Revealing that you’ve killed off one of your main characters in the trailer is a ballsy move – but for 13 Reasons Why executives, it’s all in a day’s work. The series which originally revolved around Hannah Baker’s suicide now has another dead teenager that they need to solve the mystery of. However, there’s no (or there might not be) photos or tapes this time to act as evidence.
What’s more? Everyone has motive to kill Bryce meaning that everyone could be a suspect. Let’s break down the motives for each ones and we’ll tell you who we think could be the murderer at the end of the post. Trigger warning for mentions of suicide and sexual assault.
Clay
Clay is an obvious suspect for so many reasons. The main one being that he has heard all of the tapes and clearly blames Bryce for a lot of went down in the lead up to her suicide. He also did storm up to Bryce’s house with a gun which shows that he did have the capacity to kill him if Justin hadn’t have stopped him. But this might be a bit too obvious if 13RW are going for the shock factor with who killed him (which we think is most likely). Clay has outbursts of violence but that is very different to actually killing someone.
Chloe
Chloe was a new addition to Series Two and we saw her on the arm of Bryce, seemingly unaware of how much of a walking trash bag he truly was. Until she found out that he had raped her, too, and taken a picture of it on a polaroid while she was unconscious. While this would naturally set anyone’s mind to haywire, Chloe then found out the even more harrowing news that she was pregnant with his baby. Could she be protecting herself and her baby from his evil ways?
Mr Porter
Mr Porter is the counsellor at the school who helped (or didn’t, in her eyes) Hannah when she began to have thoughts that she didn’t want to live anymore. While he does have a calm demeaour throughout most of the show, in the second series we saw him strangling Bryce without a second thought which shows that he does have the tendency towards violence and anger. He was also laid off from the school so it could be that a switch was flipped within him and he decided that Bryce was the one to pay the price for it.
Jessica
Jessica is just one of Bryce’s many rape victims at this point. She was convinced to testify against him in court which lead to his lame but unfortunately realistic punishment of community service for his crime. In the trailer, we saw Jess yelling at one of the jocks which shows she is clearly still enraged so it could be that she finally decided to take matters into her own hands.
Tyler
Tyler had a really rough time in the second series, one certain scene which sparked even more controversy than the show already had following the graphic depiction of suicide. Tyler began to let his wild side out a little more, graffiting the school and deciding to wreak havoc in a very teenage-angst way. However, when the jocks gets wind of this, they decide to remind him where he stands in the school food chain and sexually assualt him in the bathroom with a broom. One of the most harrowing scenes but obviously, one of the situations that would have an incredibly lasting effect on the boy. At the end of the second series, we saw him take guns into the school on prom night with no real indication as to who he was going to kill. Maybe he decided that it was Bryce, the leader of the jocks who should pay for the crimes.
Nora
Here’s one of the suspects that you might not think is really a suspect – Bryce’s mum. Just bear with me. Even though she is in the trailer demanding answers, this doesn’t mean that she is innocent. There wouldn’t be much of a better coverup than pretending that you knew nothing about what happened and playing the doting mother. We saw a lot of tension arise between the two when Nora began to realise thats she really didn’t know who her son was at all. It could be that an argument happened off-screen that pushed the mother into killing her own son to stop him from being the monster he was.
So, who do we think the murderer is? Honestly… all of these motives would stand up in court. Maybe. We’re not lawyers but there isn’t someone who doesn’t have a motive on this list. Knowing 13 Reasons Why, they love their audiences to expect the unexpected but I really hope it’s a shocker like Nora or Mr Porter. Whatever it is, we can’t wait to see what happens this series!
Let us know in the comments who you think is the murderer.
