Heartstopper Is Going All-In On Sex Scenes This Season
This is going to be a major change for the show.
Heartstopper is ready to face its biggest criticism head-on in Season 3. While the queer romance series’ first two seasons did receive a lot of praise for its tender quaintness, that same sweet innocence also led to some backlash from viewers calling out the show’s lack of sex as unrealistic. Shouldn’t Charlie and Nick, two high schoolers who are deeply in love, be all over each other... rather than just wanting to politely hold hands and maybe kiss sometimes? Well, it sounds like the show agrees it’s time to grow up a bit, and it’ll deliver that in Season 3.
Joe Locke revealed he and his fellow actors had been well aware of this critique, and even agreed with it. “We also as a cast have made those jokes many times,” Locke told Variety on Aug. 27. “I mean, we always joke that if it was actually real, they’d be in the bathroom just … yeah. The mushy part became old hat.”
He assured fans that the new episodes will be less mushy. “The show is growing up,” he said. “The second half of the season is about sex.”
Kit Connor added more detail to what went into exploring a more intimate relationship between Nick and Charlie. “Now we’re doing the sex scenes,” Connor told The Times on Sept. 1. “We shot a lot of footage for them. Not much actually ended up in the show. But we shot the sex scenes for about seven hours!”
This pivot to include sex in the series is a pretty big tonal shift for Heartstopper, although it is one that’s alluded to in Alice Oseman’s source novels. In the latest volume, which was released at the end of 2023, discussions around sex take center stage for the whole Truham crew, and the issue ends with the strong implication that Charlie and Nick finally had their first time together.
Though the book has yet to officially confirm if the boyfriends really went all the way, it sounds like the Netflix series is not holding back when it comes to the bedroom antics in Season 3.
