Alice Oseman talks about upcoming Heartstopper new season storylines
It’s no secret that we have Heartstopper fever in this house. At the onset of watching season 1, some of us had read the graphic novels already and some of us hadn’t. Make no mistake, that has been rectified and now we’ve all read them all. Alice Oseman has done an excellent job of creating a world where real, honest queer stories manage to show queer people being genuinely happy and in love, while not ignoring the hardships that a lot of queer folks go through from just being queer in a heterosexual and discriminatory society.
While season 1 of Heartstopper did have an air of celebratory joy about it – these kids were so happy to be around each other and their love made their lives one hundred percent better – each episode was teased with the suggestion that queerness comes with hardship. While the majority of queer representation on screens just shows queer folks struggling and wading through trauma only to turn out miserable, alone, dead, or some other ghastly ending, Alice Oseman has achieved a fine balancing act with Heartstopper.
Ensuring Alice Oseman (who wrote the graphic novels) had her hands all over the screenplay and the Netflix adaptation was the best decision Netflix and See-Saw Films have ever made. Oseman and executive producer Patrick Walters sat down with Digital Spy to talk about the future of Heartstopper, and besties, we are screaming!
Mental health issues
In season 1 of Heartstopper, Charlie’s (Joe Locke) struggle with bullying and the impact that has had on his mental health is well teased. All his friends talk about “last year”, his teacher talks about last year and the impacts of whatever Charlie went through before season 1 kicks off are adamantly clear. While he’s confident in his sexuality and what he feels, he’s not confident when it comes to interacting with others. So many people have made him feel like he is worthless and he has a really hard time believing anyone would want him in their life just as he is *cue the sound of our hearts breaking now*.
If you’ve read the graphic novel, you’ll know that Charlie develops a really hardcore eating disorder, which is hinted at in season 1 of the show. When talking to Digital Spy and the possibility of a season 2 of Heartstopper, Alice Oseman was clear on how this would play out.
“If we do get future seasons, I’ll definitely want to be bringing in the themes of mental health, because that’s something that’s really important in the books. The challenge of writing Heartstopper is exploring those darker issues while keeping the tone so optimistic and hopeful. That has been, like, the struggle of writing it for me the whole way through,” said Oseman.
In the graphic novel, despite the love and support from Nick (played by Kit Connor in the show), Charlie ends up hospitalized for quite some time because of his eating disorder. The bullying and trauma he endured when he was outed against his will ran so deep that he needed much more than the love of a significant other to fix the harm done to him.
More romance
Alice Oseman said that if Netflix picks up the show for a second season, the story will pick up from the third graphic novel. In this installment, more romance is introduced. Charlie’s art teacher, Mr Ajayi (Fisayo Akinade), develops a relationship with a new teacher called Mr Farouk.
“Yeah, 100%. If we do get a future season, we’ll be moving into volume three of the books. And that is when the teacher romance happens. So in the show, we’ve already got Mr Ajayi, but in the books there’s also Mr Farouk, who comes in, in volume three. And they have this kind of interesting friendship going on in the background that eventually becomes something more,” Oseman told Digital Spy.
We are big Mr Ajayi stans in this house so we can’t wait to see how this romance plays out in the Heartstopper world on screen.
The brilliance of Heartstopper
It just seems like everywhere we turn, folks are binge watching Hearstopper and talking about the profound impact this show is having on them. Same, besties, same.
“Firstly, I just want it to bring people joy, and make people smile. That, above all, is what I want people to take away from it. But I also hope it spreads the message that young queer people can find love and friendship and happiness, and it just makes them feel hope for the future, that they can have good, happy things in life,” Oseman told Digital Spy.
This is what makes Heartstopper so great. The adolescent experiences represented on screen are relatable in ways that most other queer coming of age stories aren’t. These kids are playing monopoly at midnight, they’re going to school, they’re studying, they’re being teenagers. But it’s also the way in which the queer experience is represented that makes it so special. Not everything has to be one huge trauma after the other – although that is the experience for some (and that is represented well in Charlie’s story-line).
In terms of continuing that honest representation into season 2, Patrick Walters told Digital Spy, “we always said when we were in the development phase of season one, to just be as faithful as possible to the source material that Alice had created. So I think one of the amazing revelations of making the show and now it launching is that clearly with Kit and Joe, we’ve got two actors who can do both. They’re so dramatically precise in how they do scenes.”
If you haven’t read the graphic novels and want to know what that holds for all our babies, we recommend that you do!
Alice Oseman’s graphic novels are available at all good retailers now, and Heartstopper is available to stream on Netflix globally. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for all queer stuff!
