Since Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why first debuted in 2017, it’s been one of the most popular shows on the platform, though the show’s handling of mental-health issues has been controversial, raising a longstanding furor over whether it glamorizes or sensationalizes suicide.
The first season, based on the novel Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, centered on a student’s suicide and the cassette tapes she made explaining why she decided to take her own life. The series was criticized after a study suggested it increased self-harming behavior and suicide threats among those who watched it. Netflix responded by adding content warnings to certain episodes, and editing the explicit suicide scene in the first season’s finale.
The series is now returning for its fourth and final season, as the characters do their best to move on from the events of the second and third seasons as they get ready to graduate. They’re still processing the trauma of one student’s murder, an attempted school shooting, and a character’s involvement with a Mexican crime cartel, but an investigation into their darkest secrets by a fellow student threatens to upend it all.
Stars Dylan Minnette, Grace Saif, Christian Navarro, Alisha Boe, Brandon Flynn, Miles Heizer, Ross Butler, and Devin Druid all return to help close out the series.
The final season of 13 Reasons Why will drop on Netflix on June 5.
