13 Reasons Why: These Are the Season 4 Scenes to Skip If You Worry About Being Triggered

Everett Collection / Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection

The final season of 13 Reasons Why is just as graphic and intense as the first three seasons of the show, covering many of the same topics, including sexual assault, death, and substance abuse. A lot of it can be really difficult to watch if you’ve experienced similar trauma in your life. Truthfully, most of this season of the show is hard to watch even if you haven’t. If you’re concerned about how these storylines might affect you, it’s important to know what to expect. Ahead, we’ve called out the most triggering moments from each episode, so you can decide whether or not to skip them. There are also warnings at the beginning of each episode to serve as a reminder of what’s to come.

  • Episode 1: There are multiple scenes in which dead characters return either in dream sequences or as hallucinations. Both have been violent in past seasons and sexually assaulted other characters.
  • Episode 2: While it doesn’t actually happen, there’s a brief moment when sexual assault is considered or implied, involving an image of an unconscious girl. At the end of the episode, a character has a brief panic attack after coming face to face with a police officer. An intense heart-beating sound accompanies the clip.
  • Episode 3: Throughout this episode, a character is stalked and tormented by someone over the phone, who eventually leads them into a bloody situation in the school locker room. One character has at-times-graphic hallucinations involving dead characters with violent histories on the show.
  • Episode 4: During the senior camping trip, a character falls in the water and fears drowning before he’s rescued. Several characters are held hostage in a cabin in the woods at night and tormented by someone outside. A character falls into a hole and struggles to break free, a scene that’s made to feel more intense by the heart-beating sound that plays over it. There are more hallucination sequences involving a dead character with a violent history in past seasons.
  • Episode 5: A dead character who has a history of sexual assault returns during a hallucination. The episode ends in a car accident, though you don’t see much, and it’s over quickly. It’s a tense few minutes leading up to it, though.
  • Episode 6: The entire episode is centered on a school shooting drill and is incredibly tense throughout. There’s a sequence in which a character has hallucinations involving two dead characters with violent histories on the show.
  • Episode 7: At the end of the episode, two characters get into a verbal altercation that turns aggressively physical. The one getting beat up then hallucinates about hurting someone else.
  • Episode 8: There is implied drug use in this episode, with one character who has a history of abusing hard drugs being shown in an alley surrounded by paraphernalia. The school resource officers that are stationed at the high school get violent with students after they walk out in anger over how they’re being treated. The officers target students of color.
  • Episode 9: At prom, one character discusses cocaine and then is seen in the bathroom with their date nearly unconscious. Friends intervene before anything can happen between them.
  • Episode 10: There is an AIDS-related death in this episode, tied to drugs and sex work. There are multiple scenes in which dead characters return, either in dreamlike sequences or hallucinations. These characters have a history of sexually assaulting other characters on the show.
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