13 Reasons Why Showrunner Gives Details On Season 2

Ever since the news broke that 13 Reasons Why is officially coming back for season two, fans have been wondering what the series will do to top its tightly plotted first outing. According to showrunner Brian Yorkey, the series will pick up a few months after the first season ended and will continue to follow Hannah (Katherine Langford) and as it connects her journey to what is going on in the present, despite the fact that her tapes have officially wrapped up.

"I knew by the time we finished season one that I wanted to continue," Yorkey told Entertainment Weekly. "We really have characters who, after 13 episodes, are just beginning the process of recovery and the process of coming to terms with what part they might've played in Hannah's death and how Hannah's death will change their lives going forward."

Yorkey says that recovery will be a big part of the upcoming season, which will delve further into the ways people grieve. It will also look at how the characters came to be the way they are, with Yorkey saying he wants to look more at "the way we raise boys up into men and the way we treat girls and women in our culture— and what we could do better in both cases." "It was something that we didn't get to watch with Hannah and I would really love to watch it with these other characters I've come to love," he said.

Yorkey says that Hannah will "absolutely" appear in season two, which will maintain the multiple timelines of the first season as it looks more into the question of who, if anyone, is responsible for Hannah's death. This will happen both through the trial and through flashbacks surrounding the other characters thinking about the time leading up to her suicide. Those flashbacks will show more about Hannah's story while also providing the other character's perspective, offering a "new context" to the events. "I have heard from a number of people, 'Well we heard all her tapes so her story is done,'" Yorkey said. "That's leaving aside the fact that for every tape there's another person who has a story, which is the person Hannah mentions on her tape. We saw Hannah's version of events unfold, but there's a lot more to be told also about those characters."

One of the characters who Yorkey says will be more heavily featured in season two is Alisha Boe's Jessica, who is "just beginning" to recover from Bryce (Justin Prentice) raping her. "I want to see how that at least starts to play out and I want to do Jessica's story the deserved justice of following her as she goes back to school, as she tries to begin to recover from what happened to her, because it's something that millions of young women go through," he said. "And also [I want to] see somebody punch Bryce in the face."

Hannah's tapes may be finished, but Yorkey says that many familiar elements from the first season will appear. Although Hannah won't be delivering a voiceover every episode any more, someone else will, allowing the show to continue to weave together different time frames. Yorkey also teases that the show will feature "a different sort of analog technology" that plays an important role in the story.

The new season will address all of the cliffhangers left after season one, Yorkey says, while also helping the characters find a "light" in their lives. "We're going to continue to tell their stories really honestly," he said. "I think what we're going to discover is, as they begin to emerge from this very dark time, there's hope and there is some light to be found."

13 Reasons Why, based on the young adult novel by Jay Asher, is expected to debut its second season on Netflix in 2018. While we wait, see the explanation of everything that went down in the season one finale.