Jessica
does a bang-up job on her own as the MCU’s first female superhero to get her
name in the title, and her presence is more than enough to make me love the
show. But then there’s Trish. Ye gods, I love the crap out of Trish, one of
Marvel’s best examples of a non-hero who can hold her own (premise spoilers.)
We’re
first introduced to Trish as Jessica’s long-suffering, semi-estranged best
friend. You get the sense that, after
what originally went down with Kilgrave, Trish tried to help, but Jessica did
her Jessica thing and pushed her friend away.
Although Trish we meet is concerned and supportive, she also recognizes
Jessica’s self-destructiveness and wrestles with how to help without enabling. More than anything, she wants to see Jessica
regain some peace of mind and get back on the superhero horse.
Jessica
wouldn’t admit it, but Trish is a good person to have in her corner after
Kilgrave. While Trish has never been
mindraped by a superpowered psychopath, she’s familiar with both trauma and
harmful coping mechanisms. As a child
actress, she survived physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her
demanding mother/manager, and she’s recovered from the addiction that plagued
her in the wake of that abuse to become a successful professional. She’s been through the fire and come out
stronger for it; Jessica, however, can’t recognize even the barest similarities
between her struggles and Trish’s, and so she doesn’t think Trish can empathize
or help in any meaningful way.
Obviously,
this both worries and frustrates Trish.
In addition to not wanting to see her friend go down a bad path, she’s
not eager to be a side character in anyone else’s story. While Trish doesn’t force Jessica into
accepting help she’s not ready for, she makes it clear that she wants to be there for Jessica and that,
contrary to what Jessica might think, she can
contribute in important ways. She’s
smart and brave, she has resources that can be of use, and she may not be able
to go toe-to-toe with a powered person, but she’s not just a liability. After her own abuse, she decided she was
through with being a victim, and Jessica’s experience with Kilgrave just made
her more determined; she’s taken the initiative to learn how to defend herself
pretty impressively, and she takes other reasonable measures to keep herself
and Jessica safe.
One thing
I really love about Trish as the superhero’s non-powered friend is that she
never tries to talk Jessica out of using her abilities (in fact, she’s the one
who encouraged Jessica to go the hero route in the first place, and at the
start of the series, when Jessica is out of the game, Trish is urging her to
get back into it as a means of helping her move on from her trauma.) The “you have to stop this; it’s too
dangerous!” mantra crops up often in superhero stories – for other Marvel
properties, think of Pepper in the first Iron
Man or Foggy in Daredevil – and
given the huge dangers that these largely-untrained heroes take on, that
concern is understandable. And to be
sure, Trish worries about Jessica’s safety, but she also knows how vital
Jessica’s work is. She doesn’t tell
Jessica not to do what she does. She
just tells Jessica that, first, she won’t do herself any favors by charging in
without a plan, and second, she doesn’t have to do it alone. Jessica is a major lone-wolf type, and she
needs someone like Trish reminding her that others can bring something to the
table as well, and that she’s stronger with friends to back her up.
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