Who Killed Bryce Walker in 13 Reasons Why? Let's Break It All Down, Suspect by Suspect

Chlöe is introduced in season two as Bryce's new girlfriend. Although she initially tries to intimidate Jess out of testifying against her boyfriend in court, she comes to realise that Bryce really is a monster (and raped her, too, when she was unconscious in the clubhouse). Despite that, she gets back together with him, and while attending the Spring Fling she reveals to Jessica that she's pregnant with Bryce's child.

Much of Chlöe's season three arc revolves around her blossoming friendship with Zach and how she leans on him during her decision to get an abortion and finally break up with Bryce. After she goes through with terminating the pregnancy, she later tells her ex-boyfriend about it, and at first he seems relatively understanding. But of course this is Bryce we're talking about — he doesn't truly care about women, even Chlöe. The thing that really upsets him about the situation is that she's become close to Zach, a factor that eventually contributes to how Bryce dies. But no, Chlöe isn't the one to do it.

The season three trailer left us with a lot of questions, specifically about who the British teenager narrating it might be. She's introduced right away in season three as Ani, the daughter of an in-home nurse who's living with the Walker family to care for their ailing (and racist) grandfather.

Over the season Ani gets close to Bryce, a relationship that's pretty odd from the start (What was the show trying to do, here? Humanise a cold-blooded rapist by showing him play cards?). Despite their warm interactions — which range from the aforementioned card games to having sex — the season opens with a scene of Ani furiously scrubbing what looks like blood off of a white shirt. In the end, though, it's merely a red herring since she's not the one who kills him. (The stain on her top was simply red paint from Jessica's Hands Off protest during the school's Homecoming game.)

Do Bryce's parents have reason to murder their son? Well, sort of. For starters, Nora has full knowledge of what her son is, and all but orders Chloe to break up with him and get an abortion, for her sake. Could she have been so disgusted she resorted to murder?

Toward the middle of the season, it's also revealed that Bryce has knowledge of his father's love child, which could seriously mess up divorce proceedings with his soon-to-be ex-wife. That alone is reason to kill him (coupled with the fact that Bryce's father doesn't seem to give a crap about him).

In the end, no, neither of Bryce's parents are the ones to kill him. Nora is actually well aware of her ex's love child, but decides not to use it against him in court, thereby eliminating Bryce's father's motive to kill him.

Clay has plenty of motive to take out Bryce from the get-go, given his history with Hannah and the fact he's the one who records Bryce's confession back in season one (and subsequently gets beaten to a pulp). But that being said, season two ends with Clay seemingly in a good place and on the road to healing and recovery after Hannah's memorial. It seemed highly unlikely that he'd snap and murder Bryce.

Season three picks up eight months after the devastating events of season two, when Clay prevented Tyler from committing a mass shooting at the Spring Fling, and then toggles back and forth in time. Clay struggles to shoulder the burden of the cover-up while helping Tyler recover, and isn't in the best place mentally. His behaviour and abrasive past with Bryce leads the police to think that Clay murdered Bryce, and Mrs. Walker even heard him say that he wanted to kill her son the night of the Homecoming game (it was due to Bryce taunting him about Ani, though).

The police end up arresting him after finding a text in which Clay also told Bryce he wanted to kill him (Really, Clay?), but in the end, as Ani tells Sheriff Standall, Clay is innocent.

For a little while it seems like Monty might be the one to turn on his former BFF and take him out for good. In a flashback, it's revealed that Bryce threatened Monty to leave Tyler alone in the locker room the night of the Homecoming game. He told Monty that if he didn't stop bullying Tyler, Bryce would go to the police with information about everything Monty had done last year, including Tyler's brutal assault. That right there was enough motive.

Monty proceeds to repeatedly try to "break Walker in half" during the Homecoming game, and confronts Bryce by the Hillcrest bus after it's over. "I will take you out," he declares, before Bryce snidely replies, "No you won't. You're just a coward, you always have been." In the end Monty isn't the one to kill Bryce, even though that's the tale Ani spins for the sheriff. His own fate is just as bleak, though — he's killed in jail.

Given his seemingly unlimited access to guns and that early scene of him on the bridge, the show really wants audiences to believe that Tyler takes out his frustrations on the jock population by shooting Bryce Walker. This is bolstered by initial police reports that say Bryce died via gunshot. But then Bryce's true cause of death is revealed: blunt force trauma, ruling Tyler out. Tyler did, however, play a minor role in how everyone found out about Bryce's death — he anonymously called a tip into the police when he spotted the body in the water.

