'13 Reasons Why' season 3 sees rapists Bryce Walker and Monty pay for their sins with their deaths but that is not justice
Season three of '13 Reasons Why' projected a lot of issues better than the show has in the past. From a mature execution of real-life harrowing experiences plaguing American teens today to the way a community comes together to get to the bottom of a problem, season three is all about solidarity in the midst of a burning mystery.
However, the one gaping hole that this installment managed to leave in our hearts was the lack of justice for its biggest criminals. Both rapists, Bryce Walker and Montgomery de la Cruz aka Monty, pay the ultimate price with their deaths but without either getting convicted or serving out their full sentence.
Season three explores the case of Bryce (Justin Prentice) who is initially missing and later found dead. It is revealed at first that he was probably shot in the head, but we are told later that it was actually a brutal blow to the skull with a baseball bat.
Now, almost everyone on the show had some incentive to kill the big, bad high school jock and rapist who sexually assaulted at least three girls including his own girlfriend. And while numerous people on countless occasions wanted him dead, we also got to see just the right amount of redemptive arc for the character this season.
However, there's no denying that death is as puny a punishment for Bryce's crimes, as was the three-month-long probation he received after he was convicted for sexual assault.
It was Bryce's actions that drove Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford), the shows former protagonist, to kill herself. Forcing himself on Jessica Davis (Alisha Boe) while she was heavily intoxicated has still left her traumatized. His girlfriend, Chloe Rice (Anne Winter), was also one of the girls he had sex with and took pictures of while while they were passed out. Chloe ended up getting pregnant and underwent a difficult abortion.
The only punishment, in turn, that Bryce had to deal with was practically an escape through death by one of the many people he has wronged. That's not exactly justice. True punishment for Bryce is to suffer the consequences of the crimes he committed, by first getting incarcerated and then serving out the sentence.
Instead, he lived his plush life in probation because he is a rich white boy after all, and returned to the luxury of his mother's home while attending a different school.
We see the same pattern in the show's other rapist, Monty, who had assaulted his classmate Tyler Down (Devin Druid) in the school's bathroom. There weren't any other explicitly mentioned accounts of Monty's crimes, but that single one was enough to spiral him into a hole of apathy from viewers, making him a character beyond redemption.
In season three, he gets framed for Bryce's murder, but that's after he is outed as Tyler's assaulter, following which he gets sentenced to prison. And even though his physically abusive dad spits on his face and he is later killed in his prison cell, the entire scenario still looks like justice not served enough.
Monty's assault on Tyler was enough to send him into a rage that led to him shooting up his own school. Even though Clay was able to talk Tyler out of the act and the following year saw Tyler make a new friends, the damage was already done.
Tyler could never even walk into a room full of people his own age without feeling uneasy. He would walk almost a mile into the local woods to even take a leak because he couldn't stand the school toilets. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Monty going to prison and dying without serving out the sentence for the pain he caused is just one way of going out the easy way. '13 Reasons Why' season three premiered on August 23 and all new episodes are streaming on Netflix.