Following in the footsteps of April’s Daredevil, Marvel and Netflix return to Hell’s Kitchen, New York with Jessica Jones another dark superhero drama.
This series finds Jessica Jones (a career-best Krysten Ritter), who has superhuman strength and near-flight abilities, struggling with not only her private eye business, Alias Investigations, but with PTSD, which had been brought on by Kilgrave (a scene-stealing David Tennant), a man with the ability to control others’ minds simply by telling them what to do, and who Jessica supposed was dead.
When a new case involving a missing girl comes across Jessica’s desk, the investigation leads to her discovery that Kilgrave is very much alive and still manipulating people, including the aforementioned missing girl. It’s at this moment that Jessica Jones steps into darker territory than its predecessor. While Daredevil saw themes of moral ambiguity in response to a criminal underworld, Jessica Jones delves deep into more personal issues such as rape, assault, drug abuse and mental illness.
It is Kilgrave’s return to Jessica’s life that sparks the series’ conflicts, straining relationships in the process. And it’s because of this that Kilgrave, as a villain, feels omnipresent. There are a handful of episodes in which he never makes an appearance, but the events that take place are a direct result of his actions. This kind of immediacy is satisfying to watch, given that it took some time for Daredevil to build up its villain.
What Daredevil had in visual style (i.e. the one-take hallway fight scene. You know the one.) Jessica Jones makes up for in substance. Characters are complex and their motivations inform their actions, particularly in the latter half of the season when the end goal of stopping Kilgrave is met with opposing methods of doing so. But credit goes to showrunner Melissa Rosenberg as well as the series’ writers for crafting an intricate plot with tiny moving parts that come together in the end as well as characters that, despite their abilities, feel real.
Jessica, Kilgrave, their relationship and their histories create a dynamic never-before-seen in the superhero genre. Oftentimes, the hero and villain roles are planted firmly as polar opposites only ever allowing for a basic good versus evil narrative, no matter how gritty our hero may be or how justified out villain’s actions may seem. Here, the two are so entwined in one another, affecting the situations they find themselves in. Viewers may find themselves sympathizing with Kilgrave, followed by a simultaneous feeling of disgust and intrigue because it is his humanness, the part we all can relate to, that makes him so terrifying.
Jessica Jones, as I mentioned above, often tackles subjects that can and will be sensitive to some viewers, but by doing so opens a dialogue about these subjects. It’s absolutely unexpected for a Marvel show to do this, and by not shying away from sensitive material the writers allow for an authentic depiction of events, emotions and reactions that should elicit an emotional response from viewers both within the context of the series, as well as in their own lives.
The 13-episode first season of Marvel’s Jessica Jones is streaming now on Netflix
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