On Tuesday, 22nd April 2025 (exactly three years after the first season aired), it was announced that there would not be a fourth season of the Netflix hit, Heartstopper.
This came after a period of mass speculation, from the fans and the media alike, about whether the story would continue on the screen, or if Season Three marked the end of Heartstopper altogether. Instead of there being a fourth season, it has recently been confirmed that a film is going to be made, instead of a fourth season. Filming is due to take place this summer.
Transness portrayed positively is what we need
As a young, queer British person myself, I am a fan of the series, and have been a fan for the past few years now, ever since the first season came out in April 2022. I found it adorable and heartwarming, in spite of some people branding it as ‘unrealistic’. However, I feel that life as a queer British person is scary at the moment for a lot of people, especially with the recent ruling that trans women are no longer going to legally be classified as women.
A young trans woman called Elle is one of the main characters featured in Heartstopper, and she has two trans friends as well, called Naomi and Felix. This kind of positive representation of transness is more necessary than ever, in my opinion.
Too many films with unhappy ending
I feel as though there is often an absence of queer joy in contemporary British media. For example, I recall that around 2017, a couple called Rana and Kate got together in Coronation Street, and got married in 2019-only for Rana to be crushed to death on her wedding day. I was so happy that us queer women got representation, and was gutted when it was taken away. Carla and Lisa, the cobbles’ current couple, have had a lot of strife, including Lisa’s daughter, Betsy, being shot. A lot of other media includes a lack of queer joy, for example They Both Die at the End, about two boys who meet and fall in love on the day they are both destined to die. Is this truly the type of representation queer people want?
It’s no wonder, then, that so many of us gravitate towards Heartstopper. Its representation of queer men, queer women, trans people, gender nonconforming people and even two asexual characters, as well as its racial diversity, are a win for the queer British community, in my opinion. It also shows us that, although we will inevitably face some struggles, we should be allowed the same happiness as our cisgender and heterosexual counterparts. Oseman’s representations of queer joy are truly beautiful.
An adorable gay couple
Take Nick and Charlie themselves, for example. While Nick goes through a period of self-discovery in Season One and Charlie doubts that his feelings for Nick are requited, they get through it and become an adorable couple. They defy the expectations of their peers, and, indeed, their society. In Season Two, they embark upon a trip to Paris together, and with their classmates, and have to figure out how to balance their new relationship with their social lives, family lives and academic responsibilities. At the end of Season Two, Charlie reveals his mental health struggles to Nick, who is supportive of him and provides him with comfort.
At the beginning of Season Three, they both confess that they love the other, after having dated for approximately six months. They also eventually become physically intimate, despite Charlie initially feeling insecure about his body due to having an eating disorder. Meanwhile, Nick is looking at universities and figuring out that his love cannot fix Charlie; Charlie needs professional support, which he does accept in the form of a therapist named George.
Then, there’s the other couples: Tara and Darcy, an interracial lesbian couple, who have to deal with homophobia, Darcy’s fear of opening up about her feelings, Darcy’s unhappy home life and homophobic mother, and Tara needing space from Darcy due to Tara having moved in with her. Like Nick and Charlie, they work through their struggles by working as a team, and through healthy communication.
Bisexual, trans, straight or gay.. it doesn’t matter in Heartstopper
There’s also Sahar, who is comfortable in her identity as a bisexual girl, and Imogen, who is realising that perhaps she is also bisexual and unintentionally uses Sahar to experiment with her sexuality. Although they do not work, this feels like a realistic part of coming to terms with one’s identity as a young person; being confused, making mistakes and perhaps even unintentionally hurting the people you care about in the process. They still end up as friends, however
Elle, a trans girl, is in a relationship with a man called Tao, who (arguably importantly) still considers himself to be straight, because he sees Elle as who she is and not the gender she was assigned at birth. They struggle with the transition of being best friends to being partners, Tao trying too hard due to abandonment issues, Elle going to art college and looking at universities, and the transphobia which Elle faces. Again, they get through it as a couple, and come out of the other side as strong as ever.
Relationship struggles are similar whatever the gender or sexuality
As may be obvious by this point in the article, these couples go through similar struggles which some cishet couples may go through, such as abandonment issues, mental health struggles, needing space, moving schools, transitioning from being friends to being partners, struggles with opening up about feelings and the threat of long-distance due to university. These are all very real struggles many young couples face, not just queer couples.
What I think makes this queer representation so good is the fact that they do go through these regular struggles, on top of the prejudice which they face due to being queer. It’s like an extra layer of problems in making their relationships work, which to me, feels realistic to queer dating, as someone who has faced some similar issues before in my own love life regarding homophobia.
It’s worth noting that Heartstopper is not Oseman’s only work that deals with queerness. Her first book, Solitaire, has an asexual character, Tori Spring (Charlie’s sister). Her second book, Radio Silence (2016) includes two queer female characters and one gender non-conforming character. Her third book, I Was Born for This, includes two queer female characters, a bisexual cis man and a gay trans man. Her fourth book, Loveless, contains two queer female characters, a nonbinary and asexual character, and the protagonist is an aromantic and asexual girl called Georgia.
Asexual people are also part of the queer community
Oseman is aromantic and asexual herself. Despite much speculation over the validity of asexual people as members of the LGBTQ+ community, asexual people are members of the queer community. I believe that Oseman being a part of our community is what helps her to write such realistic depictions of queerness, and why she may understand that there is an absence of queer joy, both in the media and in the real world. In Heartstopper, queer people get to have their cake and eat it too, and ultimately, love wins over all else, cliche that it may be.
Let’s hope that Heartstopper: The Film will be a showstopper, and that Nick, Charlie and all of their friends get to have their happily-ever-after.
God knows we’ve had enough queer tragedy.
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