Review: Heartstopper, "Sorry" & "Perfect" | Season 2, Episodes 7 & 8
A coming out story ends, but the show's queer chosen family remains on a longer journey
In the comic, Heartstopper is a transitional narrative, in terms of its lead characters. It begins as firmly Charlie’s story, with Nick’s point-of-view emerging slowly over the course of the first two volumes that would become the show’s first season. And in the third volume, which has been adapted into a single season, it’s the first time that Nick and Charlie’s stories start to feel equal, their respective lives at home becoming balancing points as they work out what their relationship looks like as their families, friends, and classmates become aware of it.
But the show was different, and Nick and Charlie were largely presented as co-leads from the beginning, with the former arguably emerging as the true “protagonist” of the first season. After all, it’s Nick’s scene coming out to his mother that serves as the emotional climax, and the season fleshed out his queer awakening in ways that kind of overshadowed Charlie’s navigation of past trauma. I would argue that the story became better with Nick’s perspective being more substantial, but there’s a risk of underselling Charlie’s importance to the story by doing so.
What’s become clear over the course of the second season is that Alice Oseman was aware of this risk, but chose to use it as a thesis in its own right. Because while Nick still has the dominant story arc in Heartstopper’s second season as he grapples with how to come out, the absence of a similar struggle for Charlie on the surface becomes the best evidence of his struggle. Charlie knows how hard it was for him when he became the center of attention after being outed to the entire school, and so from the beginning of the season he is adamant that his only goal is to ensure that Nick doesn’t go through what he did. But he spends the whole season repressing his own struggle in order to focus on Nick, and to offer his support even when he’s reliving his past trauma. As far as he’s shown Nick, Charlie has stood up to Harry on multiple occasions (first at the bonfire and then in Paris), and responds courageously to Ben’s attempt at an apology. But we’ve seen enough to know that Charlie has been struggling in between these moments of strength, and his eating disorder is bubbling to the surface often enough for Nick to realize that we have reached the point where Charlie is the one who needs everyone’s support.