How does season 2 of Netflix’s cutest series echo the experience of its main actor, Kit Connor, who plays Nick in Heartstopper?
Warning, spoilers. It is advisable to have seen Season 2 of Heartstopper before continuing to read this article.
In the top of Netflix viewings, Heartstopper is making a strong comeback on the platform thanks to its highly anticipated season 2 by fans. The series, adapted from the British graphic novels by Alice Oseman, is a real phenomenon and has conquered a large audience.
Heartstopper follows the romance between two teenagers, Charlie (Joe Locke), introverted and dreamy, but above all openly gay, and Nick (Kit Connor), popular rugby player who still questions his sexual orientation, all the more when he closer to Charlie.
This touching romantic relationship has made Heartstopper a huge success thanks to its benevolent representation of the LGBTQIA + community through its two heroes but also a gallery of touching characters.
Heartstopper season 2 echoes the journey of its hero Kit Connor
In Heartstopper, Nick realizes he’s bisexual by falling in love with Charlie. The young boy has asked himself a lot of questions about his sexuality and continues to grow and accept himself as the episodes progress. The highlight of the first season was this precious conversation between Nick and his mother Sarah, played by Olivia Colman.
The young teenager explains to her that Charlie is her boyfriend and that he is bisexual. This tender and loving coming-out scene between a mother and her son has aroused a lot of emotions among fans.
Season 2 of Heartstopper continues in this momentum for Nick, since he also wants to come out bisexual to his friends, his relatives, his classmates but also his father, whom he finds for a time during a school trip to Paris and whom he sees again at a family dinner where he comes out in a moving scene. This process is not easy for him but he can count on the support of Charlie, his mother and his friends.
Despite the disappointments, Nick reveals his relationship with Charlie for all to see and the two lovebirds can love each other in broad daylight. Nick expressed his homosexuality to all those close to him in the way he wanted at the end of season 2. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Kit Connor, Nick’s interpreter.
Because this plot of the Netflix series echoes the personal life of the young actor, who played in Rocketman and Ready Player One. At the end of the first season of Heartstopper, Kit Connor gained popularity on social networks with messages of love, but also unfortunately of hatred which result from it and he was notably accused of queerbaiting.
This term refers to a practice used by screenwriters, producers or heterosexual talents to attract the audience of the LGBTQIA+ community and make people believe that they belong to the community when this is not the case in reality. This use is often discussed within fan communities and can lead to abuses with attacks on certain talents to force them to share their sexuality, which is intimate.
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Kit Connor was the subject of attacks and inappropriate remarks on social media, which prompted him to come out as bisexual on Twitter in October 2022 in a post (since unavailable): “Back for a bit. I’m bi. Congratulations on forcing an 18 year old to come out. I think some of you didn’t get the point of the show. Goodbye. “
The actor recently explained to Teen Vogue that this action was “a reflex” And “a very human thing” that he does not regret. With Nick’s storyline, he finds himself in a kind of parallel process where his character in Heartstopper comes out bi in his own way while he felt forced in real life and didn’t have full control. wished on his private life, as if he owed something to the public.
“It’s unfortunate what happened to me. I think the reactions I got from just trying to be myself and trying to discover myself and set limits were a bit disappointing. But despite that , I was always happy”says Kit Connor.
“I’m actually bi”
And some lines from Season 2 of the show – like the conversation Nick has with Coach Singh where she tells him his rugby buddies don’t have to know about his sexuality – can be seen as important messages for all people. queer, who discover themselves, accept themselves and must have the possibility of coming out as they wish without having the forced need to share and reveal their intimacy to the rest of the world, but when they wish and feel ready .
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“There were definitely times when I was shooting season 2 and saying certain lines, I was like, this is good and this is how it should be. That’s the message we want to get across.”explains Kit Connor.
Because Heartstopper fans have particularly noted the passages of season 2 where Nick explains to his relatives that he is not straight or gay but that he is bisexual with the same sentence “I’m actually bi” (“I’m bi, actually”, in VO) proudly stated by the young boy. A line that certainly must have resonated strongly in Kit Connor’s mind.
Unfortunately, some netizens still reported inappropriate remarks about these passages saying they were awkward or that the character didn’t need to do it that many times. Except that several people from the LGBTQIA+ community have defended these sequences, explaining that it often happens in real life that bisexual people are forced to justify their attraction to people of the same sex and the opposite sex, as if this sexuality was less respected than others.
Translation : “I find Nick Nelson saying ‘I’m actually bi’ a dozen times in Heartstopper wasn’t annoying, considering I know a lot of bi people and even when they don’t have to keep reminding people that they’re bi and not just gay, they love to remind people of that information. The number of bi jokes I’ve heard, I swear. You also have to understand that every time Nick said “I am bi”, it was either because he was coming out to someone for the first time or because someone was saying something like ‘What do you mean Nick you’re gay, you don’t like girls?’.”
Translation: “People on TikTok who say it’s embarrassing when Nick says he’s bi, actually… Seriously, assholes, try to deal with the fact that there are constantly people who invalidate your sexuality.”
The messages conveyed through the series are important to Kit Connor and the whole Heartstopper team and if it takes more to make things clear, they will not hesitate to do so:
“The show we’re doing is really laying out plans for people to know how to deal with these sticky situations and how to make people feel safe and comfortable. It feels like some people didn’t quite understand the show and the original message that we were trying to convey in season one, so if that’s the case, then we’ll continue to hammer it home in season two and I hope people like it. will listen.”
With hindsight, Kit Connor wishes to draw the positive from his terrible experience in the hope that the series and the messages that are addressed in it will be able to help people who need it.
Heartstopper season 2 is available on Netflix.