Netflix Has Renewed Its Smash-Hit 'Heartbreak High' Revival for a Second Season
Hartley High's latest batch of teens will be returning to your streaming queue, after the first season reached Netflix's top ten TV shows in more than 43 countries.
What happens when you take the Australian teen series of the 90s and update it to the 2020s, all while riding a huge wave of nostalgia for all things stemming from three decades back? Even thanks to just the first part of that equation, every fan of beloved 1994–99 hit Heartbreak High could've told you that the end result would be a smash. And, streaming on Netflix since September, that's exactly how the ace new Heartbreak High revival has turned out — so much so that there's going to be a second season.
No one has been saying "rack off" to the Sydney-set show's latest run, or its new batch of Hartley High teens, or their fresh dose of teen chaos. Not Aussie audiences, with the series sitting in Netflix's top ten TV shows in the country for the five weeks since its release. Not global viewers either, with Heartbreak High 2.0 also reaching the top ten in more than 43 countries, including in the US and across Europe, Africa and Asia — and spending three weeks in the global top ten, too.
The streaming platform also advises that its subscribers clocked up 42.6 million hours watching Heartbreak High in three weeks. That's not bad for the latest high school-focused revival, doing what Beverly Hills, 90210 did, plus Saved by the Bell and Gossip Girl as well, but with a firmly Aussie spin.
Unsurprisingly, Netflix has greenlit Heartbreak High for a second season, although exactly when it'll drop hasn't been revealed. Still, if you're keen to spend more time with Amerie (Ayesha Madon, The Moth Effect), Harper (Asher Yasbincek, How to Please a Woman), Darren (screen first-timer James Majoos), Quinni (Chloe Hayden, Jeremy the Dud), Dusty (Josh Heuston, Thor: Love and Thunder), Ca$h (Will McDonald, Home and Away), Malakai (Thomas, Troppo), Spider (Bryn Chapman Parish, Mr Inbetween), Ant (debutant Brodie Townsend), Sasha (Gemma Chua-Tran, Mustangs FC) and Missy (fellow newcomer Sherry-Lee Watson), start getting excited now.
Season one started with Amerie becoming a pariah at Hartley after a big revelation — an "incest map" plotting out who's hooked up with who throughout the school — and also struggling with a sudden rift in her friendship with bestie Harper. Attempting to repair her reputation, she calls on help from her new pals Quinni and Darren, all while working through her crush on Dusty and developing feelings for Malakai. And that's just the start of Heartbreak High's 2022-set story so far.
It was back in 2020 that Netflix initially announced that it was bringing the series back — and yes, it sure is a 2020s-era take on the Aussie classic. Adolescent chaos is still the main focus, including everything from friendship fights, yelling about vaginas from the top of a building and throwing dildos at walls through to consent, crime, drugs and police brutality.
The original Heartbreak High was a massive deal, and was filled with now-familiar faces, including Alex Dimitriades, a pre-Home and Away Ada Nicodemou, and Avengers: Endgame and Mystery Road's Callan Mulvey as Drazic. It painted a multicultural picture of Australia that was unlike anything else on TV at the time. And, for its six-year run across two Aussie networks, the Sydney-shot show was must-see television — not bad for a series that started as a spinoff to the Claudia Karvan and Alex Dimitriades-starring 1993 movie The Heartbreak Kid, too.
Check out the trailer for the new Heartbreak High below:
Heartbreak High season two doesn't yet have a release date — we'll update you when one is announced. The show's first season is available to stream now via Netflix. Read our full review.
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