Shuvrajit Das Biswas
’13 Reasons Why’ Season 3 Episode 9 picks up immediately where the last episode leaves off. There is an understandable urgency to the plot now as we head towards the few remaining episodes. A lot begins to unravel as secrets come to the surface. A surprise suspect arises in the form of Seth, the deadbeat drug dealer who lives with Justin’s mother.
However, the end of the episode adds a twist we did not see coming as a character from the past appears to be in town. That being said, Episode 9 deals with Justin’s drug problem which seems to be more serious than what we thought earlier. Aptly named, “Always Waiting for the Next Bad News”, the episode has a cascade of bad news that our central characters must deal with and strive to stay ahead of.
13 Reasons Why Season 3 Episode 9 Recap:
Clay wastes no time in accusing Justin of taking Oxycodone the very next morning. However, Justin tells him it was a one-off thing. We find it really hard to believe Justin who is acting shady. Moreover, can someone really believe an addict?
Things become worse for Clay when he is officially named as a person of interest in Bryce’s case, while Justin and Monty appear to have a faceoff in the weights room. However, as the episode goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that Bryce was not into dealing oxy. It appears that Justin is lying. However, a flashback shows how Justin ended up working for Seth, who showed up at Monet’s coffee shop, where Justin works, asking for money. Justin started dealing drugs for Seth from the coffee shop but also skimmed from the top for his personal consumption. When Seth found out, he threatened to kill Justin but the cops arrived. Surprisingly, Justin leaned on Bryce for support, who not only bailed him out but also confronted Seth, getting him to back off. It was Bryce who got Justin hooked on oxy, asking him to stay away from heroin since it might kill him. Due to Bryce’s confrontation with Seth, he seems like a good suspect. However, when Clay, Ani, and Justin investigate, they realize that Seth did not have much to do with Bryce’s death after all. Justin is caught out in a couple of other lies as Clay finds him doing cocaine in the bathroom.
That being said, while most episodes are hard-pressed to portray Bryce in a better light, the episode does not shy away from reminding us why he is so hated. Justin meets Bryce to buy oxy after almost being ousted from his school game due to a random drug test. When Bryce waxes nostalgic about how they ended up here, Justin flat out tells him it is because Bryce raped his girlfriend. By the end of the episode, it seems Justin is ready to come clean to Clay as their brotherly affection grows and they each promise to protect the other. Justin finally reveals that he was down at the docks on the night of the homecoming game, getting high. We do not know whether to believe Justin yet, but the show throws in an unexpected twist at this moment. We get to know that Mrs. Baker, Hannah’s mother, is in town. Maybe she killed Bryce to avenge her daughter. She would certainly have motive and opportunity. We head to the next episode dealing with the twist in the tale.
13 Reasons Why Season 3 Episode 9 Review:
There is not much to be said for Episode 9 of ’13 Reasons Why’. In a classic whodunnit fashion, it has shifted the suspicion onto Justin for now, and though he has protested his innocence, we do not know whether to believe him. There is also the threat of an outsider having killed Bryce, that is Mrs. Baker, who seems to have come back to town from New York. It remains to be seen if she is the killer, but the final few episodes are shaping up to be nailbiters.
