Main

• Dylan Minnette as Clay Jensen, a teenage boy attending high school who had a crush on Hannah and becomes obsessed with finding out what drove her to kill herself. At the end of the second season, he successfully talks Tyler out of committing a school shooting at the end-of-year dance and helps him escape the police. He is also the primary suspect in Bryce Walker's murder in the third season. His deteriorating mental health and subsequent recovery are a pivotal storyline in the fourth season.^[14]
• Katherine Langford as Hannah Baker (seasons 1–2), a teenager at Liberty High who leaves behind a set of tapes detailing thirteen reasons why she killed herself.^[14][15]
• Christian Navarro as Tony Padilla, Clay's best friend at Liberty High who tries to help him deal with Hannah's death. Before her death, Hannah gives Tony the audio cassettes and holds him responsible for making sure everyone on the cassettes hears them. His family is deported in the third season after Bryce's dad reports them to I.C.E.^[14]
• Alisha Boe as Jessica Davis, a student who starts attending Liberty High at the same time as Hannah. She is raped by Bryce in the first season, which leads to her opening a sexual assault survivors club on campus. She is elected student body president in the third season. Throughout the series, she was in an on-again, off-again relationship with Justin Foley. In season four, she had a final reconciliation with Justin, which lasted until his death later that season.^[14]
• Brandon Flynn as Justin Foley,^[16] a student at Liberty High who comes from an abusive family and is in a relationship with Jessica.^[14] He is responsible for setting the events of the series into motion by being the first person to humiliate Hannah after their first date. He was initially Bryce's friend and Clay's enemy until he broke off his friendship with Bryce for raping Jessica. At the end of the second season, Justin is adopted by Clay's parents and lives with Clay as his foster brother. He later tests positive for HIV and dies from AIDS-related meningitis in the series finale.
• Justin Prentice as Bryce Walker, a student from a rich family and the captain of the football team and pitcher on the baseball team at Liberty High. He was friends with Justin, Zach, and Monty. He is a notorious serial rapist who is known to rape unconscious girls. He also sexually assaulted Jessica and Hannah in the first season. He is killed by Alex who pushes him from a bridge after he is brutally beaten by Zach, where Zach's beating was in retribution for Bryce injuring him during a football game.^[14]
• Miles Heizer as Alex Standall, a student at Liberty High, the ex-boyfriend of Jessica and a former friend of Hannah. Alex is sarcastic and tends to be blunt, but also cares about others. He kills Bryce in the third season by pushing him into the river after Zach leaves Bryce incapacitated. In the fourth season, he dates Winston Williams and Charlie St. George.^[14]
• Ross Butler as Zach Dempsey, a kindhearted friend of Justin and Bryce at Liberty High. After Bryce breaks his knee at the homecoming game and causes him to lose his college scholarships, Zach assaults Bryce at the river pier, breaking both his legs and his elbow.^[14]
• Devin Druid as Tyler Down, a shy, severely bullied student at Liberty High. He is an avid photographer, which often gets him into trouble, especially when he is caught taking stalker-like photos of female classmates, including Hannah. At the end of the second season, he is sexually assaulted by Monty while in the boys bathroom of Liberty High school, which leads to him attempting a school shooting at the Spring Fling before being talked out of it by Clay. His emotional recovery is a storyline in the third and fourth seasons.^[14]
• Amy Hargreaves as Lainie Jensen, Clay's attorney mother who works for the firm representing Liberty High in the Baker's lawsuit.^[17]
• Derek Luke as Kevin Porter (seasons 1–2; guest season 3), a guidance counselor at Liberty High. He is fired after giving his testimony in Hannah's trial in the second season. He is brought back in the third season to help the police interrogate the students in Bryce's murder investigation.^[18]
• Kate Walsh as Olivia Baker (seasons 1–2; guest season 3), Hannah's mother and Andy's ex-wife, who is determined to uncover the truth about the events leading to her daughter's suicide. She divorces Andy and moves to New York between the second and third seasons.^[18]
• Brian d'Arcy James as Andy Baker (season 2; recurring season 1), Hannah's father and Olivia's ex-husband. During Hannah's trial in the second season, he reveals that he had been cheating on Olivia when Hannah was alive, a fact which Hannah discovered.^[19]
• Grace Saif as Ani Achola (seasons 3–4), a new immigrant student at Liberty who lives in Bryce's house due to her mother being his grandfather's caretaker. The third season is narrated through her conversation with Deputy Standall in which she makes a case for Monty having killed Bryce before he died in order to get the sheriff to drop the case. Tensions rise when Clay and Jessica find out that Ani slept with Bryce, but she is nonetheless Jessica's best friend and Clay's girlfriend until the end of the fourth season.
• Brenda Strong as Nora Walker (season 3; recurring season 2; guest season 4), Bryce's mother. Although initially distant from her son, she takes a firmer stance with Bryce when he transfers schools to prevent him from repeating his mistakes. She pushes the police to investigate Clay into Bryce's murder.
• Timothy Granaderos as Monty De La Cruz (seasons 3–4; recurring seasons 1–2), a vicious bully from an abusive family who is a student at Liberty High. He is friends with Bryce and is quick to anger. He is secretly gay and violently assaults Winston Williams, who is openly gay, after he kisses him at one of Bryce's parties only to have sex with him later. He is killed in jail after being arrested for sexually assaulting Tyler. His father is homophobic and disowns him after learning that he is gay.
• Mark Pellegrino as Bill Standall (season 4, recurring seasons 1–3), a Crestmont deputy sheriff and Alex's father.
• Tyler Barnhardt as Charlie St. George (season 4; recurring season 3), a jock at Liberty High who is friends with Monty but kind at heart. He is later Alex Standall's boyfriend in the fourth season. During the 4th season, he spends time with Clay's friends and developed feelings for Alex. He is shown to be bisexual and the starting quarterback for Liberty after Luke was caught with steroids in the 3rd season.
• Deaken Bluman as Winston Williams (season 4; recurring season 3), a former Hillcrest student who hooks up with Monty and is furious when Monty is posthumously accused of Bryce's murder, knowing Monty was not guilty because Winston was with him the night Bryce was murdered. He transfers to Liberty to investigate the case and get information for the police while dating Alex and falling in love with him. He drops the case after Alex tells him that he was the one who killed Bryce.
• Jan Luis Castellanos as Diego Torres (season 4), a charismatic, aggressive, and fiercely loyal leader of a divided football team struggling to understand the loss of one of their own.
• Gary Sinise as Dr. Robert Ellman (season 4), a compassionate, incisive, no-nonsense adolescent and family therapist who works to help Clay Jensen battle anxiety, depression and grief.^[20]

