Hot off her Alias reread, Tansy Rayner Roberts reviews Netflix’s Jessica Jones. In this post: “AKA Take a Bloody Number” and“AKA Smile.” Spoilers for season 1.
Episode 12 AKA Take a Bloody Number
Written By: Hilly Hicks Jr
Directed By: Billy Gierhart
Luke and Jessica run from the police after his bar blew up—correction, after Luke blew up his bar at Kilgrave’s behest. Jessica is suspicious about whether Kilgrave has left any other orders in his head, and keeps him under observation until the requisite twelve hours is past.
The episode title (and I have to say, waiting for the episode title to be spoken each time is a fantastic, slightly cheesy part of the show which I really enjoy) is spoken by Kilgrave in a flashback about how he got hold of Luke—who rushed up to kill him shortly before Kilgrave entered the restaurant with Hope.
It’s hard to imagine that Kilgrave was ever not Tennant-British.
Shaken by his experience under Kilgrave’s control, Luke is a lot more sympathetic to Jessica’s history, and her choices. It even seems like he might be interested in picking up their romance again, if the deliberate lingering around in a towel after his shower is anything to go by. Oh, the scorching looks. And the meaningful pauses. And all that stuff. *Fans self.* They get through a lot of important discussion topics. She confesses that she believes Reva’s death is what severed Kilgrave’s hold on her.
Meanwhile, Kilgrave and his dad Albert are working on enhancing and expanding his powers. He tests out his range at a nightclub to moderate improvement. What he wants, of course, is for his powers to work on Jessica again… and he’s willing as ever to torture and humiliate his dad in order to make that happen.
Trish hasn’t been wasting her time in hospital—she investigates the mysterious Russian doctor who turned Simpson into a battle droid. He worked for a corporation called IGH which doesn’t mean anything that she can work out. She has a surprise visitor—her mother, who vamps in and out of her hospital room, and later turns up at her apartment with a surprise: a file that connects IGH to Jessica, as they paid her medical bills after her accident.
In a show full of gloriously bitchy people, Dorothy Walker’s performance is pretty impressive, and it gives us further inside into the troubled, broken relationship between her and Trish.
DOROTHY: I was a godawful mother back then.
TRISH: And not now?
DOROTHY: How would I know? You never gave me another shot at it.
As with Simpson, Trish is not willing to give her mother an inch, trusting in herself rather than falling for further attempts at emotional blackmail. Stay strong, Trish!
Luke’s 12 hours is up, and he is determined to help Jessica, promising to keep his distance from Kilgrave. She guesses that Kilgrave is keeping Albert alive, to work on increasing his powers.
Remember Malcolm? He’s bitter and Jessica’d out. He’s going home to his family, little suitcase trundling behind him. Considering what he said last week about his parents, their church group, their community projects and so on, I actually think this sounds like a good move for him. Supportive network! Mend your parents’ broken hearts. Fly, Malcolm, fly away from all this!
The cranky woman at the hotel who won’t let them take Kilgrave and Albert’s stuff because she was stiffed on the bill (and has sold most of it via eBay) is another great one-off character. I am enjoying the show’s randomly sassy NPCs.
The chemicals from the hotel lead Luke and Jessica to stakeout a lab Kilgrave once got supplies from, which gives them plenty of time for deep and meaningfuls.
JESSICA: They say that talking about a trauma… that it helps. That and jogging, two things that make me feel like crap.
After she rejects his attempt at an apology, Luke offers her forgiveness instead, and swears he will keep telling her she is forgiven every day for as long as she needs to hear it.
Hold on to that amazing moment, because Kilgrave is shortly going to ruin it forever.
They follow a courier from the lab to that park again, and Jessica asks Luke to stay out of range. Luke replies with the phrase “Do what you gotta do,” which, you might remember is what he said the first time Jess broke it off between then, before all the secrets came out.
The courier is a deliberate red herring, as Jessica realises when he stabs himself through the mouth with a pair of garden secateurs in the middle of the park. UGH.
Trish is waiting for Jessica at her office to tell her about the file, and is very intrigued by Luke/Jess. She ships it immediately, especially when she realises Jessica is Actually Letting Someone Help Her.
LUKE CAGE: I’m uniquely qualified.
Yes, sweetie, you surely are.
Trish reminds Jessica that even if they weren’t in the middle of this screwed up situation with Kilgrave, she would still probably push Luke away and refuse to allow herself happiness, and maybe it’s time to think about different ways to live her life. Even if that does mean shacking up with someone whose wife you totally killed that one time.
Jessica gives Luke the USB which Reva wanted him to have, with the videos of the kids being experimented on… oh. So that’s why she had it.
Despite having left with his trundle suitcase at least once already, Malcolm locks his door with an air of finality and is about to leave yet again when he hears Robyn having a meltdown at a postal worker upstairs.
