A story about what seemed like a normal high school turned out to be so much more. The third season for Thirteen Reasons Why came out, and I’m very confused. 

On August 23, 2019, the third season of 13 Reasons Why came out on Netflix. The show’s first season was released on March 31, 2017, and was quickly very appealing to teenagers because it took place in a high school environment full of drama. 

The first season covered the suicide of Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford), and each episode out of the 13 episodes, talked about a person in Hannah’s life who gave her a reason to kill herself. The second season was about a trial against a popular football player, Bryce Walker (Justin Prentice) who raped several girls at the local high school, including Hannah Baker. At the end of season 2, Bryce Walker was found innocent and Clay Jensen (Dylan Minnette), Hannah’s best friend, Jessica Davis (Alisha Ilhaan Bø), a rape victim of Bryce Walker and one of Hannah’s friends, and a lot of the other students were angry at Bryce for not getting the punishment he deserved. The trailer for the third season dropped on August 1st and the trailer showed the main conflict of this season “Bryce Walker Is Dead, Who Did It?”

 As I watched the trailer, I saw a lot of potential plot twists and a new character. I was interested to find out who killed Bryce, and how this new character would play into this story. However, I had a few questions about Season 3. The first two seasons covered some very real topics such as the suicide of Hannah Baker, because she felt alone which is something that a lot of teenagers can face at times and so much more. I found it very interesting that they turned the story from Hannah Baker’s suicide to a popular football player’s murder. 

After finishing the whole season, I just have no words. The show added a brand new character, Ani Achola (Grace Saif) who lived in the same house as Bryce Walker and instantly became friends with everyone at Liberty High. Ani tells the story throughout the entire season which gave the audience a different perspective on the story since she was the “New Girl.”  I felt like when Clay narrated in Season 1 and 2, he was very biased because he was in love with Hannah. My favorite part about Ani was that she showed the audience a side of Bryce who was caring, sweet and wanted to be a better person which was something I had never seen in Season 1 and Season 2. 

 This season, the show had two more major problems that people are facing today, school shootings and ICE raids, and personally I feel like they weren’t covered as well as they should have been. I felt like they would talk about the ICE raids for a few minutes but not fully give the whole story and then go back to the murder of Bryce Walker.  In my opinion, there was so much going on in the story with finding the murderer of Bryce Walker that the other storylines, like the ICE raids didn’t have as much of an impact on the audience that the producers wanted it to. 

Overall, I think the storyline could have been written much better and that it should have focused on just one general conflict instead of so many at one time. I would rate this season 2 stars out of 5 because it was interesting at times, but also very confusing. Stay tuned for Season 4, who knows what the producers will do next!