Recurring

Development

Universal Studios purchased film rights to the novel on February 8, 2011, with Selena Gomez cast to play Hannah Baker.^[21] On October 29, 2015, it was announced that Netflix would be making a television adaptation of the book with Gomez instead serving as an executive producer.^[22][4] Tom McCarthy was hired to direct the first two episodes.^[23] The series was produced by Anonymous Content and Paramount Television with Gomez, McCarthy, Joy Gorman, Michael Sugar, Steve Golin, Mandy Teefey, and Kristel Laiblin serving as executive producers.^[23]

On May 7, 2017, it was announced that Netflix had renewed the series for a second season, which was released on May 18, 2018.^[24]

On June 6, 2018, Netflix renewed the series for a third season, which was released on August 23, 2019.^[25] It was dedicated to executive producer Steve Golin (founder and CEO of Anonymous Content), who died of Ewing's sarcoma on April 21, 2019, four months before the third season's release.^[26]

On August 1, 2019, it was announced that the series had been renewed for a fourth and final season, which was released on June 5, 2020.^[10][11]

Casting

In June 2016, Dylan Minnette, Katherine Langford, Christian Navarro, Alisha Boe, Brandon Flynn, Justin Prentice, Miles Heizer, Ross Butler, Devin Druid and Brian d'Arcy James were cast as the main leads.^[19] In September, Amy Hargreaves, Kate Walsh and Derek Luke were cast.^[17][18] Langford exited the show after the second season.

