’13 Reasons Why’ Season 4: Does Hannah Baker Return?

13 Reasons Why Season 4 featured the return of a number of characters, but did Katherine Langford’s Hannah Baker return for the final season? Based on Jay Asher’s young adult novel of the same name, the Netflix original series initially began as a story surrounding Hannah, though over the course of the following seasons, her presence became less and less. Warning: This post contains spoilers for 13 Reasons Why Season 4.

While Season 4 featured the returns of Bryce Walker and Monty de la Cruz (in hallucination form) as well as Ryan Shaver and Courtney Crimsen, it was the brief return of Hannah in the series finale that made the series come full circle. After a few mentions of Hannah throughout the season, it is as Clay is sitting in Liberty High School’s gym after graduation that he sees Hannah sitting on the bleachers opposite him in the Winter Formal dress she wore in Season 1, Episode 5, “Tape 3, Side A.” An exact callback to a scene in that episode, Clay and Hannah both begin to walk towards each other, though before Clay can reach her, the vision is broken by Heidi, a senior from another school, asking if he wants to get coffee with her.

While that was Hannah’s only appearance in the season, other than a photo of her Tyler Downs develops, in one of the series’ final scenes, the original group of characters meets to bury the tapes that had kick-started the series.

Although the moment was brief and used repurposed footage from Season 1, it was more than what many fans had been expecting. Hannah had not made an appearance since Season 2, when she again appeared as Clay’s hallucination. She was entirely absent in Season 3, aside from a handful of mentions and callbacks. Her absence had to do with the fact that Langford, following the second season, announced that she had made the decision to no longer be part of the show.

In an Instagram post, Langford wrote that she could “finally share with you as my journey on 13 Reasons Why has officially come to an end.” Reflecting on her role in the series, which was her first acting credit, Langford said that 13 Reasons Why would “always be a special part of my life.” It was later announced that the actress had been cast in the Netflix series Cursed, which was followed by several other roles.

All four seasons of 13 Reasons Why are available for streaming on Netflix. Stay tuned to Popculture.com for the latest information.