Kit Connor as Nick & Joe Locke as Charlie in Heartstopper season 3. (Samuel Dore/Netflix)

Heartstopper Season 4 Replaced By Feature Film

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Will our favourite boy-meets-boy return for one more season? Not anymore...

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Heartstopper Season 4 Replaced By Feature Film

Kit Connor as Nick & Joe Locke as Charlie in Heartstopper season 3. (Samuel Dore/Netflix)

New news for Heartstopper fans: Charlie and Nick’s story will draw to a close on Netflix, but not in the way we imagined. Here’s what we know about the future of Alice Oseman’s beloved boy-meets-boy series.

Joe Locke as Charlie & Kit Connor as Nick in Heartstopper season 3. (Samuel Dore/Netflix)

Will There Be A Heartstopper Season 4?

No, there won’t be a fourth season of Heartstopper – but there will be a feature film. Netflix revealed the news yesterday (22 April; exactly three years after season 1’s premiere), despite strong belief from fans and commentators that season 4 would get the go ahead.

The British series has become a global phenomenon for the streaming platform, shining a golden beam on its ensemble cast of characters. After the first season’s immediate success, the show received a rare double renewal, meaning season 3, which just dropped on 3 October 2024, was on the cards since 2022.

‘I am completely overjoyed that we will get to tell the end of the Heartstopper story,’ creator Alice Oseman says. ‘I’m so grateful to everyone who has worked hard to make this possible and to the incredible fans of Heartstopper for your patience and passion. I cannot wait to bring this story to a magical conclusion.’

Why Is A Film Replacing Season 4?

With success for a series comes a spotlight on its actors, and our leading duo Joe Locke and Kit Connor surely have jam-packed schedules these days. The former recently appeared in Agatha All Along and Sweeney Todd on Broadway, while the latter is becoming a hot commodity, with a starring role in Alex Garland’s new war film Warfare and upcoming roles in A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow and One of Us, following a turn as Romeo in Shakespeare’s classic on Broadway.

With Locke unknown prior to the series and Connor a relative newcomer, the young actors’ raised profile is in part thanks to the fan reception to the series and its positive impact on LGBTQ+ representation in the media. So it was unsettling for Netflix when season 3 did not attract as many viewers as the streamer was used to – 30 percent less, to be precise. This, combined with expired contracts for Locke and Connor means greenlighting Heartstopper season 4 wasn’t as clear-cut as we might have thought from the outside.

In the fact of these conflicting factors, creator Oseman commented she was ‘working very hard behind the scenes to get us a renewal for Heartstopper‘.

‘It is still ongoing, we don’t have a final answer yet, but there are so many people behind the scenes who are working really hard to make it happen,’ the writer-artist added. ‘We’re feeling optimistic, we’re feeling hopeful, and hopefully we’ll be able to share some news about that sometime soon. Fingers crossed.’

‘I’d definitely like to do it as long as it’s done right,’ Connor previously said on the prospect of season 4. ‘I just want to make sure that we keep the heart in it. So, we are working on something, and hopefully we’re making it happen.’

What Will Happen In The Heartstopper Movie?

Season 3 ends on an, ahem, high note – and that was totally purposeful. ‘It’s such a nice, emotional end to the season,’ Joe Locke tells Netflix. ‘I’m really glad that it ended up that way.’ In Alice Oseman’s graphic novels, however, Volume 4 – which season 3 is based on – ends on more of an uncertain note: Nick has a decision to make about university, and the threat of a long distance relationship hangs in the air. This will all be explored in the movie but, because Heartstopper Volume 6 hasn’t actually been released yet, we don’t have much more to go off. We’re sure it will all be wrapped up neatly and lovingly.

According to Netflix, the Heartstopper movie will wrap up the duo’s journey. But with Nick set to leave for uni and Charlie finding new independence at school, the reality of a long-distance relationship sets in…

Joe Locke as Charlie & Toby Donovan as Isaac in Heartstopper season 3. (Samuel Dore/Netflix)

Is It The End?

The Heartstopper movie is the end of Charlie and Nick’s story – but that doesn’t necessarily mean we will be saying goodbye to the so-called Osemanverse.

Oseman has three more novels set in the same universe but exploring characters away from Nick and Charlie’s lives: Radio Silence (2016), I Was Born For This (2018) and Loveless (2020). If Netflix wants to keep the success of Heartstopper going, we could well see screen adaptations of these works, too. All remains to be seen.

Yasmin Finney as Elle & Will Gao as Tao in Heartstopper season 3. (Samuel Dore/Netflix)

The Cast

It will be a last hurrah for the core Heartstopper cast. We expect the following stars to return:

Kit Connor as Nick Nelson
Joe Locke as Charlie Spring
Yasmin Finney as Elle Argent
William Gao as Tao Xu
Corinna Brown as Tara Jones
Kizzy Edgell as Darcy Olsson
Tobie Donovan as Isaac Henderson
Jenny Walser as Tori Spring
Darragh Hand as Michael Holden
Rhea Norwood as Imogen Heaney

Jenny Walser as Tori in Heartstopper season 3. (Samuel Dore/Netflix)

How Many Heartstopper Books Are There?

If you simply can’t wait for the Heartstopper movie, it’s time to turn to the written word. In total, there are six volumes of Heartstopper, a graphic novel written and illustrated by Alice Oseman. But that’s not all: Oseman has been working in this universe since her debut novel, Solitaire, was published back in 2014. That book centres on Tori Spring, Charlie’s older sister, and her relationship with Michael, which we see glimpses of in Heartstopper season 3. But Oseman found herself evermore drawn deeper into the side plot: Charlie and Nick’s relationship, publishing a novella titled Nick and Charlie in 2015. But, as we well know, it didn’t end there.

While the sixth (and final) volume of Heartstopper still hasn’t hit the shelves, Oseman has been working on other books in the same universe in the meantime: one exploring ‘study machine’ Frances at Truham, one following a fangirl called Angel, and one following a girl called Georgia as she heads off to university.

With novellas sprinkled in between, that brings us to a total of 11 books in the Oseman verse. They are, in timeline order: