The Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t the only movie franchise that seems to be expanding without limits. Just when you thought the horny love story between your favorite star-crossed teens couldn’t get any more complicated, the popular film series After is also growing, with a number of new films that will explore the couple’s origin story as well as the long-lasting ramifications of their fraught love affair.
After, based on the steamy young adult novels penned by Anna Todd, follows the perpetually turbulent relationship between teens Tessa (Josephine Langford) and Hardin (Hero Fiennes Tiffin). Since we first met them, Tessa and Hardin’s romance has been rocky, but new announcements from the creators of After reveal that the hardship actually pays off in the long run — these two are actually going to have a future together.
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The After franchise has been green lit to create at least two more films following the release of third project After We Fell some time this year. One film will focus on Tessa and Hardin’s family; despite all of the drama that the couple faces, they’re eventually able to overcome their issues, get married, and raise two children on their own. As teenagers, their children Emery and Auden will experience their fair share of chaos in their personal lives, using their parents’ history as a guide for traversing their own relationship woes. (Given what we've seen from Tessa and Hardin, I don’t know if that’s the best idea.)
We’re also going back in time to see who Hardin was before — get it? — he met Tessa. A prequel film has also been set in motion, following the series of events that shaped the young man into troubled heartthrob that we know today. Hardin wasn’t always as chaotic and reckless as he is now, and in the prequel, we’ll meet the person who influenced his emotional trajectory: his first love.
“He’s gone through a lot of trauma in his family life and in his relationships,” Landon told Teen Vogue of the main character’s journey. “[We’ll] see more of that messiness before he meets Tessa, and how that experience changes him,”
We’re covering a lot of ground here, but the After franchise has been known to move very quickly; the first two films were released in 2019 and 2020, with the third to follow this summer. Production for both of the new projects has been scheduled to begin later this year, so we might be time traveling throughout this steamy YA universe sooner than we expect.