Review: Heartstopper, "Out" & "Family" | Season 2, Episodes 1 & 2
Everything seems likely to work out for Nick and Charlie, but there's no simple path to joy for queer teens
Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of Netflix’s queer teen romance Heartstopper, which returns today for its second season. This review is free, but subsequent reviews—which are all currently live, but will be emailed out one per day, each covering two episodes—will be exclusively for paid subscribers. You can learn more on our About Page and check out our full summer schedule here.
Heartstopper’s first season was a well-made adaptation of a compelling comic, but ultimately execution was not what helped it break out of the glut of Netflix’s deluge of originals to become a major success story. It was the very essence of the show—a warm-hearted, feel-good look at queer love that embraces joy over tragedy.
This is not to say that there weren’t rough edges around Nick and Charlie’s love story, but the show is predicated on the feeling that their connection with each other can transcend those concerns. The bullying Charlie received from Harry and others is in the past, and whatever hesitation Nick had about embracing his queerness was washed away by his mother’s love and the ocean waves on his and Charlie’s season-ending date to the seaside.
But for anyone who had read the subsequent volumes of the comic collected in graphic novel form, Heartstopper’s reputation as an unabashed space of queer joy has risked slipping into misrepresentation. My boyfriend—who I connected with in part because of Heartstopper, for what it’s worth—noted he was nervous that the show was going to devolve into the bleak stories of your average queer narrative, and I had to be honest and say that…it kind of is. Heartstopper is never going to become a tragic queer story, to be clear, but it also has no desire to romanticize the reality that Nick and Charlie face after finding love. As noted in a text message taken directly from the comic, “Why is being out so complicated?” is basically this season’s thesis statement, and that means a different vibe than the coming-[out-]of-age journey of season one.
My biggest question going into this season was how “out” we were supposed to think Nick and Charlie were at the end of season one. The comic has no equivalent to the “Field Day” element of the finale, where Nick makes a big show of walking off the field to greet Charlie, catching the attention of Imogen and presumably anyone else who was watching from the sidelines. In the books, only Tara and Darcy technically know they’re a couple at this point—Nick’s rugby friends know but are waiting for him to say something, while Elle figures it out on her own and Tao is unaware for a long while (it’s a whole thing). But “Out” immediately clarifies that in the show’s version of this story, Nick and Charlie are fully out as a couple with their central friend group, who unites for a sleepover to give Nick support in telling Imogen, unaware she figured it out on her own.
It creates a slightly larger bubble than the couple had in the books, which makes it all the more jarring when the show moves to burst it. The bubble, to be clear, is not the very idea of Nick and Charlie being able to be in a relationship: at no point in these opening episodes does it ever feel like the obstacles they face outside of the comforts of their friend group will threaten the connection they have with one another. However, “Out” and “Family” explore the costs of existing as a queer person, and how despite Charlie’s best efforts there is nothing he can do to shelter Nick from the realities of coming out to the people around him. And despite Imogen being totally supportive at the end of “Out,” and despite Nick’s mother taking the news so well last season, the presence of positivity is sadly not always paired with the absence of toxicity, as he discovers over the course of “Family.”
We’ll start with the Imogen situation, which saddles her with the saddest burden of deciding she likes another queer guy wrestling with his sexuality. Now, the most significant reason why we—and Nick—object to Imogen’s crush on Ben is because of how he treated Charlie: even if the show softened Ben’s interactions with Charlie and explored more of the emotional turmoil driving the aggression, he still treated him like absolute shit up to and including the physical altercation Nick witnessed. However, there’s no question that Ben’s sexuality—however he might define it—is part of Nick’s concern, and perhaps fairly so: when you know someone mistreated your friend while wrestling with being in the closet, you don’t want to necessarily watch a friend enter into their orbit.
But as Nick stews through sitting with Ben during their GSCE study sessions, and Ben poking the bear with discussion of Charlie gets them sent off to a private study corral, the conversation that emerges lands in a complicated space for understanding Ben’s place in the show’s take on bisexuality. Nick has every right to be worried for Imogen, and Ben is absolutely wrong that Nick is like him in terms of how he treats people around him. However, Nick’s also absolutely perpetuating the idea that Ben’s interest in Charlie means he couldn’t like Imogen because he’s secretly gay, which is the very presumption that he had to defend against with his mother and then again with his dirtbag brother (more on him in a second). The scene notably ends with Ben getting the last word, with Nick deep in thought as he wonders whether his anxiety over coming out stems from the fact he hasn’t fully come to terms with his own place on the spectrum of sexuality.
