As you may know by now, Netflix will be releasing the second season of the highly talked about, somewhat divisive series, 13 Reasons Why. Chances are you heard about the show last year, since people talked about it everywhere, but in case you don't know what it is, here's a quick breakdown.
The series starts with the tragic suicide of high school student, Hannah Baker. Hannah, before she died, made a series of tapes where she gave the 13 reasons why she decided to kill herself, each tape laying blame to someone or something that happened in her life. She then mailed them to be passe around to each person on the tapes, like some twisted chain mail, so they could all know how they played a hand in her death. She also gave an extra copy of the tapes to someone she trusted, in case someone decides to break the chain, in which this person would than blast her story through the speaker of the school. The series itself focuses on Clay, a friend of Hannah's who had a crush on her, and vice versa, and his adventures of blame and guilt and trying to understand why Hannah died and why he was on the tapes. When the series ended, it ended with Clay finishing the tapes and all the backlash everyone else on the tapes faced for, in some cases, either making a mistake or being a dumb teenager, with an actual horrendous crime sprinkled in.
That's where season one ended. Really, that's where the whole series should have ended. Clay finished the tapes. He passed them along. He understands why Hannah died and how he quite frankly did not belong on those tapes. This is essentially where the book the series is based on ended as well. There is no reason to continue the story. At least not with a whole other season.
I get it, we want to know if Bryce will be arrested, or if Alex will live after shooting himself, or where Justin will land, or what Jessica is going to do coming to terms with what happened to her, or why Tyler was looking at all those guns. There are bits of stories still there. But they couldn't be wrapped up with a ninety minute special? Isn't that similar to what Sense8 did? Or we could have left it at that, an ominous ending. Hey, I could even go with a four part, a la Gilmore Girls style thing, where the series uses that to neatly wrap up the questions they left in the finale, and that's it.
But with a whole second season, they're not just going to wrap up those story lines. There's going to be more plot points, more questions, maybe another cliffhanger to milk the premise into a third season. How long until we, as viewers, get tired of it though? Will we be on season 6 of 13 reasons why before we stop tweeting about it? Or maybe Netflix will see the backlash they already have with this season and think two is enough. I'm not sure.
What I am sure of, is I'm not going to be watching how they drag out a story they already told last year.
