The final chapter of the Heartstopper series is a two-hour movie on Netflix, the cherry on top of a show so sweet it could make your teeth hurt. While it’s sad that one of the purest-of-heart shows to grace our screens has come to an end, in this day and age, when shows disappear between seasons with no satisfying conclusion, I’m glad this one got to end with a finale so we could say goodbye to our favorite lovesick teens.
Heartstopper: Forever follows our familiar gaggle of queers, but of course mainly Charlie (Joe Locke) and Nick (Kit Connor), through the last year of school we’ll share with them. For some of them, like Nick, it is their last year of school before going off to uni or for a gap year or for wherever their post-high school life takes them. The movie is broken up by season, following Charlie running for Head Boy and trying to get a Pride Club started at school, Nick applying to uni and getting a job at an animal shelter, the duo celebrating their two-year anniversary, and more.
Things aren’t all cartoon butterflies and fireworks. As the school year nears its end, worries about the future spring up; they hear people talking about how teenage relationships never last, they see Tao (William Gao) and Elle (Yasmin) break up over the distance they’ll be apart next year. And they let it get to their heads.
The thing I love about the Heartstopper series is the same thing I love about this movie; it shows these teenagers going through hard emotional things, but it also shows them talking about it. When Nick and Charlie fight, Charlie tries to self-isolate but his friends won’t let him. Nick tries to push down his feelings, but because he’s learned to open up more, he talks to his mother about them. (His mother was sadly recast for this movie and isn’t Olivia Coleman, but Anna Maxwell Martin did a good job picking up where she left off.) It shows boys being affectionate with one another—and not just the romantic and sexual ways Nick and Charlie are affectionate with each other. It shows Tao and Isaac (Tobie Donovan) being their friends and hugging and talking about their feelings, too. It’s such a good model for young men in this world where too many of their models are toxic and patriarchal. This friend group is a mix of genders, but they’re all treated as equals, and they all love each other and aren’t afraid to say so. I loved the show Skins, and obviously Euphoria is very popular, but as fascinating it is to watch teens’ lives go out of control, it’s so far from my own teenage experience I might as well be watching science fiction. Heartstopper feels closer to a reality I could have experienced, if I came out much younger and found a group of queer friends before I was in my twenties.
Speaking of this friend group, I will say I wish this hadn’t been a movie. I wish we had gotten a proper season, even if it was four episodes instead of eight. The movie feels too long while also feeling like it doesn’t have enough room to fit everything. I know Charlie and Nick are the point, but in the series we were able to spend more time with the rest of the friend group as well, and they felt like afterthoughts in this film. I’m glad Tara (Corinna Brown) and Darcy (Kizzy Edgell) are still happy together, but we barely got to see them in this movie. I loved Elle’s speech to Charlie about how scary it is to be an out and proud trans person right now, and I loved watching her on top of a Pride float leading a chant about trans rights. But her and Tao’s breakups all happened in the background, and I wish we had gotten to see more about how she was feeling about all that. I loved Isaac and Tori (Jenny Walser) having a little asexual bonding moment at the party, and I loved learning that Isaac wants to write a book, but I wish we had learned what kind of book. Hell, Imogen (Rhea Norwood), previously the token straight friend, had a whole coming out arc in this movie—in the fall she thought she might be bisexual, and by summer she has realized she’s a lesbian—and it all happens in the background.
I loved it, I did, but I wanted more. I do think everyone did the best they could with the time they were given; the writing and the acting and the music (gods, the MUSIC) were all incredible. It showed that Nick and Charlie weren’t the shy little kids we first met; in fact, now Charlie is something of a mentor to shy little gay kids, like sweet little Alfie who Charlie saves from bullies and who joins his underground queer club, and looks at Charlie like he hung the moon. Nick and Charlie have come so far from their first kiss; they’re now having sex and talking about the future, and how they fit into each other’s dreams and plans. They also showed that just because they’re in love doesn’t mean everything is always easy. It doesn’t mean Charlie’s eating disorder or self-harm impulses are magically gone, and it doesn’t mean Nick has everything about who he is and what he wants figured out. And it doesn’t even mean everything between them is always easy. As Nick’s mother says: “Love is a choice. Every day.” And they have to choose to lean into it and work at it.
The movie also touches on the bittersweet goodbyes of your last year of high school. This friend group got split in two, and they’re excited about the future but sad to say goodbye. They want to believe they’ll be best friends forever, but part of them knows they won’t be. But Tao points out that no matter what, no matter whether they stay in touch or don’t, no matter how far away they go, the truth of them, the love they shared, the way they shaped and formed each other in these early important years of their life, that will always stay the same.
So as sad as it is to say goodbye to Heartstopper, we will always have the feelings it gave us. It will always be a radical celebration of queer love that refused to back down, making more and more characters queer up until the very end, showing a wide spectrum of sexualities and genders, and not just showing the struggles we face but the JOY we can experience, the love we have to share. Even if one day it disappears from the internet, the impact this show had on us and on the culture as a whole, the feelings this show gave us will always be real. And, of course, we’ll always have Paris.
Three seasons and a movie of Heartstopper are available on Netflix, as well as the official podcast. There will also be a documentary about the show titled Ending on a Hi dropping later this week.
