The third season of Hannah Carroll Chapman's Australian Netflix comedy-drama Heartbreak High premiered recently, and it's got people talking! The entire show has a compelling plot, but even more intriguing is how it navigates relationships, sex, and gender scripts.
I think the show does a really good job of touching on these topics in a way that feels accurate and current without sacrificing entertainment value. So, I want to take a second to unpack some of those core themes from the first two seasons and weigh in on how they were handled in preparation for watching season three. Fair warning: light spoilers ahead!
Men & Masculinity in Heartbreak High
This show does not leave much to the imagination when it comes to exploring masculinity in all its complexity. Erectile dysfunction, bisexuality, desire discrepancies are all given real screen time, and none of them treated as punchlines.
The one I really want to key into though? The erectile dysfunction x toxic masculinity pipeline.
Erectile dysfunction is handled with a surprising amount of nuance for a show about high schoolers–rather than playing it for laughs, the show uses it to explore how young men are often conditioned to tie their sense of masculinity to sexual performance. His ED plays out through:
Performance anxiety and shame
Intimacy issues with Missy
Possible demisexuality (This is unconfirmed!)
By the end of the season, his struggle with ED and his struggle with his own misogyny and insecurity are basically the same storyline. You can't talk about one without recognizing the other’s role.
Now, the toxic masculinity piece.
It comes up in subtle ways, woven into how male characters communicate, deflect vulnerability, and navigate friendships, but pretty overarching ways too.
The institutional version of all this? The CUMLORDZ, a group that forms specifically in opposition to the school's Sexual Literacy Tutorials (SLTs).
The SLTs are meant to get students to engage critically with gender, power, and sexual health. The problem is the only message many of the students are hearing is all men are trash. That frustration becomes recruitment material for Spider and other boys in the class. The message writes itself: you're not the problem. Everyone just hates men.
And here's what the show gets right that a lot of shows don't:
It doesn't let either side off the hook. Spider's frustration isn't entirely baseless as being reduced to a symbol of patriarchal evil isn't exactly an invitation to self-reflect. But the CUMLORDZ aren't a support group. They're a feedback loop. One that makes it harder for Spider to actually sit with the shame and vulnerability underneath all of it.
But, the show communicates that the boys aren't reaching for misogyny because they're bad people. They're reaching for it because it's being handed to them by a group pushing an ideology that tells them resentment is the same thing as strength.
Overall, Heartbreak High treats its male characters as full people navigating a lot of cultural noise about what it means to "be a man." The show seems genuinely interested in what it costs young men to perform toughness, and a few of the character arcs reflect real growth in that area.
“Puriteens” & Purity Culture
The show introduces Ca$h and Darren pretty early on, and it’s clear that they have a real romantic spark, but a fundamental mismatch in desire. Darren has a higher libido and is eager to take things further while Ca$h eventually comes out as asexual. It's a storyline that handles an underrepresented experience with care–but what's just as interesting is what happens next.
Let's get into the real-world stuff this storyline brings up:
Desire discrepancy is normal and common. Partners rarely have perfectly matched libidos or levels of sexual interest, and that's okay! What matters is how you navigate it. I have to say, the show depicts this tension honestly rather than resolving it unrealistically.
Asexuality is still widely misunderstood. Ca$h's coming out is significant because asexuality is one of the most stigmatized and erased sexual identities out there. Being asexual doesn't mean something is wrong with you, that you've never been interested in sex before, or that you just "haven't found the right person." It's a valid orientation, full stop.
Rejection is not a reason to repress. After Ca$h ends things, Darren interprets the breakup as a sign that his sexuality is the problem, and promptly joins the sex-abstinent “Puriteens” group at the high school. This is such a relatable and painful misread.
And this is where purity culture comes in: the Puriteens aren't just about abstinence, they're about shame. And shame and sexuality are a genuinely toxic combination. Here's why that matters:
Shame doesn't eliminate desire!
Sexual repression is linked to negative outcomes, like worse sexual communication and possibly sexual dysfunction.
Purity culture disproportionately harms young people by framing normal sexual feelings as something to be fixed or suppressed rather than understood.
If you want to learn more about how sexual shame plays a role in someone’s sex life, I would recommend this review.
The message the show is sending is that the problem was never Darren's desire. The problem is a culture that teaches people their sexuality is something to be managed, hidden, or punished rather than explored safely and honestly.
Neurodiverse Relationship Experiences
Heartbreak High represents neurodiversity pretty well through the relationship between Quinni, an openly autistic character, and her neurotypical love interest Sasha.
Their dynamic touches on some really important real-world experiences that don't get enough airtime:
Masking is exhausting. Quinni mentions early on that she is often good at masking her autism (meaning she has learned to suppress or hide autistic traits to appear more neurotypical in social situations).
Miscommunication hits differently across neurotypes. Quinni has support needs that often go unmet, and the two frequently find themselves at odds because of it. This is incredibly common in neurodiverse relationships and the fix is usually not trying harder, it's communicating differently.
Unmet support needs are a relationship issue, not just an individual one. If your partner's needs aren't being met, that affects both of you. It's worth having explicit conversations about what support actually looks like rather than assuming.
The storyline also tackles infantilization head on. Sasha makes choices on Quinni's behalf to keep her safe, but Quinni is not having it. And rightfully so. This reflects something a lot of neurodivergent people experience: people around them conflating care with control. Good intentions do not equal good support. If you're not asking your partner what they need and instead deciding for them, that's worth reflecting on, even if you mean well!
. . . And There's More to Heartbreak High
And somehow, I didn't even get to the abortion storyline, the threesome, technology-facilitated sexual violence, or whatever disaster unfolded at the school dance. Seriously, this show leaves nothing out. Heartbreak High is doing a lot, and it's doing most of it well.
Which is exactly why it matters! The media we consume can shape how we think about sex, relationships, consent, and identity, arguably more than any formal education we receive (or may not receive) on those topics. When a show addresses these experiences directly, honestly, and without flinching, people notice. They feel seen. They learn something. They start conversations they didn't know how to start before.
That's not nothing. That's actually kind of everything.
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Written by Jesse John, B.S.
Jesse is a clinical psychology doctoral student at Rowan University in New Jersey. Their research focuses on sexual decision-making, sexual violence, and relationship experiences. The author identifies as a Queer, neurodiverse, white, non-binary person, which informs the way they write and see the world!