In August 2017, Jake Weber, Meredith Monroe, R. J. Brown, Anne Winters, Bryce Cass, Chelsea Alden, Allison Miller, Brandon Butler, Samantha Logan, Kelli O'Hara, and Ben Lawson were cast for season two.^[27][28]

In September 2018, Timothy Granaderos and Brenda Strong were promoted to series regulars for season 3 after recurring in the previous seasons.^[29] On September 5, 2019, Gary Sinise was cast as a series regular for the fourth season.^[20] On February 11, 2020, Jan Luis Castellanos joined the cast as a series regular for the fourth season.^[30]

Filming

Filming for the series took place in the Northern Californian towns of Vallejo, Benicia, San Rafael, Crockett and Sebastopol during the summer of 2016.^[31][32] The 13-episode first season and the special were released on Netflix on March 31, 2017.^[33][34] Therapy dogs were present on set for the actors because of the intense and emotional content of the series.^[35]

Filming for the second season began on June 12, 2017,^[36] but was briefly halted in October in response to the then-ongoing Northern California wildfires happening around the areas where the series was being filmed.^[37] Production on the second season wrapped in December 2017.^[38] The second season was released on May 18, 2018.^[39]

Filming for the third season began on August 12, 2018, but was halted due to another wildfire until December 17.^[40] Filming was scheduled to be completed on February 6, 2019.^[41]

The fourth season began filming in July 2019 and finished in December 2019.^[42]

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the series has an average rating of 35%.^[51] On Metacritic, the weighted average rating for all seasons except the last one is 60 out of 100, based on 38 critic reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".^[52]

Audience viewership

The marketing analytics firm Jumpshot determined the first season was the second-most viewed Netflix season in the first 30 days after it premiered, garnering 48 percent of the viewers that the second season of Daredevil received, which was the most viewed season according to Jumpshot. The series also showed an 18 percent increase in week-over-week viewership from week one to week two. Jumpshot, which "analyzes click-stream data from an online panel of more than 100 million consumers", looked at the viewing behavior and activity of the company's U.S. members, factoring in the relative number of U.S. Netflix viewers who watched at least one episode of the season.^[82] According to Nielsen, the premiere episode of the second season drew 6.08 million viewers in the U.S. in the first three days of its release.^[83] It also revealed that a significant part of its audience were young – aged 34 or younger (75%) – and female (65%) – with males representing 35 percent of viewers.^[83] The second season became the eighth most watched English-language television series on Netflix, with 496.1 million hours viewed.^[84]

Awards and nominations

Criticism

Several health professionals, educators and advocates linked the show to self-harm and suicide threats among young people. This community also expressed major concerns about the series romanticizing suicide, not providing adequate resources at the conclusion of each episode, targeting a young vulnerable audience, and painting mental health professionals as unhelpful and not worth seeing.^{[104][105][106]} Mental health experts are also educating the general public on what to do in the situations Hannah Baker goes through, disseminating accurate information surrounding teen suicide, depression, and youth that experience traumatic events through research surrounding the show and mental health resources for help-seeking youth.^[114]

The release of 13 Reasons Why corresponded with between 900,000 and 1.5 million more suicide-related Google searches in the United States, including a 26 percent increase in searches for "how to commit suicide", an 18 percent increase for "commit suicide", and a 9 percent increase for "how to kill yourself".^[115] After an initial spike in calls to the Crisis Text Line after the first episode, there was an overall reduction in crisis call volume for the remainder of the series.^[116] Although the link between searching for suicide information and suicide risk is unclear,^[117] increases in self-harm admissions to one children's hospital were observed.^{[118][119][120][121][122]}