Again, Nick is not Ben, given that he’s consciously going through this from a place of communication and understanding in a way Ben never did. But I appreciate the show following up on the parallels between their respective situations, which I talked about with Alice Oseman when I interviewed them at the end of last season:
“People have said how important it is to see that kind of queer character who is dealing with kind of the same thing Nick is dealing with—internalized homophobia, being in a society with so much homophobia—but [Ben]’s going about it in the complete wrong way, and it’s turning him into a really horrible person. And that is a different sort of queer story, but it’s still a real queer story, and it’s still something that happens.”
I’m not sure how deep the show intends to go with Ben’s side of this story, but I’ll be interested to see how his place within Nick and Charlie’s orbit evolves as the season unfolds. Oseman emphasized that they didn’t believe a redemption arc was ever appropriate for the character, but his thematic value is clear, much as Imogen’s naive crushes and hurt feelings offer plot value in terms of introducing conflict that isn’t really about the core idea of Nick and Charlie’s love for each other.
The other conflict in Nick’s life is a different story, though, and a problem that I flagged the moment the show revealed the casting for Nick’s mother. Put simply, I really struggle to understand how Olivia Colman raised someone as spiteful and homophobic as David Nelson—yes, I know she’s not literally Olivia Colman, but Nick’s mother has been portrayed in such a warm and understanding context, and it has amplified my existing issues with the book’s use of David as a lightning rod of bigotry. I understand the story’s utility: as the episode’s title represents, “Family” is not a structure that is always going to offer support for one’s queerness, especially the nuances of bisexuality. It would be unrealistic if the show was full of families that were unilaterally supportive of their queer children, and making it a brother normally away at college—sorry, “uni”—allows for a temporary source of anxiety without the feeling like Nick’s house is never going to be a safe space for their relationship. It just also doesn’t track with what we’ve seen of his family so far, although the mentions of an absent father signals unseen issues that the season will continue exploring.
Charlie, meanwhile, continues to take something of a backseat compared to his central position in the book, much as we saw last season. He already had his coming out story, and so his focus is on trying to protect Nick. However, it’s clear from everything we know that all is not well with Charlie: he’s falling behind in his coursework, and the moment he exchanges with his sister demonstrates that he’s projecting a lot of his own experience of coming out onto Nick in ways that have to be somewhat traumatic. He spends a lot of his texts apologizing to Nick, as though what he’s experiencing is somehow his fault, a notion that is born from his relationship with Ben. And as the stress mounts, he declines an offer of food from Nick, but then tells his parents he ate when he was there, the stress of the situation with David spilling over into his ability to keep himself afloat. We know that—unlike Ben—Nick is going to do everything in his power to support Charlie, but he’s definitely dealing with his own mess right now, and Charlie isn’t fully letting him in as it stands.
None of this implies that their relationship is in jeopardy, an idea that Heartstopper has refused to—and never will, honestly—use as a plot device. It’s more that the show believes very strongly in a radical idea of queer positivity, but knows that others in the world don’t, and takes its time exploring the nuanced challenges of living as a queer person in that world. Elle’s side of “Family” is much the same. As with Charlie, we’re coming to Elle’s story after the greatest trauma has passed, and it’s clear that she’s found true friends in Tara and Darcy (and now Prom coordinator Sahar, who was introduced for the Paris trip in the comic). But her transition always carries with her at Higgs, and in her friendships with the boys still at Truham, which is a huge part of what makes the open evening at the art school so freeing. It’s not just that there’s another trans girl, Naomi, and a bohemian environment that seems supportive of queer identities. It’s that she’s Elle, and not “Elle that used to not be Elle,” and Naomi isn’t wrong that a clean slate would be hugely appealing.
But Elle also has Tao. Given that the “Main 6” of the show’s cast has two couples in it, the pairing of Elle and Tao has always felt like an inevitability, but the first season left it at “sparks and butterflies,” and after nothing comes from the sleepover in “Out” Elle seems content to move on from whatever feelings she has. But in “Family,” we shift more to Tao’s side of the story, as his attempts to hang out align with her new connections at the art school, and he starts to feel her drifting away from him. But while “friends to lovers” comes with its own form of baggage (like destroying the friend group), Elle’s transness undoubtedly adds new layers to their dynamic. Tao’s jealous of Elle’s new friends, absolutely, but you also sense that he’s fully aware of why she might want to grow and move on from the friends she currently has. He knows the trauma she experienced, and to admit he likes her and wants to be with her is also to want her to stay in a space she might want to escape.
What would be a happy ending for Elle and Tao? The general romanticism of Heartstopper means that the show is rooting for them to be together, but these are still high school relationships, and Elle’s potential move to Art School reminds us that these characters are not going to be one big happy chosen family forever. While I’m not suggesting the show is going to start separating them, the foundation of queer family they’re building in these moments will shape their lives moving forward, and this is really what Heartstopper is about. There will still be homophobic older brothers home from uni, and there will still be trauma from past bullying, but there’s something profoundly hopeful in finding people who support you, and whose love can make it possible for you to be the best version of yourself. These opening episodes continue the efforts of the first season in expanding and complicating the world of the comics in the interest of exploring those themes in greater detail, and create a launching pad for some compelling stories to follow in the rest of the season.