Well, Zach almost kills Bryce. It's not surprising, either, considering the tension that bubbles between them all season long. In the penultimate episode, "And Then the Hurricane Hit," we discover just what happens between the two of them that leads to Bryce's last night alive.

Through flashbacks we know that Chlöe had already told her ex about her abortion, which Zach helped her get through. Zach's involvement in Chlöe's life majorly rankles Bryce's ego, which is what sparks a football injury that leaves Zach's future college football career dashed — during the Homecoming game brawl, Bryce gets his revenge on Zach by purposefully diving into his former friend's knee with his football helmet, instantly shattering it.

Ani's repetition of the phrase "violence begets violence" in season three ends up applying to these two in particular, when Zach teaches a physical lesson to Bryce on the docks after being released from the hospital and trailing Bryce post-game. Despite only having one good leg, he proceeds to beat Bryce nearly to death.

During the scene, Bryce screams about Zach "taking away" his future by convincing Chlöe to dump him, and bitterly asking him if he "f*cked her," proving exactly what we've known all along: Bryce hasn't changed one bit; he still sees women as objects, as opposed to people. Zach's response? Breaking Bryce's leg. Woof. But, in a feat of self-control, Zach limps away before doing any more damage to Bryce. When he leaves him, Bryce is still alive.

Jessica is one of Bryce's many victims, and therefore has motive. As a reminder, back in season one Bryce rapes a mostly unconscious Jessica at a party, and later she tries to bring him to justice at the trial that unfolds in season two. Her efforts, though brave, don't pan out the way she'd hoped (aka with Bryce in jail for the foreseeable future).

In season three she takes this frustration out by running for student body president and starting the Hands Off Our Bodies club at school with female classmates, who incite a riot during the school's Homecoming game. Was Jessica pushed to the edge again that night at the docks, ultimately murdering Bryce? Yes and no.

Not long after Zach leaves Bryce broken and bloody by the pier, Jessica arrives not with her on-again boyfriend Justin, but with her ex, Alex, in order to pick up whatever Bryce had wanted to give her (the blood-splattered confession and apology cassette tape, that he asks Jessica to play for Mrs. Baker). In full-on "pity me" mode as usual, Bryce groans that although he's trying to be better, "this f*cking world won't let me . . . nobody believes I can change." (Sure, Jan.) Given how badly beaten Bryce is, Alex makes a move to help him up and save him from either bleeding out or dying of exposure in the Winter air even though Jessica wants to leave him. That's when things start to go down hill for the villain.

"F*cking Zach! I'm gonna f*ck up his other knee and wreck his life," he yells in "a fury of pain," as Ani tells it, before accusing Jessica of setting him up to get attacked by Zach. That's when something becomes clear to Alex — if Bryce survives this ordeal, Zach isn't the only one whose life he's going to try to destroy. Bryce is going to go after Jessica, and even Alex, too. That's what inspires Alex to make a final, murderous decision.

"You've hurt everyone I ever loved," Alex tells Bryce, before shoving him into the ice-cold water below. There Bryce, given his extensive injuries, struggles to stay afloat as Alex and Jessica watch from the safety of the pier, ignoring his pleas for help. Finally, Bryce sinks down for good, leaving the pair to reckon with their choice.

Jess and Alex decide to cover up Bryce's murder by figuring out that they need to stay apart to ensure they don't get caught. The group also gets involved with Tyler agreeing to be Alex's alibi, and Charlie planting Bryce's tape in Monty's locker to properly frame him. The gang later reunites at Clay and Justin's, where Alex reveals that he went so far as to write a confession and try to get a gun to kill himself over the whole cover-up situation. Fortunately he has someone important on his side: his dad.

The sheriff can see through Ani's lie about Monty, and in his heart he knows that his son must've had something to do with Bryce's death. They wordlessly acknowledge this in the final episode as they hug and cry together. The sheriff also burns Bryce's tape and the clothes Alex was wearing the night he pushed Bryce off the pier. Will the cover-up be revealed?

During a flash-forward to Thanksgiving at the end of the season, everyone seems to be happily moving on with their lives. But THEN some fisherman stumbles upon the big sack of Tyler's guns that was thrown in the river. Oh, and Winston, the guy Monty had hooked up with from Hillcrest, confronts Ani about her big lie since he knows for a fact that Monty couldn't have killed him. With only one season left at Liberty High, it seems like we might have more death, doom, and gloom on our hands.