Other Doctor Lives: Jessica Jones: Season 3, Episode 13 – “A.K.A. Everything” (2019)

*Episode premise spoilers, but since this is the series finale, that includes some major spoilers that came before it.*

While David Tennant’s season 2 appearance on Jessica Jones is a proper guest starring role, his appearance in the season finale is barely a cameo. But, completist that I am, I need to write about it. Let’s do this!

Jessica has discovered that Trish is using Erik’s ability to identify and punish bad people, and she’s already multiple people, including the imprisoned serial killer Salinger. Though it kills her to do it, Jessica realizes she needs to bring Trish to justice.

I think season 1 of Jessica Jones is unquestionably its best, and David Tennant is just one of many reasons why. Nothing else on the show hits quite as hard as that does, but I find season 3 pretty compelling, albeit in a painful way. Throughout seasons 2 and 3, it’s hard to watch Trish transform so much from the brave, supportive sister she was in the first season. First, she gets hooked on the experimental superhuman inhalers Thompson was using in the military, then she becomes obsessed with getting real, permanent powers of her own, putting her life at serious risk to get them. And then, once she has them, she grows increasingly consumed with being judge, jury, and even executioner. It’s a tragic fall for a character that I really loved in season 1.

And no matter what harm Trish has done, Jessica still loves her, which makes it all the more heartbreaking for her to have to go up against her sister and stop her. Even though they’re not nearly as close as they once were, even though Trish has already hurt Jessica in profound ways, she can’t stop caring. As they go toe-to-toe, Jessica urges Trish to stop, telling her, “You’re not fast enough, and you can’t beat me.”

The finale also gives us a last-minute Defenders reunion, with Luke Cage returning to the show where he made his Marvel TV debut. His appearance is brief, and he doesn’t really get to throw down, but it’s good to see him with Jessica again. Relationships between powered people are important, because often, they’re the only ones who can really understand the burdens they have to deal with.

As I said, hardly any David Tennant. We get the slightest nod to Kilgrave, with a vocal cameo at the end of the episode—as you can see from the screenshot at the top of the post, the only visual cue to his presence is the purple lighting. I won’t spoil the details of his short appearance, but it’s a definite moment, and it comes at a pivotal point for Jessica.

And that’s the end of Jessica Jones! Wrap-up thoughts:

Accent Watch

English, posher than Tennant’s Doctor(s), and I think a little posher than Crowley as well.

Recommend?

In General – Yes. This is a strong, gritty superhero/detective show, full of messed-up characters and complex relationships. Krysten Ritter is absolutely fantastic as Jessica.

David Tennant – Definitely! Tennant is skin-crawlingly good as Kilgrave, and so radically different than the Doctor or Crowley.

Warnings

Violence (including discussion of rape,) sexual content, language, drinking/smoking/drug use, strong thematic elements (including stalking, PTSD, and psychological torture,) and a disabled character played by a nondisabled actor in the later seasons.

Other Doctor Lives: Jessica Jones: Season 2, Episode 11 – “AKA Three Lives and Counting” (2018)

*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.

Other Doctor Lives: Jessica Jones: Season 1, Episode 13 – “AKA Smile” (2015)

*Guest star spoiler.*

Season 1 finale, and it’s a good ‘un. If you watch superhero shows, you know the finale is the time for the big showdown between the hero and the villain—after watching Jessica and Kilgrave all season, their ultimate clash doesn’t disappoint.

Although Kilgrave has of course been making Jessica’s life a living hell all season, there have been certain things keeping her physically, comparatively safe from him herself, not least of which being the fact that he’s obsessively in love with her. Instead, to borrow from The Princess Bride, Kilgrave has been fighting “to the pain,” psychologically torturing Jessica and hurting/killing those around her to torment her. But as she becomes more determined to do whatever it takes to stop him, he starts to strip away the few safeguards that have been in place, preferring to own her but willing to see her killed if it comes to that. Jessica gears up for one final battle with Kilgrave, not sure if she can beat him but knowing that no one else really stands a chance.

First off, the friendship scenes in this episode are on point. As usual, Trish gets the more heartfelt/explicit moments while Malcolm’s support is quieter and more understated, and although I definitely wish for more for Malcolm, I do really love both. With Trish, we see hints of the personal issues that will bubble up later, and her insistence on sticking by Jessica and helping her despite no powers of her own are, in part, about her latent desire to be a hero. But they’re also about wanting to back Jessica up no matter what, not letting her go it alone. Their secret signal to one another is utterly sweet. Meanwhile, Malcolm’s scenes with Jessica herself are relatively subdued, but he gets a really nice scene with a Defendersverse character who pops up unexpectedly in the episode—Claire! (Yeah, the first time I watched this, I squeed when I saw her.) Claire is terrific throughout the episode and also has some excellent scenes with Jessica, just wearily getting shit done, but I really like her and Malcolm connecting as nonpowered people trying to support heroes amid their messy lives.

Jessica is great. She’s just great. She’s determined and self-loathing, terrified and angry, clever and overwhelmed, desperate and brave. Krysten Ritter kills it throughout. It saddens me that she continues to beat herself up over the things Kilgrave does to people in order to get to her, even as it’s a shining example of her being the hero she doesn’t think she is. She and Kilgrave have an indirect encounter early in the episode that’s really good, and the final confrontation is awesome.

I think in general, this show does a good job building up to the final battle without really feeling like it’s stalling. Jessica hasn’t just been circling around Kilgrave all season, holding back from wholeheartedly going after him. They’ve had a number of clashes involving a variety of plans on both their parts, and the twists and turns that have disrupted those plans have felt pretty organic. I’m sure it helps that the season is only 13 episodes, as opposed to, say, an Arrowverse show with a full-season order, but I still appreciate it.

David Tennant is, unsurprisingly, excellent. In addition to doing a great job throughout the final battle—so creepy and so awful, but still throwing a tiny bit of surprise humor in there—Kilgrave also gets a few good scenes with other characters as well. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I like the dichotomy of Kilgrave being this odd mix of carefully controlled while also being a walking id and simmering with barely contained rage just below the surface. It’s fascinating to watch, and he’s a top-notch villain for Jessica to face: a formidable foe just from the perspective of his powers and his intelligence/deviousness, as well as one whose clash with Jessica is deeply personal. Kilgrave is reprehensible right to the end.

Kilgrave is the main baddie in season 1 only, so this marks the end of Tennant’s role as a major character on the show, but we’re not quite finished with the character yet. Tennant appears in a couple more episodes. Until next week!