‘Heartstopper Forever’ Director, Writer and Stars Joe Locke and Kit Connor on the Finale: “It Connects the Whole Heartstopper Gang”

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[This story contains major spoilers for Heartstopper Forever.] 

Over the last year, writer and artist Alice Oseman has had the privilege of saying goodbye to Heartstopper three times. There’s the July release of the final graphic novel, Heartstopper Volume Six, and the April publication of the webcomics’ last pages online. But their first goodbye came out of order for an adaptation, taking place nine months earlier when filming concluded on Heartstopper Forever. 

In the Wash Westmoreland-directed movie conclusion to the Netflix adaptation, the newly elected (and confident) Truham Grammar School head boy, Charlie (Joe Locke), is facing an increasingly closed-off boyfriend. Also in the midst of deciding about university, Nick (Kit Connor) is withdrawing amid his anxieties and questioning whether he’ll take his next steps with or without Charlie. The duo’s friend group shares similar questions as they navigate prom, Pride, graduation, and an unexpected break-up between their two friends. It’s an installment that takes its teen ensemble to new places, while honoring the journey — the snowball fights, trips to the seaside, and the room where Nick and Charlie first kissed — that got them there. 

Stepping outside the format of an eight-episode season of TV, Heartstopper Forever had Oseman “excited by the idea of the film feeling more cinematic from the outset,” says Westmoreland. But it also presented a unique adaptation challenge. “For the first time, the book isn’t complete before we’ve started filming,” Oseman recalled during a set visit in July 2025. “I was writing the last volume of Heartstopper last year, but several times, we’ve had to film a scene that I hadn’t drawn yet, which was kind of scary. We had no references.”

It also required condensing the final volume into a two-hour format. “Having less screen time to work with in a film was a big challenge, and it forced me to have to be really precise about what’s in the story and to get rid of anything that’s not necessary,” Oseman said during that set conversation. “You stay with the main characters for much longer periods of time, which feels very different to the TV show.”

Concessions were made in the adaptation process, including a montage of Nick and Charlie enjoying Christmas together, according to the director. But “Alice wrote the script so that it focused predominantly on Nick and Charlie,” the director, in his only interview for the film at publish time, tells THR. “It seemed right that this final chapter should take a deep dive into the complexities of this central relationship as the story moves to its conclusion.”

“Right at the beginning, when Charlie plays with the dogs in the garden, surrounded by both practical falling autumn leaves and the animated leaves that have always been part of Heartstopper — for me, it quietly announces what the film is trying to do: honour the visual language of the series while taking it into a more grounded, realistic world,” Westmoreland tells THR. “The characters are now 18, or almost there, and it felt right that the filmmaking should mature alongside them. As they’re becoming more emotionally complex, the performances deepen, and I wanted the visual language to reflect that.”

In conversations conducted ahead of Heartstopper Forever’s release, Westmoreland, Oseman, Locke, Connor, and other cast members explain how the Heartstopper film delivered several major moments and adapted the message behind the graphic novel’s ending for the screen. 

During much of Heartstopper’s run, its sentimentality has led to claims that the series doesn’t portray certain aspects of teenhood realistically. But for Oseman, whose love story has always explored heavier but relevant subjects, that earnestness isn’t something to shy from. “I think sometimes people can cringe away from that a little bit, and they’re like, ‘It’s too much,’ but I love that about it,” they tell THR. 

That earnestness doesn’t quite vanish in Heartstopper Forever. But the film leans further into new territory with its leading romantic duo, taking their physical relationship to different places following the events of season three. With both boys squarely in their young adulthood, the film not only uses intimacy to depict the evolution of their relationship but also offers a realistic representation of teen sexuality.  

“There are four main scenes of physical intimacy in the film, and each one reveals a different stage in Nick and Charlie’s relationship. We felt it was very important that none of them existed simply for their own sake. Each scene had to carry the story forward and reflect where the characters were emotionally at that particular moment,” Westmoreland says. 

Collectively, the sequences depict healthy, sex-positive experiences while individually illustrating an equal partnership — one that disregards stereotypes around roles in queer sex and embraces men showing up emotionally.

“Alice was very clear that Nick and Charlie are sexually versatile, and we wanted to honor that,” Westmoreland explains. “At the same time, Heartstopper has an audience that includes young teens, so it was never about explicitness. Our focus was always on the emotional truth of the scenes — so that the physical intimacy expressed what they couldn’t yet put into words. In Nick’s case, especially, there are moments where physical closeness becomes a way of avoiding the conversation he knows he needs to have.”

The sequences cap off a half-decade romantic journey and offer a counter to some of Heartstopper’s detractors. “Kit and Joe were completely on board throughout the process. Together with our intimacy coordinator, Robbie Taylor Hunt, they approached every scene with professionalism, thoughtfulness and, naturally, a few giggles,” the director says. “Some people will say there’s not enough sex in it, some people will say there’s too much. Perhaps some people might even say, ‘It’s just right.’”

As Nick and Charlie’s sexual experiences expand on screen, so do their emotional and relationship dynamics, with the duo undergoing a role reversal of sorts, which fuels a dramatic break-up. “That is not something that happens in Volume Six. It’s actually in a short story from 2015, which I wrote before Heartstopper, [titled] Nick and Charlie,” says Oseman. “I felt like when I was making Volume Six, that scenario just didn’t make sense for those characters, whereas with the film, we’re always looking to push the tension and angst just a little bit more, so it felt like an idea that could work really well for the film.”

The blow-up is partly a result of Charlie’s transformation, going from an underdog “who’s been bullied and suffered from mental health issues.”

“He’s been through the wringer in a lot of ways. In this film, we see that Charlie is actually someone to look up to. He’s not just this person who’s been through a lot, but who’s used it to triumph and take a step in the direction that he wants to be with his life,” says Connor. “In the same way, Nick has always been this character that we’ve grown to see as quite strong and wise beyond his years; a very mature and emotionally intelligent character who closes down [in the film]. He isn’t really able to discuss and articulate the things going on inside his head. He doesn’t even know where to start.”

“Alice had located Nick and Charlie’s break-up at Harry Greene’s party, and that felt exactly right because Harry has always represented a more toxic side of their teenage world. We leaned into that by creating a kind of teenage manosphere — a basement rave full of young men, pounding dubstep, vivid lighting and huge projections of Mako sharks. It’s an environment that’s visually arresting but emotionally quite hostile,” Westmoreland tells THR about how they adapted the split for the film.  

“This was the perfect set-up for [giving] Kit and Joe the opportunity to deliver two extraordinary performances,” he continues. “What’s heartbreaking is that they still love each other and they’re both trying to communicate, but for the first time, they’re no longer in sync. Throughout Heartstopper, communication has always been their superpower, and here it suddenly fails them.”

Fans of the graphic novel series may notice the storyline is not exactly what’s in the 2015 novella — a choice that made sense for their screen incarnations, says Oseman. “I did change a lot of what happens in that argument and break-up, but I think it really makes sense for Nick and Charlie on screen, where they’ve both got their own issues that they’ve been dealing with, and are feeling so anxious about the future. They love each other so much that they talk themselves into the idea that the other person is probably better off without them, which I think is a very Nick and Charlie argument to have.”