*Spoilers from previous episodes.*
I didn’t review episode 4, since David Tennant isn’t in it, but we’re back with a vengeance today. Another really strong episode—by the end, I think I was a little over the Marvel Netflix shows, but this rewatch has been reminding me, every week, how awesome season 1 of Jessica Jones is.
Jessica thinks she has a way to take out Kilgrave, and thanks to his twisted obsession with her, she thinks she also has a way to find him. She’s learned that he has a minion following her around taking pictures of her for him, so to her, it’s simple: follow the minion to deliver the photos, find Kilgrave. As she steels herself to confront her tormenter again, she enlists Trish’s help, but she also gets a second, unwelcome, accomplice in the form of Simpson.
One great thing about this episode is the flashbacks of Jessica and Trish before Kilgrave entered their lives. The difference in Jessica is almost instantly apparent—she’s still cynical and snarky, but her demeanor is so different. She doesn’t constantly have her walls up, and she isn’t perpetually angry as a way of trying to power through her lingering trauma and fear. There’s a lightness to her, and she’s just a sardonic young woman with superpowers contemplating the idea of using her abilities to save people, even as she mocks all of Trish’s suggestions for costumes and secret identities. There are enough similarities to make it clear that this is obviously still the same character, but at the same time, we see how thoroughly her experiences with Kilgrave have stained her life. Seeing the flashbacks, it’s understandable why Trish is always worried about Jessica’s well-being; her friend was dragged down a dark road, and she’s still working on finding her way out.
Introducing Simpson into the mix puts an interesting color on things. Even though he’s joining two women on a mission to stop a man who deeply violated Jessica, he immediately makes it about himself, trying to take over the operation and undermining Jessica’s lead at every turn. Simpson is so zealous about this because he too was violated by Kilgrave, and he wants to do everything he can to take him out, but in doing so, he’s also getting in the way of women’s agency, albeit through condescendingly throwing around his weight and military experience rather than mentally controlling them. No surprise that Jessica clashes with him from the start, and Trish is caught between two incredibly strong-willed people trying not to let either of them walk all over her.
By now, we’re into Kilgrave having a true presence on the show, not just a shadowy aura of menace that Jessica pursues but we rarely see. The bolder she gets in trying to take him down, the closer she comes into contact with him. It’s heartbreaking to see how much he still terrifies her, and we cheer for her as she navigates that pain to confront him anyway. As his screentime increases, more about him becomes clear. Like any supervillain worth his salt, he’s extremely well-prepared and often seems a step ahead of our hero (although, so far, it’s all within the realm of reason.) We see how controlling people is practically a reflex for him, how casually he brings people into his thrall to satisfy his whims, how callously he tosses them aside when he’s done with them. Also, he is still creepy as hell.
Again, I’m impressed by how physically different Tennant looks in this role, despite only minimal changes to his hairstyle and whatnot. He brings a reptilian quality to Kilgrave, a coldness that stirs underneath a more “normal” mask he can present to the world when he chooses. With his powers, he can have pretty much anything he wants at any time, which explains why he’s so obsessed with Jessica—it burns him that she got out of his grasp. It’s fascinating to see how both of them have a hold over one another. Him because of the trauma he inflicted on her, her because he’s hungry to get her back under his control. He toys with her and relishes making her skin crawl, even as he seethes at her eluding him. Tennant plays that dynamic well, that of a man who projects (and usually possesses) complete control but who, at the same time, finds himself almost at a loss when confronted with someone he can’t take ownership of with zero effort on his part.
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