“Heartstopper Forever” Has A Lot More Sex… Joe Locke Says It Would Be Weird If It Didn’t
Heartstopper Forever, the feature-length finale of Netflix’s queer coming-of-age hit, lands on Friday 17 July, and it shows a lot more sex than the three seasons before it. Kit Connor and Joe Locke, both 22, say the shift follows where Nick and Charlie are in their lives rather than any change in what the show stands for. Nick is leaving for university. Charlie is finishing school. The relationship has to survive the gap.
Locke put it plainly in an interview with the Guardian.
“There’s a lot more sex, it would be weird if we hadn’t shown it,” he said. “Just because our show is a more earnest version of a queer representation doesn’t mean that sex [shouldn’t be shown]. It’s still a big thing for anyone in the world.”
He was careful to add that Nick and Charlie staying monogamous is not a comment on anybody else’s choices. “I don’t think Heartstopper is ever trying to say anything bad about casual sex,” Locke said. “It’s just nice to see two boys in love.”
Where Connor Drew The Line
Connor, who serves as an executive producer on the film alongside Locke for the first time, described the maths behind the scenes.
“It’s a line that you have to walk: ‘How far are we going to take this?'” he said. “But at the end of the day, it did feel like these two guys are really attracted to each other at the age where they probably would have been doing it.”
The show has never been coy about this. Season three gave Nick and Charlie their first time, and it did so without flinching or apologising. What has changed in the finale is the frequency and the confidence.
— Kit Connor (@KitconnorHS) August 19, 2025
Both actors were quick to puncture any fantasy about how these scenes actually get made.
“In a silent room with lots of middle-aged men,” Connor said. Locke finished the thought: “A camera right next to your face while you’re wearing a cock sock.”
Not quite the fantasy, is it?
What Else Is In The Finale?
Alice Oseman wrote the script, adapting the sixth Heartstopper volume and her novella Nick and Charlie. Wash Westmoreland directs. Yasmin Finney, William Gao, Corinna Brown, Kizzy Edgell, Tobie Donovan and Rhea Norwood all return, with Derek Jacobi joining the cast. Anna Maxwell Martin takes over as Nick’s mum, Sarah, the role Olivia Colman played across the series.
Netflix commissioned a film instead of a fourth season, a decision reported to follow a viewership drop of around 30 per cent between seasons two and three. Whatever sat behind it, we get a proper ending rather than a cliffhanger, and the two actors who grew up inside this story get to close it themselves.
Heartstopper Forever streams on Netflix from Friday 17 July.
