13 Reasons Why really never needed to exist beyond season 1

Netflix renewed controversial teen drama 13 Reasons Why for a fourth and final season prior to its Season 3 premiere. But did we really need four seasons of this show?

In case you somehow missed this news, it’s official: Netflix renewed its controversial teen drama 13 Reasons Why for a fourth and final season.

No, we still haven’t seen the third one yet. (It premieres on August 23.) Yes, that means that by the time season 4 concludes, we’ll have seen 52 episodes of this show. And, if we’re honest, that’s way, way too many.

The first season of 13 Reasons Why adapted a popular novel of the same name by Jay Asher. It followed the story of the life – and death – of Hannah Baker, a teenage girl who commits suicide and leaves a series of cassette tapes for her former friends and enemies to listen to afterward.

The show came under considerable fire for its graphic depictions of suicide and sexual assault, but it’s hard to deny that its realistic and frequently disturbing portrayal of modern teen life was deeply compelling. And that was largely due to the character of Hannah, whose thirteen tapes formed the narrative backbone of the story, and whose losing struggle with despair grounded it emotionally.

In the wake of Hannah’s suicide, season 2 didn’t entirely know what to do with itself, attempting to recreate the magic of its first outing by focusing each episode on the testimony of a particular character during the trial surrounding the school’s culpability in her death. Hannah herself is – vaguely – still part of the story, appearing as a sort of ghost vision to her ex-boyfriend Clay. (We get it, Netflix; you wanted to keep Katherine Langford around.)

But her voice, as such, becomes increasingly faint, as the series’ second season reduces Hannah from a girl telling her own story, to the stories people tell about her.

Now the series is getting ready to return for a third season, in which Langford doesn’t appear and which isn’t about Hannah at all and we have to ask – what’s the point?

13 Reasons Why has always been Hannah Baker’s story, and it’s virtually impossible to imagine this show can possibly look like without her. The season 3 promotional materials seem to promise a murder and another mystery, but since very few of us watched this show because we cared about Clay or Zack or Marcus or any of the B-list students whose names I’ve forgotten in the year since season 2 aired.

What, honestly, is the point of this? Are there really two seasons worth of story here? We all know that Bryce – who, apparently, is the victim of the aforementioned murder, according to the season 3 trailer – is a rapist and all around monster. Do we really care that much about who killed him?

And if the story is stretched this thin in the series’ third season, what on earth happens when we get to the fourth?

13 Reasons Why was never meant to be a dark ensemble teen drama like Riverdale or Pretty Little Liars. This was a story about the tragedy of one girl, who found her voice only in giving it up forever. Dragging this out so much only further devalues Hannah’s story, and fails her as a character. We really don’t need a season 3, or season 4 – but sadly, that’s exactly what we’re getting.

13 Reasons Why season 3 premieres on Netflix on August 23. Season 4 is currently in production.