Rebecca Davis
AFA Journal staff writer
November 2019 – From suicide to homicide, Netflix continues sending people to their graves with its recently released Season 3 of 13 Reasons Why, the controversial suicide-themed series targeted at young people.
Season 1 was based on a young adult novel by Jay Asher in which teenager Hannah Baker commits suicide as an act of revenge and leaves behind 13 cassette tapes blaming people for her death. Season 2 explored a myriad of heavy topics related to the aftermath of Hannah’s death, then ended with a graphic rape scene and an attempted school shooting.
Now Season 3 has the homicide of a teenage serial rapist at the helm of its darkness, filth, and perversion.
The show’s writers, producers, and cast continue to claim the show is a catalyst for starting healthy conversations about serious issues facing today’s youth: abortion, drug use, feminism, homosexuality, mental illness, racism, rape, sexual assault, suicide, school shootings, toxic masculinity, etc.
They rationalize with warnings, disclaimers, and an informational website where viewers can go for help. All sounds well – until viewers find themselves in the wake of the show’s deadly destruction (See AFA Journal 5/18, 8/18, 9/18, 10/18, and 6/19).
A dark grave
Ed Vitagliano, executive vice president of AFA, calls the series “a dark and demonic primer for impressionable young people that invites them to enter a realm of perversion, hatred, deceit, and violence that has been birthed in hell itself.”
Season 3 wastes no time delving into the danger of eternal consequences. In the second episode, Chloe, who became pregnant by her boyfriend, the show’s serial rapist, is shown having an abortion. Other than the dulled sound of the vacuum sucking life from her womb, the procedure appears to be no more invasive than a routine gynecological exam.
Once again, 13 Reasons Why presents intentional death as a reasonable and acceptable response to an unwanted situation. Chloe simply ends her child’s life and moves on with her own.
Based on the suicide contagion that spiked among young people after watching Season 1, it only makes sense to assume that an “abortion contagion” could result from Season 3 – this time sentencing innocent babies to death.
A deep grave
There are no adequate words to describe the depth of darkness found in this season. The 13 episodes, rooted deeply in deceit, are filled with pornographic scenes of homosexual and heterosexual teens having sex, teen drug use, oblivious parents, extreme feminism and masculinity, the humanizing of a serial rapist, and teens offering trusted friendship as the only remedy for mental illness.
Teens lie to authorities and cover up the murder of their hated classmate. Furthermore, a law enforcement officer knowingly goes along with their plan and destroys evidence of his own son’s involvement.
Critics are questioning the reason for the show’s continued existence. A secular critic from vox.com calls the third season “irresponsible” and “ridiculous.”
She said, “[I]t continues the approach that made season one so dangerous: The show insists on exploring very serious real-life problems in as much didactic detail as possible, but it does not show any evidence of having done the research to get the exploration right.”
“Clearly, controversy is the aim, not education,” wrote another secular critic.
Offering no hope and no real answers, the show’s creators keep digging deeper into the bottomless pit of human depravity, shoveling over it the guise of educational entertainment. 
Take action
With the recent release of Season 3 of 13 Reasons Why and a fourth and final season already in production, AFA presses on, urging concerned persons to put maximum pressure on Netflix to pull all seasons of this dangerous series from its streaming service. Sign the petition at afa.net/netflix.