Stray observations
Just in terms of balance, this review definitely errs more on the side of “Family,” in part because it does so much work to complicate the more romantic, idyllic honeymoon phase of their relationship as they jump back and forth between each other’s houses being cute as hell to start the season. That scene where Charlie musses Nick’s hair, though? Adorable.
Isaac, who is an invention for the show, still doesn’t really have a storyline of his own, but he does get a moment during the parent-teacher conference where they want him to participate more, so we’ll see if that’s the start of any kind of arc.
I’m very supportive of the dynamic of queer family, to be clear, but I do wonder if the group collectively misjudged how important it was to pressure Nick into telling Imogen in a borderline public setting? My boyfriend clocked it as a particularly aggressive position for the friend group to take, and in rewatching their gungho-ness is certainly part of what gets in his head about the whole deal.
While Ben gets a clearer thematic presence in the episode, Harry is mostly treated as an afterthought, outside of a quick interaction as Nick struggles to get back into a groove on the rugby pitch.
The choice to pull directly from the comic is the source of the very thirst trap-esque post-shower Nick in the closing montage set to Tegan and Sara’s “You Wouldn’t Like Me,” which definitely hits different in live action. It’s a little suspicious we never see Nick in a gym, honestly.
Related note: I posted a tweet before the show debuted that reflected my frustration the show didn’t mirror the size difference between Nick and Charlie in the books, and I read that Kit’s time in the gym between seasons was based on his insecurity after people said he was too small, and I just want to clarify I didn’t need him to change that and it was honestly more of a height issue for me. But still, my bad.
Interesting moment with Tao and Nick, who are clearly not friends after everything that went down last season—we never really unpack it, and it’s mostly so Tao can be indignant about not liking Elle, but it’s definitely a prickly dynamic the show will need to work out as the “Main 6” grows closer together.
I love how the show gets mileage out of the lack of context behind text messages—Charlie sends three hearts after Nick’s voice memo, but he spent the whole thing reliving his bullying and looking awfully concerned about it.
The dialogue from when Charlie tells his parents about Nick is taken directly from the comic, but the tone is entirely different—in the comic, his father seems very jovial and kind of kidding about the hanky-panky talk, but his parents both have a more severe reaction here, extended by the schoolwork concerns and grounding that follows. I’m reading this as Oseman realizing that TV shows need more stakes, and that slightly sterner parents are an easy way to make that adjustment.
Big episodes for Nellie, who makes it onto Nick’s grid with Charlie and reacted to David’s homophobia exactly as I wanted to, complete with a growl when he entered the room. Good girl, Nellie.
And welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of the second season of Netflix’s Heartstopper. This was one of the first shows I wrote about for the Substack when it was just my personal project, and so it has a soft spot in my heart, which is why I’m violating my own “No Binge Releases” policy. This review of the first two episodes will go out to all subscribers, but the subsequent reviews—each covering two episodes—will be exclusively for paid subscribers. $5 gets you access to all four reviews, which are all currently live (but will arrive daily via email). I encourage you to read and comment as you go, creating a sort of asynchronous conversation, and I hope you’ll be attentive to potential spoilers in those discussions. There’s no perfect way to do this, and I’m still experimenting with the viability of binge releases in this format.
It will be interesting to see Ben evolve in the show especially as he plays a part in Solitaire, Oseman's first novel about Charlie's sister Tori (that was revised in 2020, the version recently released in the US), which eventually intersects with Heartstopper although I believe probably not until the next season? (I believe the hope is to do a Solitaire spin-off miniseries starring the actress who plays Tori...the tone is so different it wouldn't work as a season of Heartstopper, although Nick and Charlie do play a part.)
Full disclosure: I've already made it through seven of eight. I didn't set an alarm for 4:00 am or anything, but that's when I woke up, so...
Anyway, some unorganized thoughts:
* I buy David Nelson. Parents don't craft their children's personalities nearly as much as we imagine they do, and there are a lot of other influences out there trying to turn young men into dicks.
* One detail I enjoyed related to Charlie's issues with food is that he only fake pours milk onto his cereal.
* It's always a questionable choice when a straight ally cuts off a queer person's coming out by saying they already know (and TV does it a lot), but I gotta give Imogen a pass here. Nick and Charlie are not being subtle. This is jumping ahead a bit, but it kind of makes it hard to accept that coming out to his friends is something that weighs on Nick for multiple episodes worth of story.
* I agree that there are some issues with bi-erasure in how Nick deal with Ben, but given how bad he was with Charlie I think it's fair for Nick to be concerned for Imogen. That said, I'll have more to say about the forgivability of Ben later.