*I’ll be as general as I can, but there are going to be a few spoilers here. This includes a major element from the season 1 finale and the ending of season 2, episode 10.*
Even though this post is coming immediately on the heels of the season 1 finale, I didn’t watch this episode immediately after. As I gradually worked my way back through a rewatch of all the shows in the Defenders sub-universe, I wrote the Jessica Jones reviews as I came to them, intentionally sitting on them until I made my way through the whole show. In other words, it’s been a while since I’ve seen Kilgrave, and a lot has happened since then.
Jessica’s latest case is deeply personal for her. It’s forced her to dig into her own history and face a ton of hard emotional stuff. At the end of episode 10, during a confrontation with a seriously bad guy, she let her strength get away from her, and self-defense turned deadly. Now, as she reels with what she’s done while still trying to stay on top of everything else—Trish has been on a downward spiral for a while now, and things are coming to a head in this episode—she keeps seeing visions of Kilgrave.
When Jessica realizes that she’s killed this man, Krysten Ritter impeccably captures her dizzying mix of horror, guilt, shame, and panic. You can see something break in her at this moment. Jessica Jones is a show that likes to flirt with antiheroism for its title character, but when Jessica crosses that line, even by accident, you can feel how devastating it is for her. That’s why she continues to be a hero—even when she makes bad choices or horribly consequential mistakes, and even when she doesn’t feel like one.
As Jessica is forced to deal with what’s just happened and pull herself together enough to try and stop Trish from going down a dangerous rabbit hole of her own, all with Kilgrave sneering in her ear, it’s a little impressive that she’s able to function at all. I really enjoy a montage of her getting creative with a dating app to pinpoint someone’s location.
As for the Kilgrave of it all, the show plays with the tone here. There are moments, especially early in the episode, where the hallucinated Kilgrave is as creepy and skin-crawling as he ever was in the flesh. Before we see him actually show up, he’s presaged by purple lighting, and in one of the earliest scenes where Jessica sees him, he sidles up behind her in the shower because oh my god of course he does. Later on, though, he becomes something between an irritating devil on her shoulder and an accusatory guilty conscience. In between pointed comments about how “good” she’s getting at killing, he simply pops up like a Whack-a-Mole, singing in the background or lounging on the bed of a hotel room she’s search.
David Tennant slips back into the role well, and he balances the shifts in tone, moving easily from vile to funny and back again. His performance is visibly Kilgrave while also being evident that he’s not the real Kilgrave. He’s the one in Jessica’s mind, filtered through her subconscious. This gives us moments like Kilgrave voicing Jessica’s PI instincts and observations as she investigates.
In the season 1 finale, Jessica killed Kilgrave: as revenge for how he violated her and to stop him from doing it to anyone else ever again. So when Jessica pictures Kilgrave dogging her steps and needling at her from the corner of the screen, it’s not just a hallucinated villain pulling out the old “you’re just as bad as me” card. It’s a villain taunting her about her body count, which includes him. “Extortion, forgery, now murder,” he purrs. “Is there no crime Jessica Jones won’t commit to get what she wants?”
Season 2, on the whole, is a big comedown from season 1, although I’m not as down on it as some. For me, it’s more that season 1 is just so good, so laser-focused on its strong central plot, that it flounders a little trying to repeat that success. As such, bringing Kilgrave back for an episode feels like a bit of a cheap grab, but I think it works with where Jessica’s head is right now, and Tennant makes the most of his time back.
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