The superintendent of Palm Beach County, Florida schools reportedly told parents that their schools had seen an increase in suicidal and self-harming behavior from students, and that some of those students "have articulated associations of their at-risk behavior to the 13 Reasons Why Netflix series".^[123]

The Australian youth mental health service for 12–25 year-olds, Headspace, issued a warning in late April 2017 over the graphic content featured in the series, due to the increased number of calls to the service following the series' release in the country. However, Netflix demonstrably complied with the Australian viewer ratings system by branding the series as "MA15+" when streamed via its own interface. They accompanied its presentation with additional warnings and viewer advice, and ensured that counselling referrals were included and not easily skipped at the conclusion of each episode. Each warning voice over is read by a different cast member at the end of the episode, with Katherine Langford reading in her native Australian accent in her voice-overs.^{[124][125][126]}

In response to the graphic nature of the series and New Zealand's high youth suicide rate, which was the highest among the 34^{[lower-alpha 1]} OECD countries during 2009 to 2012,^[128][129] the Office of Film & Literature Classification in the country created a new rating, "RP18", allowing individuals aged 18 and over to watch the series alone and those below having to watch it with supervision from a parent or guardian.^[130][131]

In April 2017, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) in the United States released a statement regarding the series, saying: "Research shows that exposure to another person's suicide, or to graphic or sensationalized accounts of death, can be one of the many risk factors that youth struggling with mental health conditions cite as a reason they contemplate or attempt suicide."^[132] NASP sent a letter to school mental health professionals across the country about the series, reportedly a first for NASP in response to a television series.^[133] The following month, the United States Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (SCCAP) released a statement also noting how strongly the series may serve as a trigger for self-injury among vulnerable youth. They lamented the depiction of mental health professionals as ineffective for youth who have experienced trauma and may have been considering suicide.^[134] The statement implored Netflix to add a tag following each episode with mental health resources, and a reminder that depression and suicidal thoughts can be effectively treated by a qualified mental health professional, such as a clinical child psychologist, using evidence-based practice.

Similarly, clinical psychologists such as Daniel J. Reidenberg and Erika Martinez, as well as mental health advocate MollyKate Cline of Teen Vogue magazine, have expressed concerns regarding the risk of suicide contagion.^{[135][136][137]} However, Eric Beeson, a counselor at The Family Institute at Northwestern University noted that "it's unlikely that one show alone could trigger someone to attempt suicide."^[132] Mental health professionals have also criticized the series' depiction of suicide itself, much of which violates widely promulgated recommendations for reporting on actual suicides or not depicting them in fiction, in order to not encourage copycat suicides.^[138] The season finale, which depicts Hannah's suicide in graphic detail, has been particularly criticized in this regard.^[139] Nic Sheff, a writer for the series, has defended it as intended to dispel the myth that suicides "quietly drift off", and recalled how he himself was deterred from a suicide attempt by recalling a survivor's account of how painful and horrifying it was.^[140]

Executive producer Selena Gomez, in defense of the controversy surrounding the series, stated:

We stayed very true to the book and that's initially what Jay Asher created was a beautifully tragic, complicated yet suspenseful story and I think that's what we wanted to do ... We wanted to do it justice and yeah the backlash is gonna come no matter what. It's not an easy subject to talk about, but I'm very fortunate with how it's doing.^[141]

The NASP statement also criticized the series' suggestion that bullying alone led Hannah to take her life, noting that while it may be a contributing factor, suicide far more often results from the bullied person having a "treatable mental illness and overwhelming or intolerable stressors", along with a lack of adequate coping mechanisms. Alex Moen, a school counselor in Minneapolis, took issue with the series' entire plotline as "essentially a fantasy of what someone who is considering suicide might have—that once you commit suicide, you can still communicate with your loved ones, and people will suddenly realize everything that you were going through and the depth of your pain ... That the cute, sensitive boy will fall in love with you and seek justice for you, and you'll be able to orchestrate it, and in so doing kind of still be able to live."^[139] Other counselors criticized the depiction of Hannah's attempt to reach out to Mr. Porter as dangerously misleading, since not only does he miss obvious signs of her suicidal ideations, but says he cannot report her sexual assault to the police without her identifying the assailant. School counselors are often portrayed as ineffective or clueless in popular culture, Moen says, but Porter's behavior in the series goes beyond that, to being unethical and possibly illegal. "It's ridiculous! Counselors are not police. We don't have to launch an investigation. We bring whatever information we do have to the police", she told Slate.^[139]

