OK, you guys, I think it's finally time we put this debate about what happened to Alex Standall in the "13 Reasons Why" finale to bed once and for all. Fans have picked up on a new little detail that seems to clarify what actually went down with the show's blonde rocker.
SPOILER ALERT: Obviously, don't read on until you've finished all of season one of "13 Reasons Why," or you just don't care about having the finale spoiled for you.
So, the season finale leaves viewers with a good amount of cliffhangers: What's Mr. Porter going to do with the tapes? Is Bryce going to pay for what he did? But the biggest cliffhanger of the bunch is what's going to happen with Alex.
In the final episode, we find out Alex is in critical condition in the hospital after reportedly shooting himself, buuut one popular theory circulating the internet is saying that Liberty High's resident photographer/stalker Tyler actually shot Alex and made it look like a suicide attempt.
That theory points to the fact that we see Tyler building up his own mini-arsenal of firearms toward the end of the show, and that the last shot we see of Tyler is him staring at a row of photos of all the main characters and then pulling Alex's down.
That Tyler-shooting-Alex theory may sound exciting, but let's take a step back and really examine what's going on here.
It actually looks like the show has been subtly telling us that Alex may have been suicidal for some time now. Yep, it seems like there probably isn't any crazy, hidden other layer to Alex's suicide attempt involving Tyler or anyone else.
We see that Alex is clearly the most depressed about what happened to Hannah (possibly aside from Clay) out of everyone on the tapes. He displays violent mood swings between apathy and rage (fighting Montgomery in the parking lot), and a disregard for his own life (refusing to slow down the car when he, Justin and Zack kidnap Clay). These are all warning signs of suicide, according to WebMD.
But one of the most blatant signs of Alex's suicide attempt of all is the parallels between himself and Hannah that the show displays. In one of the earlier episodes, Alex listlessly falls into Bryce's pool, mirroring Hannah's bathtub death scene in the finale.
Possibly the most enlightening of all, Alex cleans his room right before his last scene of the season, which Hannah is shown doing right before her suicide, BuzzFeed points out.
Alex's dad even compliments his son's clean room to really drive the point home. And it turns out, suicidal people will often clean up their rooms before a suicide attempt.
Soooo, I'm pretty convinced Alex really did shoot himself, you guys. "Then what about Tyler's gun collection," you ask? I'm pretty sure that's meant to be a lead-in to the show's possible second season (if it has one).
It looks to me like Tyler was preparing to take out all the people at Liberty High that had bullied or been dismissive to him, but then why would he start with Alex, especially when we see a flashback of the time Alex defended Tyler from his main bully, Montgomery, while Tyler is looking at Alex's picture?
I think Tyler removing Alex's photo in the finale is actually his indication that he won't be targeting Alex when he goes on his shooting spree, as opposed to all the other students whose photos are still hanging in his lab.
But hey, I could be totally wrong about all of this! We won't know for sure unless Netflix gives us a season two.
Citations: No One's Noticed This One Detail In "13 Reasons Why" That Explains The Ending (BuzzFeed)
