How ‘13 Reasons Why’ Changed Netflix’s Teen Programming Forever

13 Reasons Why takes its final bow on Netflix today. After four years of heartbreaking drama, the series that began mourning the death of a lovely teen girl named Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford), calls it quits in its fourth and final season. While fans will be spending the weekend grappling with 13 Reason’s Why‘s last emotional gut punch, it’s worth ruminating on the show’s complicated legacy. Yes, it was a hit. Yes, it sparked necessary conversations about mental health. Yes, it was controversial to the extreme. From a business perspective, though, 13 Reasons Why changed Netflix’s teen programming forever.

After 13 Reasons Why proved to be a mega-hit, Netflix didn’t just hurry to feed its rabid teen audience. It rethought how best to tell teen stories. From the ways in which future YA adaptations would eschew bleak scenes of sexual assault and suicide to how 13 Reasons Why itself has been edited since its initial premiere, the series represented a huge learning moment for the streaming service. For better or worse, 13 Reasons Why was Netflix’s first big teen hit, and its shadow will reach over future projects targeted for a YA audience.

It might be difficult to recall in 2020, but when 13 Reasons Why premiered on Netflix back in 2017, it was a supernova hit. The Selena Gomez-backed series was a harrowing deep dive into the darker parts of adolescence, complete with candid portrayals of sexual assault, violent bullying, and death by suicide. Still it captivated audiences like few other Netflix originals had before. While it’s worth noting that both Stranger Things and The Get Down starred teen characters, they were genre-defined. The sci-fi and musical elements came first, respectively. 13 Reasons Why was almost entirely focused on the drama of being a teenager in today’s world. Not only that, but it didn’t shy away from the uglier sides of adolescence that were often censored on network hits. 13 Reasons Why not only showed Netflix that they had a teen audience hungry for dark, difficult content, but that adults would tune in, too.

Netflix soon rushed to order more seasons of 13 Reasons Why, which was only envisioned to be a single-season limited series. To circumvent this, the deceased character Hannah Baker came back in visions to male lead Clay Jensen (Dylan Minnette) during the course of her trial. While Hannah leaves the series at the end of Season 2 — in the show, her character is granted the peace to move on, while in real life, Langford was appearing in Knives Out and this summer’s Netflix fantasy series Cursed — 13 Reasons Why trudged on with two more seasons of angst, sorrow, secrecy, and death.

While this was happening, Netflix added a slew of teen-oriented programming to their slate of originals. The first wave included series that would have been ordered before 13 Reasons Why became a massive hit: Atypical, American Vandal, and End of the F***ing World. After 13 Reasons Why dominated Netflix viewership, they greenlit the likes of Everything Sucks!, On My Block, and picked up Insatiable after the CW passed on the Debby Ryan pilot. What’s fascinating is that if you look at these waves of teen-oriented originals, you can see that Netflix was learning from the success of 13 Reasons Why what to do and not to do when it came to producing teen content.

By the time On My Block became a hit and Insatiable a controversial hate-watch, the next wave of Netflix teen shows seemed to be more…streamlined. Yes, these show still had dark elements and ensemble casts made of the stuff of teenage dreams, but their rough edges were sanded down. The Society looked at what would happen if teens came home to discover all their parents were missing. It was part Lord of the Flies, but much more of an emotionally fraught soap opera. Sex Education is a chipper, technicolor look at burgeoning sensuality, but for all its raw sex talk, the underlying messages are still about the power of friendship and fighting through trauma. Even the quirky I Am Not Okay With This, a follow up from the team behind The End of the F***ing World, sidestepped its source materials most grim parts: sexual assault and suicide.

Just as Netflix seemed to nail down its formula for binge-worthy teen dramas, the service began to rewrite a key part of show that sparked this boom. Last year, Netflix recut the scene in 13 Reasons Why where Hannah dies by suicide. Audiences can no longer see how exactly Hannah dies. According to showrunner Brian Yorkey, this was done because “[o]ur creative intent in portraying the ugly, painful reality of suicide in such graphic detail in season one was to tell the truth about the horror of such an act and make sure no one would ever wish to emulate it. But as we ready to launch season three, we have heard concerns about the scene from Dr. Christine Moutier at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and others, and have agreed with Netflix to re-edit it. No one scene is more important than the life of the show and its message that we must take better care of each other. We believe this edit will help the show do the most good for the most people while mitigating any risk for especially vulnerable young viewers.”

It’s true that since 13 Reasons Why premiered in 2017, both the show and Netflix has come under fire for potentially glamorizing suicide. So it’s worth noting that Netflix has not only gone out of its way to provide links to mental health resources to viewers, but they’ve also produced a documentary to accompany the show called 13 Reasons Why: Beyond the Reasons. Still it’s worth noting that when tackling teen-driven content now, Netflix isn’t afraid of profanity, sexuality, or dark content; but they are starting to completely sidestep the topic of suicide. The graphic novel I Am Not Okay With This is based on ends in the heroine’s death by suicide, but the show’s first season closes on Sydney meeting a mysterious mentor figure.

Today, the biggest teen hits on Netflix tend to be soapy adventures like Outer Banks or even offbeat sitcoms like Never Have I Ever. Both shows contain adult themes — sexuality, grief, and, uh, treasure hunting? – but they emphasize that their characters have a community to lean on in their turmoil. 13 Reasons Why might have kickstarted Netflix’s teen boom, but it also taught the streaming service how to be more responsible when tackling these emotionally fraught tales. Teens don’t just want to see themselves depicted on screens; they need role models, too.

Watch 13 Reasons Why on Netflix