13 Reasons Why: 9 Reasons It Ultimately Fails

4. Alex's Suicide Attempt

One of the series' big twists, which comes right at the end, is another suicide, or rather a suicide attempt, as Alex - formerly one of Hannah's close friends, and someone mentioned in the tapes - shoots himself in the head.

It's not an inherently bad development, because the show could frame this around the notion of copycat suicides and more explicitly the dangers of them, as well as the fact Alex is shown to be a troubled character with impulsive actions. However, it doesn't really work for a couple of reasons. One is that it happens so abruptly, and is just totally shoehorned in at the very end of the series, which means there's no weight to it beyond the potential for Season 2, and the initial shock value and added drama in a series that has already had a LOT of both.

It also means that it's showing the consequences of Hannah's tapes, because the implication is that him being named in them, and the circumstances that arise from their existence, lead to his own suicide. So if he were to leave his own tapes, one of them might be for Hannah. Again, it's an overly simplistic take on suicide, using it for drama rather than analysing the reasons behind it, and making it overly sensationalist too.