As a microcosm of sex and dating in 2024, Heartbreak High is teeming with life. Season two of the Netflix ’90s reboot is a Petri dish of lo-fi chemsex, anti-fap apps, incel erectile dysfunction, cute throuples, BDSM fantasies and bi-curious explorations. Nobody stays closeted or curious for long on this campus, and being sexually extra is celebrated.

Season one, in 2022, became a global hit, also taking off on Tiktok. Since then, battle lines have been drawn at the fictional Sydney school Hartley High (filmed at South Sydney High School), between the Woke, the Sluts and the Cum Lords. How can hotness possibly penetrate this pile-on?

Here’s how. Since the dawn of time, pop songs have declared variations of “If something feels so right, how can it be wrong?” and it’s that illicit thrill that sees hitherto hostile characters Spencer “Spider” White and Missy Beckett circling each other with sudden interest.

“The forbidden love aspect of it makes it more heightened,” reckons Sherry-Lee Watson, following a few hectic hours of throwing popcorn at Broadsheet’s photographer with co-star Bryn Chapman Parish.

As Missy, she’s the queer queen of the scathing putdown. In season one, she was in a relationship with the ultra-woke Sasha, but in season two she and Spider flirt with power dynamics. Maybe the thug in him appreciates her prowess on the footy field, as she comes storming through the defences to the righteous rap of Miss Kaninna’s Blak Britney: “I’m a deadly bitch…”

Spider has transcended his mayonnaise-douchebag status of season one. Now he’s leading the school’s men’s rights group, the Cum Lords – guided by the unsteady hand of physical ed teacher Voss (played with relish by Angus Sampson). Voss thinks young males are experiencing a crisis of confidence and wants to awaken Hartley High to the perils of the Woke Agenda. That’s why he’s got Spider and his fuckbois digging a massive hole, writing down their feelings and literally burying them.

But is Spider really just an incel in Fred Perry? A deeper understanding of the disaffected male psyche was required, so Chapman Parish spent time in the darker corners of Reddit in preparation, also reading Clementine Ford’s Boys Will Be Boys and watching his mate Aleks Hammo’s Youtube video interviewing Jordan Peterson fans.

“This is a scary time for young men who are already vulnerable to be led astray by Andrew Tate figures. It’s very easy to be radicalised quickly,” Chapman Parish says, in sympathy with his character’s struggles.

It says something about flirtation in 2024 that Spider and Missy’s love language is trolling, but there are also unexpected layers to their deepening relationship. Sasha’s warning to Missy that Spider has “fetishised a Black girl and you’re just bringing his Pornhub wishlist to life” proves unfounded, with Missy reaping the majority of sexual favours.

The production had two intimacy coordinators, but the actors, having attended drama school in the wake of #MeToo, were already literate in the language of consent. As a First Nations woman, Watson was determined to set a precedent with the sex scenes.

“The writers really took my suggestions on hand, in terms of how we would film a lot of the intimate scenes,” she says, “because this is really the first time [many] people are seeing a young Aboriginal girl have sex consensually and pleasurably onscreen, so I wanted to make sure that was done respectfully. I think it was originally written that when Missy climaxed loudly, the camera was on her face, and I was like, I don’t think that’s really necessary for the storytelling.”

In season one, the students were subjected to “sexual literacy tutorials” – aka SLUTS – that continue in season two. Teacher JoJo Obah, ever big on sex positivity, advises the year 11s to just keep their faces out of any nude pics. Get arty, basically.

“It’s crazy how that’s changed even over the last four or five years,” says Watson. “When I was in high school, it was still quite a big thing that you don’t send nudes to people. I graduated in 2016, so – what – seven or eight years later, everyone’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I send nudes – I keep them in my iCloud folder. Just don’t keep your face in it.’”

Chapman Parish agrees. “It’s so a part of our society and sexual interaction now. I guess, as the show explores, it’s about doing it the safe way and establishing boundaries with partners. In the show Euphoria, the actors took real nudes, like Sydney Sweeney. Her nudes get leaked in the show as her character, but they were actual nudes that Sydney consented to taking for use in the show.”

Supplying nudes is not an ask that Chapman Parish and Watson had to contend with, and the actors maintain a dignified digital presence. Chapman Parish says he can barely handle social media, so has never had a Tinder date. “It’s just another highlight reel,” he bemoans. “It’s not like the dynamics are starting in a great place.”

Even so, he can relate to a lot of the breadth of goings-on at Hartley High. Unlike Watson, who went to a boarding school where dating was kept under wraps, Chapman Parish went to a performing arts co-ed in Newtown.

“It was pretty loose,” he says, “and I know for a fact that the graveyard party in the first season is based on parties that we would have at a graveyard close to our school. But also, it was a pretty amazing school because I was introduced to the concept of non-binary and trans people in year eight or nine. People were sexually fluid throughout the cohort, and it was very accepted.”

While that personal freedom and safety certainly isn’t true of most high schools, shows like Heartbreak High are at least flying the flag. All of the flags. “Euphoria shows you the darkest side of how sex can go horribly wrong, and then Sex Education is really good at approaching a much more sexually open and accepting way of sexuality,” says Chapman Parish. “I think our show does a good job of blending those two things.”

Having been slightly weirded out that he won an AACTA Audience Choice Award for his problematic character, Chapman Parish is pleased that in season two Spider has a reckoning of sorts.

“As an actor, sometimes I can feel guilty about a profession where some would say you’re not contributing to society, but hopefully this is impacting the next generation about the proper ways to go about relationships and sexual situations,” he says. “When I was growing up I was watching Skins and The Inbetweeners, but they weren’t really dealing with those things. I think these conversations around consent that teens are watching now are really socially beneficial.”

Heartbreak High season two drops on Netflix on April 11.