Oh,
what a terrific, acerbic, messed-up, guilt-ridden, self-destructive hero. I love Jessica, her flaws, her damage, and
her attempts to deal with it. Not the first
female hero in the MCU, but the first superhero to get a solo property –
well-deserved, I’d say (premise spoilers.)
I like
that Marvel’s Netflix shows so far – Daredevil
and this series – drop us into the story at varying levels of in media res and weave the origins in
gradually through flashbacks. In
Jessica’s case, we have two separate origin stories informing her. There’s the typical superhero
“discovery/acquisition of powers” origin that dovetails into taking up the hero
mantle (although here, there’s enough distance between points A and B that
Jessica becoming a hero almost feels like another
backstory,) but there’s also the origin of how she gave all that up and has
been trying to get through her days by being anonymous and unremarkable.
I don’t
blame Jessica one bit for getting out of the game. Her mental and physical violation at the hand
of Kilgrave was horrific, and it’s understandable that it takes this already
fairly-guarded woman a long time to want to have anything to do with people
again. She’s a strong person trying to
deal with having had her autonomy stripped from her, not wanting to admit how
powerless she felt, and, probably worst of all for Jessica, having used her
powers to kill someone at Kilgrave’s behest (how I’d love a scene of her and
Bucky commiserating over drinks.) The
way memories of Kilgrave still haunt her, it’s no wonder she self-medicates
with way too much alcohol and drives off anyone who wants to get close.
That’s
what makes her even more incredible for stepping up when it comes to light that
Kilgrave isn’t as dead as previously thought.
This monster has replaced every childhood nightmare she ever had,
shattering her life into pieces, and when she gets an inkling that Kilgrave might still be around, she freaks out. She’s absolutely terrified, and even as she
chokes down massive fear to extricate his current plaything, her next instinct
is to run away as far and as fast as she possibly can. She knows exactly what he did to her, and she
has ideas about what was left of her as a result, and she doesn’t want to allow
the slightest chance of that happening again.
But she
doesn’t run. As every part of her is
telling her to get out, Jessica stays.
She comes at Kilgrave sideways, using her P.I. techniques to gather
intel at arm’s length so she can try and make a plan from a place of (very
relative) safety. She gets a lot of
things wrong. She has a hard time
letting in the people she should trust, and once she gets over that hurdle, she
still wants to go lone-wolf and do everything herself to keep others out of
danger. Her lingering psychological
scars make her paranoid, she only second-guesses herself when she doesn’t need
to, and she lashes out in fear/anger/vulnerability. She’s makes some really misguided decisions
over the course of the first season and has trouble taking anyone else’s
advice.
I like
that, though. I like that she’s a
complete mess, that she’s still working through her trauma, and that, despite
all that baggage, she doesn’t give up.
With all that horrible stuff weighing her, she’s still such a hero. Her compassion outweighs her misanthropy, her
bravery outweighs her terror, and her self-will outweighs her
self-destructiveness. Jessica Jones for
the win.
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