'Heartstopper' Season 3 Gets Steamy: 'We Shot Sex Scenes for 7 Hours!'

The upcoming third season of the sweet queer romance series "Heartstopper" grows up with some sex scenes between its leading men. But just how steamy will the show get?

Star Kit Connor, 20, who plays bisexual high school athlete Nick in the show, offered a clue in comments to The Sunday Times, according to Variety.

"We've been taking baby steps," Connor said in acknowledgement of the show's glacially paced progress as the love affair between teen characters Charlie (played by Joe Locke) and Nick unfolded across the first two seasons of the globally popular series.

Noting that an intimacy coordinator had been on set from the show's innocuous beginnings, Connor recalled that in "Season 1, he would be there making sure that we were comfortable holding hands."

"And now we're doing the sex scenes" for Season 3, Connor added.

Connor and Locke were both 17 when the show began, and now they have hit their 20s. Apart from the series, they have both seen their careers take off in film and on stage, with Locke having recently made his Broadway debut in "Sweeney Todd" and Connor about to portray Romeo in a Gen Z-infused production of "Romeo + Juliet."

It only makes sense that the show, which has so far traded on an inoffensive sweetness, would make its way into more mature territory.

"I wouldn't say that we've outgrown the show," Connor told the Sunday Times, "because the show is growing in itself."

Nothing could prove that point more aptly than the upcoming season's depiction of how Nick and Charlie's relationship is moving from hand-holding and the occasional snog toward more comprehensive intimacy.

"We shot a lot of footage for [the sex scenes]," Connor explained. "Not much actually ended up in the show," he added. "But we shot the sex scenes for about seven hours!"

The new season will also dive more deeply into Charlie's trauma following intense anti-gay bullying from schoolmates after he came out.

"After two seasons, Locke savored the opportunity to dig deeper into Charlie's 'dark places,' and trust that he could find his way back," Variety relayed in a previous article.

"The not-fun content is almost the most fun stuff to do," Locke commented – though the steamy stuff can be fun, too, despite the series avoiding overt sexual activity between Locke and Connor in its first two seasons.

That lack of hormonal teen interaction has tended to make the show seem artificial, Variety noted, and Locke agreed.

"I mean, we always joke that if it was actually real, they'd be in the bathroom just ... yeah," Locke told the magazine of the two main characters' coyly sexless relationship. "The mushy part became old hat. Me and Kit, we were doing kissing scenes every day. We were like, 'Right, come here – let's do it.'"

Season 3 premieres Oct. 8 on Netflix.

Watch a teaser for "Heartstopper" Season 3 below.