About

Heartstopper is a television show adapting the comic book of the same name written and created by Alice Oseman. The show is produced by See-Saw Films for the streaming service Netflix and primarily tells the story of Charlie Spring (Joe Locke), a gay schoolboy who falls in love with classmate Nick Nelson (Kit Connor), whom he sits next to in his new school year. The series first season premiered on April 2022 and a second season debuted on August 2023. The Netflix adaptation was well received by fans and critics, inspiring fan art memes on social media using clips and quotes from the show.

History

Alice Oseman started publishing Heartstopper on her Tumblr in September 2016^[1]. She gained a significant following and decided to start producing and releasing physical copies of the first two chapters. On June 20th, 2018, she launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a physical version of the comic and, in two hours, achieved the desired impact^[2]. The comic book (shown below) is an LGBTQ+ young adult graphic novel about the lives of Nick Nelson and Charlie Spring as they meet and fall in love.

The production for the_Heartstopper_ television series started in 2019 when See-Saw Films asked Oseman if she could try writing a screenplay.^[3] On January 20th, 2021, it was revealed that Netflix^[4] green-lit Heartstopper as an eight-episode half-hour series. On April 13th, 2022, the first trailer of the tv series was posted on YouTube^[5] (shown below), garnering over 4.5 million views and 215,000 likes in a year.

The first season of Heartstopper was released on April 22nd, 2022, and the second on August 3rd, 2023.

Reception

During the show's debut week, Heartstopper ranked at number seven on Netflix's Top 10 TV English titles just two days after its release.^[6] The review website Rotten Tomatoes reported a "Certified Fresh" 100% approval rating for the first season of the series, with an average rating of 8.7/10, based on 59 critic reviews^[7].

For Paste Magazine, the critic journalist Emily Maskell gave the show a rating of 8.8/10 and said, "An open-armed embrace for queer youth, Heartstopper lays the strong foundations of what you can only hope will be the uplifting and inclusive depictions of queer characters for the next generation of viewers."^[8]

Online Presence

The series was well received online, becoming a trending topic on Twitter and other social platforms. For instance, on May 6th, 2022, Twiiter^[9] user @saintzyves posted a Skeleton Rollercoaster High Five image macro using the show's logo alongside the HBO series Euphoria. The post (shown below) garnered over 151,000 likes and 16,300 retweets in a year.

Twitter^[9] user @hrtrobins uploaded a GIF using several clips of the series (shown below), which amassed more than 87,200 likes and 20,600 retweets in a year.

happy one week heartstopper pic.twitter.com/Eg4IjyCAmz

— kai (@hrtrobins) April 29, 2022

Related Memes

This Was My Heartstopper

As the Netflix adaption premiered on April 2022, the "This Was My Heartstopper" trend started on Twitter, which consisted of LGBTQ+ fans sharing their favorite or first introduction to queer content, earnestly and ironically. For example, on May 5th, 2022, Twitter^[10] user @filmsbygays posted a collection of still images of Hayley Kiyoko's music video "Girls Like Girls" paired with the caption "this was my heartstopper." The post (shown below) garnered over 120,800 likes and 22,500 retweets in a year.

Search Interest

External References