'13 Reasons Why' S2 Changes How You See Hannah
This post contains spoilers about 13 Reasons Why season two.
The first season of 13 Reasons Why told its story entirely through the lens of one character, Hannah Baker, and the tapes she left behind in lieu of a suicide note. Season two, by contrast, spotlights thirteen different characters as they each give testimony at the Bakers’ civil trial against Liberty High. What becomes clear in hearing their stories is that Hannah was a completely unreliable narrator.
Clay, always the audience surrogate, is trying to process all of this new information about Hannah while simultaneously dealing with Ghost Hannah, who periodically shows up to offer commentary on the many, many holes in the tapes’ narrative. And though some of the new revelations about Hannah seem to contradict with what we saw in season one, most of them actually make her a more rounded, more convincingly flawed character.
Below, nine season two moments that might reshape your view of Hannah.
1. Hannah and Zach’s secret relationship, aka the best and worst revelation of season two
As far as we knew during season one, Hannah and Zach never had much of a relationship. He tried to be kind to her after her awful Dollar Valentine date with Marcus, she viciously rebuffed him, and he stole her compliment notes from communications class in retaliation. As far as the “Reasons” went, Zach was low-stakes. But as it turns out, Hannah left a lot out of Zach’s tape: They had a weeks-long relationship the summer before she died; they lost their virginities to each other; their romance is probably the most healthy and functional and loving we’ve ever seen on this show. They’re so adorable that it’s kind of unbearable to watch because you know what’s coming.
This whole thing was such a significant retcon that it’s hard to completely swallow. Ghost Hannah tries to explain away the tape discrepancy by saying she wanted to keep her and Zach’s relationship private, but why put him on the tapes at all in that case? They only begin to bond after Zach apologizes to her for what happened before, and she accepts his apology, so her dredging that up for the tapes feels false. Their relationship ends because Zach admits he doesn’t want his friends to know about her, which clearly crushes Hannah and makes a lot more sense as a reason for him to be on the tapes than anything we heard last season. So… zero points for logic, but 1000 points for Hannah and Zach, who in an alternate universe in my head are still together and happy and extremely alive!
2. Jessica’s side of the friendship triangle
One of the earliest “Reasons” centers on Hannah’s short-lived friendship with Jessica and Alex, and how their cute hangouts over hot chocolate went sour. As Hannah described it, Alex and Jessica started dating and froze her out – there’s one particular scene where Hannah rings up her friends while they’re on a date at the Crestmont, and Jessica is straight-up bitchy to Hannah, who just tries to be nice.
But in episode two, we see Jessica’s version of that same exchange, and it’s completely different. Jessica clearly feels bad, not wanting to rub her relationship in Hannah’s face, and offers to get coffee with Hannah after the movie. Hannah turns her down, and makes it clear she’s jealous. Jessica continues to feel guilty for weeks, while Alex is the one telling her to get over it (“fuck girl code,” he specifically says). It also comes out that the entire trio kissed each other during a game of Never Have I Ever, and so when Alex then started dating Jessica, it felt to Hannah like a direct rejection of her. It’s not that Hannah was lying in her tape, but her version of events is clearly colored by her hurt feelings.
3. The Molly
Honestly, the revelation that Hannah and Clay did drugs together makes a whole lot of sense, and adds some realistic teenage messiness to a relationship that sometimes felt thin last season. Sometime early in the season one timeline, Hannah, Clay, Jeff (RIP), Jeff’s girlfriend, Sherri and Ryan all did Molly together, and Clay is now haunted by a moment during the comedown where Hannah said: “What’s the point of it all? Do you ever think, I can’t do it any more? Like, I want to die?”
But everybody’s having a rough comedown, so they’re mostly like “ha yeah totally,” and only Clay seems concerned. He didn’t do anything, which made sense in the moment, but in retrospect feels like one more way in which he let Hannah down. Given how fast her downward spiral sometimes felt last season, it’s telling that Hannah was having suicidal thoughts as far back as this hang.
4. Andy Baker’s affair
Hannah’s home life seemed, for the most part, pretty idyllic last season – the only real moment of conflict was when she lost the money she was supposed to deposit into the bank from her parents’ drugstore. So the revelation about her dad in episode eight is a huge missing puzzle piece in terms of why she might have felt hopeless. Andy was having an affair, Hannah found out about it, and when she confronted him about it, his reaction is… not ideal. He makes excuses and tells her, “It’s a terrible moment when you realize your parents aren’t perfect,” and when she rightfully calls him out on this patronizing nonsense, he promises to tell her mom. In present day, Andy is still seeing this other woman, while he and Olivia are in the early stages of divorce proceedings. The affair is revealed in court as a pretty damning piece of evidence against the Bakers’ case that Hannah’s school is solely to blame for her suicide.
