Malcolm! He, Jessica, and Trish are my Jessica Jones character trifecta – love
all three of them for awesomely different reasons. I liked Malcolm from the first and was
thrilled with how his character’s potential expanded (Malcolm-related spoilers.)
Okay,
so, on first watch, I was surprised when it comes out that Jessica’s amusing
junkie neighbor is under Kilgrave’s control and has been surveilling Jessica at
the behest of her disgusting superpowered stalker. However, I was gobsmacked at the reveal Kilgrave used his powers to make Malcolm
take heroin, getting him hooked so he’ll keep coming back for more and Kilgrave
can top up his influence over Malcolm.
Even though, by this point, we’ve already seen Kilgrave order people to
kill themselves at this point, and we’ve gotten glimpses of the grotesque
violation Jessica suffered when she was in his thrall, learning this
information hit me hard. It’s such a
horrible thing to do, purely for convenience’s sake, and if I hadn’t already
been 100% on-board with Jessica taking out Kilgrave with extreme prejudice
(which I was – hard to find too many who need to die as thoroughly as that
guy,) this would have done it for me.
Luckily,
Jessica’s around, and her deep-down goodness and massive guilt complex mean
she’s not about to give Malcolm up as lost.
She gets him away from Kilgrave and helps him find the endurance he
needs to get clean, and that’s when we really
meet Malcolm. Not the Malcolm he was
before Kilgrave – it’s unlikely he’ll ever completely return to that – but the
new Malcolm he now has a chance to become.
One with physical and emotional scars, whose sense of identity has been
shaken and who’s been questioning the extent to which he can forge a new
path. Is he forever a product of what
Kilgrave made of him? Can he
change? Even if he couldn’t control
himself under Kilgrave’s power, how does he now deal with the guilt of the
things Kilgrave made him do?
These
are questions that everyone who’s been used by Kilgrave asks, but Malcolm tends
to avoid them less than other members of the main cast. While Malcolm wants to move forward with his
life, he knows the only way to do that is by first dealing with where he is
right now, and so he asks the agonizing questions and makes conscious choices
about how he wants to take back his autonomy.
Before Kilgrave, he was heading toward social work, and after Kilgrave,
he puts those sensibilities to good use, trying to help others who’ve been
affected work through their confusing emotions about what happened to
them. He doesn’t make too much headway
with Jessica, who’s a tough nut to crack, but he doesn’t stop trying to help
her, and when Jessica tracks down a number of other people who’ve been
victimized by Kilgrave, Malcolm helps facilitate a survivors’ group where they
can get together and discuss their experiences.
I
really like this last point. Malcolm
becomes fiercely loyal to Jessica, going through a ton on her behalf, but for him, it’s not all running around helping
the superhero stop the evil villain.
It’s also about the human element of other ordinary people who’ve been
caught in Kilgrave’s wake and discarded when they were no longer useful to
him. Jessica can be so focused on the
big picture that she tends to think nothing else matters, and she can get nasty
to others as a result. Malcolm is the
one who takes her to task for this, reminding her that the small, individual
pictures are important, too, and that, while it’s vital to find a “cure” to
their very dangerous problem, the difficult process of healing that follows it
can’t be ignored.
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