Favorite Characters: Jessica Jones (Jessica Jones)

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.