'13 Reasons Why' Season 2 preview: There's more to Hannah's story still to be told

The first details of the second season of Netflix’s hit teen drama 13 Reasons Why have started to emerge following a lengthy silence that has, so far, kept the specifics of Season 2 firmly under wraps.

Speaking at a Netflix preview event in Rome, co-showrunner Brian Yorkey revealed the second season of the show would further explore Hannah Baker’s story before her death by suicide. In Season 1, which debuted on Netflix in March 2017, Hannah (Katherine Langford) recounted her final days through 13 audio tapes which were shared between her circle of friends, but the showrunner says the tapes don’t show the full picture.

“For Hannah, have we heard the whole story?” Yorkey hypothetically posed, “We’ve heard the tapes but there must be more to that story. We heard the story that she wanted us to hear. There’s more.”

Not only will Season 2 delve into more of Hannah’s backstory, but it also promises to explore the fallout of her suicide, and the effect it had on the residents of Crestmont and the students of Crestmont High, including Hannah’s friend Clay, played by Dylan Minnette.

“There’s so much left unsaid,” Yorkey added.

“Really, when we were at the end of Season 1 when we pull off away from Clay, staring out of the window, it feels like an ending, but really when you think about it, he’s just lost a girl that he loved in a horrific fashion.

“There’s now fallout from that, he’s only just beginning to come to terms with what that is.”

Minnette, whose character Clay appeared to achieve some sort of closure by the end of Season 1, says there’s still a lot of healing left to do.

“When Season 2 starts Clay is trying to move on. From the memory of Hannah, and the events of Season 1,” shared Minnette.

“He’s really just trying to move on in any way that he can. When this new trial begins, it brings him back to old memories of Hannah, and brings him back to trying to find justice for her again. Whether he wants to or not, he can’t really help it. No matter that he believes that he has moved on, or is beginning to, I think he quickly realises, and the audience realises, that he hasn’t.

“I don’t think Clay is ever going to have any easy path, no matter how much we want it.”

The trial is presumably the court case between Hannah’s parents, played by Brian d’Arcy James and Kate Walsh, which could offer the new season a neat framing device for the flashback scenes that will help to flesh out Hannah’s back story now that the tapes have been fully explored.

In a new interview with E!, Walsh offered a bit more insight into the second season.

“You see us sort of following the trail of Bryce Walker [Justin Prentice], so this season deals with sexual assault, it deals with truth, it deals with responsibility, it deals with the aftermath of Hannah’s death… And really trying to, again, look for responsibility and accountability. It’s very intense and very, I think, still totally addictive.”

At Netflix’s See What’s Next event, Yorkey also talked about how the community of Crestmont will begin to take a closer look at itself in Season 2.

“Each of these characters has so much more to them, and as we were making Season 1, it really became apparent to us that we didn’t want to leave them behind. You felt like there was so much more story to tell.

“We were really interested in seeing how they would all start to heal from the trauma they were a part of. We were interested in seeing if they had learned any lessons as a community. And maybe they would learn to come together for each other and be there for each other in a way that they maybe they weren’t able to before.

“I think we really sorta, all of us working on the show, became very invested in what happens next for them? For all these people that we’ve come so close to.”

13 Reasons Why Season 1 is available to stream on Netflix now. Season 2 does not have an official air date yet.

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