Westmoreland (Colette) have managed to strongly present the fear and anxiety which form a backdrop to this period of life.
We end, of course, on a joyful note – that is the point of Heartstopper, and of Oseman’s story here. And so we leave Nick, Charlie and their friends. We’ve seen the choices they make, and we’ve had a glimpse of their futures. As an audience, we get to experience some queer joy, which is still an all too rare occurrence in screen media. We’ve also managed to complete a story – in an era when Netflix is all too keen to cancel shows featuring queer characters, this is a rarity, even if there’s an awareness amongst the followers of Oseman’s Patreon that this was supposed to be a fourth and final television season.
As the curtain falls on the teenagers of Truham, it’s appropriate to consider the legacy of Heartstopper as a screen text. The first season surpassed even the wildest expectations of producers See-Saw (The King’s Speech, Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth), and distributors Netflix. Viewing figures were reported to be in the tens of millions, and the show has been a regular feature of Netflix’s “Top Ten Most Watched” as each season has been released.
The show has also propelled its (mostly) teenage cast into a level of stardom that they’ve all stated none of them imagined.
Kit Connor, who already had a strong pedigree as a child actor prior to season one, has successfully transitioned to being an adult actor. Voice over work in The Wild Robot has supplemented on-screen appearances in Alex Garland’s Warfare, and the currently still in production Elden Ring. He’s appeared on stage on Broadway, in a critically acclaimed revival of Romeo + Juliet. Several other screen roles are, per industry reports, in the pipeline.
Joe Locke, the infamously undiscovered Manx talent, plucked from “over 10,000 auditionees”, and literally flown from the Isle of Man to chemistry read with Connor in a school hall in Windsor in early 2021, has similarly seen his career sky rocket. A stage appearance in an, again, critically acclaimed production of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, revealed an angelic yet powerful singing voice, which allowed him to hold his own when performing with Broadway icon Patti LuPone in 2024’s Agatha All Along, Marvel’s “sort of sequel” to 2021’s WandaVision. Promised psychological thriller Black Church Bay (set and filmed in Wales), and body horror Baby, are in post-production and awaiting release. Other roles have also been filmed. Both Connor and Locke are only 22 years old, but their step up to be Executive Producers on Heartstopper Forever shows their already impressive advances in this most notoriously turbulent of industries.
The rest of the cast have also had success. Yasmin Finney (Elle) has had a number of screen roles, including notably playing Rose in 2023’s Anniversary Special Doctor Who episode The Star Beast, as well as other Who-niverse episodes. Toby Donovan (Isaac) has had a slower start, but made a spine-tingling appearance as a featured guest in an episode of the recently rebooted Lindley. Rhea Norwood (Imogen) has appeared in Cabaret in the West End, where she gave a powerful and emotionally intense performance as Sally Bowles, the role made famous by Liza Minelli (or Dame Judi Dench, depending on your favoured medium). Forthcoming appearances in a new screen adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, and Only Murders in the Building are next on Norwood’s radar. Corinna Brown has appeared in The Summer I Turned Pretty, and was well received in the lead role of Sephy in Noughts and Crosses at Regents Park Open Air Theatre.
Sebastian Croft, who appeared in seasons one and two of Heartstopper as Charlie’s terrible ex-boyfriend and bully, Ben Hope, has split his attention between screen work, and a developing music career. Appearances in comedy horror film Get Away and post-WW1 drama Dope Girls have been complemented with the release of several apparently memoir-based singles. William Gao (Tao), and his real life sister Olivia Hardy have taken the world of melancholic, soft rock jazz-inspired fusion music by storm. Their band Wasia Project continues to have great success on the touring and festival circuit, and their new singles regularly feature as “songs of the week” on radio stations. Other cast members are carving their own niches.
It is staggering that a show with this small of a budget, and little initial marketing push, has punched above its weight in this way. Occasionally, such a show does emerge. We’re reminded of the 1996 epic television production Our Friends In The North. That show solidified the careers of Christopher Eccleston (later The Doctor in Doctor Who), Gina McKee, Mark Strong, and Daniel Craig, who went on to portray James Bond. Kit Connor is already being talked of as a ‘future-Bond’, and it would be truly refreshing for that character to be played by an openly queer man.
That a small, queer show, based on a web comic, has brought to public and industry figures an awareness of this breadth and depth of talent is remarkable. If the cast of Heartstopper go on to have careers even half as stellar as those of the cast of ‘Our Friends’, then the legacy of this show will be considerable.
As it is, the immediate impact remains significant: a queer story line, produced by an overwhelmingly queer group of actors and creatives, has brought to the world queer joy, optimism, and, overwhelmingly, kindness. That all the characters get to experience their own interpretations of a happy ending may feel unrealistic, but is long overdue. Far too often, in far too many books, films and television shows, we get too much doom and gloom, with queer characters being thrown under the metaphorical (and often literal) bus in what has always appeared as a moralistic admonishment designed to prevent queer people living their lives joyously and authentically. As Elle (Yasmin Finney) states, ‘I just want to be myself. To be free. To be happy’. Queer people are entitled to stories which are, ultimately happy, and Heartstopper Forever wraps up the Heartstopper story in a happy way, with our characters going off into a world where they are accepted and loved. We can only hope that the real world becomes a better reflection of this imagined happiness.
Heartstopper Forever is available on Netflix now, rated 15.
