Heartstopper is more than a Teen Drama
It’s a Masterclass in Coming Home to Yourself
By Bri Perry - Your Local Mystic
I have something to get off my chest.
I’m not exactly the main target audience as a mid‑thirty‑something millennial, however the Netflix series Heartstopper has had me in an absolute chokehold for yearssss.
Like… embarrassingly so.
What began as some lighthearted bonding time with my step‑daughter during her own high school years quickly turned into a full‑fledged obsession. We’d cozy up on the couch on a Friday night, our dog in the room like she wanted in on the drama, while the two of us screamed during new episodes like feral creatures. Over the years we watched, and rewatched, and cried, and felt the spectrum of emotions this story draws out of you. Since the series completion I’ve rewatched it in its entirety multiple times. I’m already planning a third rewatch of Heartstopper Forever.
LOL, I know! You have full permission to laugh at me. I’m laughing at myself with you.
But in all seriousness, what continues to leave me utterly awestruck is that after all the years I’ve been engaging with this story, these characters, the gorgeous themes, the tiny details, I still discover something new that completely unravels me. In some magical way it’s like the show keeps handing me little emotional love notes I didn’t know I needed.
It’s no surprise that Heartstopper has often been described as a sweet queer coming‑of‑age story. And it 100% is. Yes. Full stop.
BUT… I also have found it to be SO much deeper than that. The more I sit with this exquisite work of art, the more I realize I don’t think this story is ultimately about first love at all. I think something the author and creative genius, Alice Oseman, conveys so brilliantly is that it offers the audience a more expansive message of what it looks like when people stop rejecting themselves. When they stop ignoring their own inner truth.
One of the most breathtaking aspects of Nick Nelson’s character arc isn’t that he realizes he’s bisexual.
It’s how he realizes it.
There’s no frantic attempt to prove he’s straight. No immediate shame spiral. No internal war. Instead, we see something quieter unfolding.
He witnesses himself.
He sits with curiosity.
He lets confusion exist without labeling it as wrong.
He wonders.
He researches.
He replays moments.
He lingers in uncertainty instead of rushing to escape it.
That alone, outside of a queer context, is a delicious way of being in relationship with our emotions. Imagine a world where it was normal to stay a little longer in our questioning. To sit with surprise. To let new information breathe before we make any meaning of it. So watching him move through his own self-discovery, something has stayed with me.
Nick’s greatest strength isn’t bravery. It’s self‑trust.
He trusts that his inner experience is worth listening to. And that kind of inner curiosity displayed in Alice’s work is revolutionary.
As someone who spent nearly 15 years immersed in evangelical Christian communities, I internalized teachings in my adolescence that told me my heart couldn’t be trusted. That my intuition was deceptive. That my desires were dangerous. What an unbelievably tragic belief system to hold as a teen and young woman when your adolescence is already brutal enough.
Our words have the power to breathe life into someone, or slowly draw it out.
It’s why language and storytelling matters. The way we speak to ourselves, the words we use, the stories we tell matter, because they create the doorway for what we allow in from others. I wasn’t trying to disappear, I was searching for belonging. What teenager isn’t? I truly believed self‑denial was the pathway to unconditional love because that was the narrative fed to me.
And yet, my own mother, like Nick’s, never asked that of me. She has always been an emotional sanctuary. The conditional love wasn’t coming from her. It was coming from the relationship I learned to have with myself through other environments.
That’s why Nick’s journey moves me so deeply. He keeps asking himself a question I never believed my younger self was allowed to ask:
What is actually true for me?
I think that is why Heartstopper feels so healing. Every character is slowly giving themselves permission to become.
Charlie chooses professional support when he is struggling.
Tao loosens his grip and learns love doesn’t disappear when people grow.
Elle dreams bigger than she once believed possible.
Isaac realizes fulfillment doesn’t have to look like romance at all.
No one is forcing themselves into an outside expectation. Sure, they rub up against external standards, pressures, and societal norms…who doesn’t? But they’re ultimately discovering their own story and orienting toward what feels true for them. What an unbelievably empowering message to gift the minds and hearts of today’s generation of teens. I can’t help but feel hopeful and in awe of the creative material available for younger generations, and simultaneously grieve the kind of messaging I wish us millennials had been given.
One of my favorite details in the entire series is the animated leaves.
At first glance, they’re whimsical and romantic. But after years of watching, I wonder if they actually represent surrender.
They seem to appear when a character stops bracing against themselves. When they let themselves feel excitement, tenderness, wonder, relief, love.
So I wonder, what if they aren’t just highlighting a romantic moment but instead celebrating congruence?
A visual cue that someone is trust‑falling into their own inner universe.
If you’ve experienced trauma of any kind, something often feels stolen from you. Not just joy, but imagination. Your ability to dream. Because when you are stuck in survival your world shrinks. Your nervous system scans for danger. You stop asking what’s possible and start asking what’s safe?
It’s like looking at life all the time through a straw.
But returning to child‑like play does something miraculous. You begin to soften. You start to expand. Your capacity slowly starts to widen. For joy, wonder, uncertainty, creativity, intimacy, hope. Not because life all the sudden becomes easy, but because your inner world no longer feels like enemy territory.
People often say love heals. Personally, I’m not sure that’s quite true. Love alone isn’t a cure. But safe, tender, soft love creates the conditions that makes healing possible.
Nick doesn’t ultimately rescue Charlie.
Charlie chooses therapy. He does the difficult work of recovery.
Nick becomes the balm, the steady presence who says, again and again and again:
“You don’t have to do this alone.”
That’s a different kind of love. A liberating one.
The older I get, the less interested I am in keeping relationships that ask people to become smaller. The ones that move me in my own life are the ones that create enough space and safety for people to become more of themselves.
That’s what Nick and Charlie offer one another.
What Elle offers Tao.
What Isaac finds in friendship.
What my chosen family and friends offer me.
Not pressure. Not performance. Permission.
The last seven years of my life have felt like returning home to myself in more ways than I can count. After my divorce, life handed me a blank canvas, something terrifying and remarkable.
I thought I had to reinvent myself. Divorce has a funny way of placing unnecessary pressure on a circumstance that’s already overwhelming. Thankfully that pressure was short lived! Because I realized I wasn’t actually inventing anything.
I was rediscovering. I was returning. I was remembering.
Remembering all the parts of me that existed long before fear and trauma convinced me they weren’t safe to be witnessed.
Remembering how to play again.
How to trust my intuition.
How to dream again without immediately asking if the dream is practical.
How to choose curiosity over certainty.
How to offer myself more compassion instead of judgment.
Maybe that’s why Heartstopper has such a grip on me. Not because it reminds me of the teenage years I wish I’d had, but because becoming yourself is not something exclusive to adolescence.
It’s the work of a lifetime well into adulthood.
And perhaps maybe that’s what those beautiful little animated leaves have been trying to whisper at us from the very beginning. Maybe they appear to remind us what it looks like when someone finally stops holding their breath.
When someone surrenders to their truth.When someone pays attention to the emotional currents of their inner world. When someone remembers that even after the harshest winters, the flowers in their inner garden still know how to bloom by the warmth of their own heart.
Bri x
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