When “Heartstopper” debuted on Netflix in 2022, it provided viewers with a heartfelt and warm coming-of-age love story between Nick (Kit Connor) and Charlie (Joe Locke) and was praised for its tender and thoughtful representation of a same-sex romance.
The show was adapted from Alice Oseman’s black-and-white 2016 webcomic of the same name, which became popular online. Through crowd funding, Oseman self-published her first graphic novel in 2018. Since then, there have been five more installments, with the final one released this month.
The third season of the TV series was released in October 2024 and left lots of loose ends for the characters to tie up.
Then, in April 2025, Netflix and Oseman announced that the story would conclude with a feature-length movie in lieu of a fourth season. In a Rolling Stone interview, Oseman touted the benefit of the format, saying, “We really sit with the characters on their journey.”
With the movie now on Netflix, here is a primer on the characters, where the story left off and what major themes to expect.
What is ‘Heartstopper’ about?
When the story began, Nick and Charlie were both attending Truham Grammar School (a fictional all-boys school in Britain), with Nick a sophomore and Charlie a freshman.
While it included lots of chaste smiles and low-key flirting between the two boys who met in homeroom, much of Season 1 involved Charlie’s friends convincing him that Nick was straight and would never like him back. Charlie had previously been outed in school and bullied by his classmates for it. In a swoony and sweet moment at a schoolmate’s house party, Nick and Charlie shared their first kiss and secretly dated throughout the rest of the season. (On multiple occasions, they narrowly missed getting caught making out in the rugby locker room, the park and their bedrooms.) Nick also sorted out how to define his sexuality, and in the first season’s finale he came out to his mother as bisexual.
The second season followed Nick and Charlie as they continued to date and work toward being more comfortable sharing their relationship publicly — plus, a shared bedroom on a school trip to Paris led to a scandalous hickey incident.
In the show’s third season, much like in the graphic novels, the topics became more serious. Charlie found his obsessive-compulsive and eating disorder symptoms worsening while Nick grappled with how best to support him.
Along with Charlie and Nick, the members of their high school friend group are an integral part of the story. In the series, Tao (William Gao) and Elle (Yasmin Finney) — two of Charlie’s oldest and closest friends — navigated a romantic relationship after years of being friends. Elle, who is trans, had attended Truham but transferred to a nearby all-girls school after her transition. She later moved schools again to pursue painting and drawing.
Their other close friend, Isaac (Tobie Donovan), is bookish and quiet. During the second season, after a kiss with another boy in his class, he told his friends that he identifies as asexual.
Tara (Corinna Brown) and Darcy (Kizzy Edgell) — two students from the all-girls school — started dating during the first season of the show. Their relationship was a model for Nick and Charlie as the boys grappled with their comfort in coming out. In the third season, Darcy came out as nonbinary.
Rounding out the “Heartstopper” universe is Tori (Jenny Walser), Charlie’s quiet, awkward and concerned older sister who found love in the most recent season.
What were they up to when we last saw them?
Halfway through the third season, Charlie was admitted to an inpatient eating disorder clinic and then continued the emotional work in therapy after he returned home.
The last scene of Season 3 was an intimate and romantic moment between Charlie and Nick, but even as the two found solace in each other, an underlying tension remained. University was at the top of Nick’s mind throughout the third season, and in the finale he grappled with whether he should attend one close to home to be near Charlie or head to Leeds, where he really wanted to go, and navigate a long-distance relationship.
What can we expect from the movie?
The film will follow Nick and Charlie as they figure out what their futures look like — individually and as a couple. With executive producer credits on the movie, Connor and Locke were able to have more of a say over their characters.
In a recent New York Times interview, Locke said that a lot of the film was about the two characters “figuring out how, instead of being one whole circle together, they can be like a Venn diagram where they have their own things in their own lives, but also fit together.”
Is there more ‘Heartstopper’ coming?
Oseman confirmed to The Times that this is the end of the “Heartstopper” franchise — both the show and the books — but a behind-the-scenes documentary, “Heartstopper: Ending on a Hi,” will be released on Netflix on July 24.