In May 2017, the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) along with the Centre for Suicide Prevention (CSP) released a statement with similar concerns to the ones raised by NASP. CMHA believed that the series may glamorize suicide, and that some content may lead to distress in viewers, particularly in younger viewers. Furthermore, the portrayal of Hannah's suicide does not follow the media guidelines as set out by the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention (CASP) and the American Association of Suicidology. CMHA and CASP did praise the series for raising awareness about "this preventable health concern," adding that, "Raising awareness needs to be done in a safe and responsible manner. A large and growing body of Canadian and international research has found clear links between increases in suicide rates and harmful media portrayals of suicide." Ways in which the portrayals of suicide may cause harm, according to CMHA and CASP, include the following: "They may simplify suicide, such as, by suggesting that bullying alone is the cause; they may make suicide seem romantic, such as, by putting it in the context of a Hollywood plot line; they may portray suicide as a logical or viable option; they may display graphic representations of suicide which may be harmful to viewers, especially young ones; and/or they may advance the false notion that suicides are a way to teach others a lesson."^[142][143] A 2019 study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that the overall suicide rate among 10- to 17-year-olds increased by 28.9 percent in April 2017, the month immediately following the release of the first season. The study examined monthly suicide rates for that age range from January 2013 through December 2017, and the rate observed in April 2017 "was the highest monthly suicide rate of any month during the 5-year study period".^[103]

Netflix response

Netflix responded to the criticism surrounding the series by adding strong advisory warnings prior to the ninth, twelfth, and thirteenth episodes in the first season, the first two due to rape and the last due to the suicide scene. In July 2019, before the release of season three, Netflix edited the suicide scene of the first-season finale. Originally, the episode included a bloody depiction of Hannah slitting her wrists in a bathtub.^[144] However, it has been argued support to vulnerable viewers should be inspired by an ethical commitment toward the audience, rather than the moral panic for suicide contagion.^[101]

Season 1 (2017)

Season 2 (2018)

Season 3 (2019)

Season 1

13 Reasons Why (A Netflix Original Series Soundtrack)
Soundtrack album by Various artists
Released	March 30, 2017 (2017-03-30)
Genre	Indie rock synthpop new wave[153]
Length	52:21
Label	Interscope
Singles from 13 Reasons Why (A Netflix Original Series Soundtrack)
"Bored" Released: March 30, 2017 "The Killing Moon" Released: April 21, 2017

Season 2

13 Reasons Why: Season 2 (A Netflix Original Series Soundtrack)
Soundtrack album by Various artists
Released	May 18, 2018 (2018-05-18)
Length	72:17
Label	Interscope
Singles from 13 Reasons Why: Season 2 (A Netflix Original Series Soundtrack)
"Lovely" Released: April 19, 2018 "Back to You" Released: May 10, 2018 "Start Again" Released: May 15, 2018 "The Night We Met" Released: December 14, 2018

Season 3

13 Reasons Why: Season 3 (A Netflix Original Series Soundtrack)
Soundtrack album by Various artists
Released	August 23, 2019 (2019-08-23)
Length	63:50
Label	Interscope
Singles from 13 Reasons Why: Season 3 (A Netflix Original Series Soundtrack)
"Fuck, I'm Lonely" Released: August 1, 2019 "Another Summer Night Without You" Released: August 12, 2019 "Teeth" Released: August 21, 2019 "Die a Little" Released: October 30, 2019