By: Susan San

The hit show 13 Reasons Why that was released in March of last year, finally released its long-awaited second season. Hannah’s tapes left many questions unanswered in season one, such as whether or not Alex really died from the gunshot he inflicted upon himself. Turns out, he’s alive! I do have to admit that I fangirled a little bit when I saw him alive and in action, but I’m going to miss the dyed blonde hair he had last season. He played an important role in this season as he struggled with his identity, since he injured himself amidst attempting to take his own life in the last season.

To be frank, I thought the whole idea of Clay hallucinating Hannah in the show was pretty weird at first. She was like his annoying conscious the whole time, and she even got on my nerves a little. If I could change something about the show, it would be the fact that she was basically there the whole time; you couldn’t see much of Clay’s own thoughts alone. One  aspect I found interesting was the director’s decision to use these hallucinations to represent Clay not letting the thought of Hannah go up until her funeral, towards the end. On a different note, there has also been a lot of drama and controversy around the scene of Tyler Down being physically and sexually assaulted by Monty and his jock friends in the boys bathroom. It was said in the 13 Reasons Why: Behind the Reasons follow-up show that the producers wanted to spread awareness that guys can assault other guys too. Many people got a different impression of this scene, claiming that it’s too graphic and inappropriate as a Netflix show. Other people have even started to protest taking the entire show off the website because they feel so strongly about this. In my opinion, there are many shows that are a lot worse in terms of appropriateness on Netflix, but I agree that they should not have made the scene as graphic and upsettingly shocking as it was.

All in all, I would only recommend this show to first season lovers and people who aren’t as sensitive to violence in shows. I don’t think it’s a good idea to watch a second season if you were content with the way things ended in the prior one because many new problems arise, but at the same time the many conflicts still floating in the air become resolved. Based on the last scene/cliffhanger in the last episode, it seems like they will be making a third season. If they do come out with a third, I’d like to know how they would incorporate Hannah back into the show, or if they would do that at all. I will most likely end up watching it out of curiosity on that and how the cliffhanger unfolds.