5. Hannah went to The Clubhouse with Bryce
This doesn’t actually end up changing our view of Hannah in any significant way, but it initially promises to do so. The end of episode ten reveals a Polaroid of Hannah at The Clubhouse, the secret storage room where some Liberty High jocks drank, smoked, and sexually assaulted girls. She’s smiling in the picture and wearing someone’s letterman jacket. The picture plays on a lot of the uncertainty we – and Clay – have developed about her after all these new revelations in court. Did she have a secret relationship with Bryce, as he claims during his testimony in episode 11?
Naturally, the answer is, Hell no. Bryce pursued Hannah and they seemed to have an uneasy friendship for a while, until she gently rejected his advances at The Clubhouse and put him in the friend zone. As a privileged white athlete used to getting whatever he wants, that made him furious. This whole chapter ends up revealing more about Clay than it does Hannah, because he’s so quick to believe the worst of her, and so slow to grasp what female victims go through.
“Why are these girls getting themselves into this situation in the first place?” Clay asks when he, Justin and Sherri are going through years’ worth of Clubhouse photos. “Clearly no-one’s forcing her to be there.” Sherri, thankfully, is quick to call him out on this victim-blaming mindset. “Girls don’t just get themselves into bad situations. Guys make the situations bad. You don’t know what that feels like, to be a girl in that room.”
6. “You did an evil thing.”
How much pain do you have to be in to justify causing pain to other people? That was one of the big questions underlying Hannah’s whole tape endeavor, and it gets explored in more depth this season along with the “Reasons” all being humanized more as they tell their sides of the story. The tapes have done a lot of harm: Alex shot himself and Clay almost threw himself off a cliff, so his explosion at Ghost Hannah in episode eight of season two feels overdue in some ways. “You fucked up people’s lives!” Clay screams. “You killed yourself and you didn’t care. You did an evil thing.” He ends up apologizing to her for the outburst, but it’s a needed perspective.
One episode later, the principal of Liberty High expresses a similar view which, again, plays like a direct response to one of the big criticisms of season one – that the show glamorized suicide by allowing Hannah to live on through her tapes, and to have the last word, making it appear as though death is a way to finally be heard. “Hannah is not a hero,” the principal says. “She does not have lessons to teach us. We need to recognize the sad and simple truth that she is gone. The most dangerous thing would be to believe somehow that Hannah’s suicide is more than a tragic death.”
7. Hannah was a bully
The show dropped this like a bombshell before gradually peeling back the layers to reveal something more nuanced and minor. Hannah was a new transfer to Liberty High the year before her death, and episode ten reveals that at her former school, she was part of a clique that viciously bullied another girl, Sarah, who testifies against her during the trial. Fortunately, Hannah came clean about this chapter in her life to Tony, admitting she’d taken part in the bullying rather than be an outcast herself, and Tony pays Sarah a visit to let her know how guilty Hannah always felt about it. This is one of the most plausible revelations about Hannah; she’s clearly never felt very socially secure, so it completely tracks that a 14 or 15-year-old Hannah would bully Sarah rather than risk not fitting in.
8. Hannah lied to the police for Tony
It was never entirely clear in season one why Tony was so endlessly devoted to seeing the tapes through, and seeing Hannah’s wishes fulfilled. Since he wasn’t on the tapes himself, he remained a bit of a mystery, but episode ten focuses on him and fleshes out the friendship he had with Hannah. It turns out that in addition to the two assault charges that have landed him on probation, Tony narrowly escaped arrest after beating up a man who yelled homophobic slurs at him and Ryan. The only reason Tony got away was that Hannah hid him at the Crestmont and lied to the police when they came looking. On one level, this is just further proof that Hannah was a kind and loyal friend. But cashing in that favor in the way she did – “You owe me,” she writes in a note alongside the tapes on his doorstep – also suggests an edge of ruthlessness.
9. Reasons Why Not
Probably the most heartbreaking reveal of the entire season: Hannah did want to live. At least, enough so that she made a list of “Reasons Why Not,” and was only able to come up with eleven. What’s even sadder is that a lot of those are duplicates; her parents are on there multiple times, while Clay shows up both by his own name and by “Helmet.”
If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). The Crisis Text Line is also available; text REASON to 741741. You can find additional support, services, and resources at 13ReasonsWhy.info.
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