She’s freaking out with Kilgrave-paranoia, but the parcel turns out to be a power supply Ruben ordered before his death (she wouldn’t let him pay express shipping, so he never got it). Malcolm comforts Robyn and the two of them stage a meaningful farewell for her brother at the dock where Malcolm bricked his body, and Jessica tore off his head with her bare hands.
This final scene between them is actually comedy gold, and I—I hate to say this—I think I’m starting to appreciate Robyn. Why, show, why do this to me now?
ROBYN: Enough. Pisces are the most forgiving of the zodiac.
MALCOLM: You forgive me?
ROBYN: I’ve thought about breaking into your apartment and sticking a screwdriver into your eye.
MALCOLM: Biblical. Eye for an eye.
Kilgrave and Albert have taken over a beautiful apartment belonging to a couple who are of course doomed. Albert is excited that the stem cells from the foetal remains are giving him major progress on the upgrade, but the pressure is getting to him.
There’s one more bike riding scene for Luke/Jessica fans before it all goes to hell. Oh those cute matching helmets. They investigate the nightclub where Kilgrave made his recent experiment with controlling a crowd.
JESSICA: Breaking and entering, my specialty.
LUKE: As well as punching, kicking, drinking, and talking shit.
JESSICA: Four essentials of being a PI.
There’s a clue we need to worry about—a kid that Kilgrave told to stand facing the park ‘forever’ is still there, a full 24 hours later. Uh-oh.
Inside the SO PURPLE OMG nightclub, they pose as the liquor authority and stage a “raid” to observe the security footage, but it’s too late.
Kilgrave returns to his “testing arena” while they’re inside (did he pick this nightclub because of its purple lighting? I’d say so). Jessica sends Luke to safety and prepares to confront her enemy…
But Kilgrave has a nasty card up his sleeve. He mocks Jessica by repeating Luke’s forgiveness speech and reveals that he didn’t overhear it—he wrote it.
Luke has been under Kilgrave’s influence all this time, doing and saying everything he was told. Including that time he lingered in nothing but a towel after his shower and there was hand-holding. *Sobs.*
This confirms that Kilgrave’s powers have more reach—not only has his influence over Luke been extensive, he was also able to compel him over the phone.
Jessica is pursued through the building by Luke, who has been ordered to kill her. They wreck the building and each other in a haze of purple light to the sound of Kilgrave crooning into a microphone about how clever he is.
We get some intense smash-and-pain scenes, including Luke pulling Jessica bodily through a wall. She keeps begging him to break Kilgrave’s hold, but he is relentless. Then the police turn up, which adds to the stakes.
Jessica fights Luke off desperately and ends up with only one chance to survive his onslaught—a police-issue shotgun. She begs him to stop so she doesn’t have to, and he cares about her enough to pause for a second and say that line again…
LUKE: Do what you gotta do.
She shoots him in the head at point blank range, and he crumples to the ground.
COMICS AND CONTINUITY
Remember that elegant origin exchange back in Episode 3, when Jessica said ‘accident’ and Luke said ‘experiment’ to describe how they got their powers? Both of these are expanded on in this episode. We still don’t know whether Jessica got her powers from her accident or not, but if the mysterious IGH were involved in it, then it may be a lot closer to the ‘truck spill’ story from the comics than I thought! (We’re gonna have to wait for Season 2 for that one.)
More importantly, Luke. I’d been wondering all along who Reva was and why she had this footage of Kilgrave—but of course, it makes sense now. She had that footage because Luke is one of the kids who was part of those experiments, and she was trying to protect him. Right?
Is anyone else starting to suspect that Walter from Fringe might have been behind all this? I’m just saying, it feels like his work.
In Luke’s comics origin story, he was an adult and a volunteer for the Super Soldier program, while serving a prison sentence for a crime he did not commit. Reva Connors was the girlfriend of his former friend, criminal Willis Stryker, and after she and Luke got together, Stryker framed him and got him arrested.
This new version, of course, has a much higher potential for angst in Luke’s own upcoming series. Bring it on, Netflix.
DAMAGE REPORT
Jessica’s apartment. I know I mentioned this last episode, but OMG the dents in the plasterboard.
Dents in the plasterboard is the major theme of this episode, with her fight against Luke punching through all kinds of walls, doors and so on in the night club.
Jessica tearing off a police car door to use as a shield and a weapon is a glorious thing and supports my initial feelings about this show, sing it with me, JESSICA JONES DOES NOT RESPECT DOORS.
I do love the artistry with which they have wrecked her apartment and I kind of hope that if it goes to a second season, then the dents and holes remain, possibly only slightly patched over, as a testament to Jessica’s history as a bad ass private investigator and a terrible renter.
She solemnly locks her door as she leaves, even though the glass panel is gaping open.
In other news, yes Trish really should fire her doorman. This is getting ridiculous now.
Episode 13 AKA Smile!
Story By: Jamie King & Scott Reynolds
Teleplay By: Scott Reynolds & Melissa Rosenberg
Devastated at hurting Luke so badly (he is unconscious after she shot him in the head, though has no apparent wound), Jessica takes him to the hospital. She hasn’t thought this through, though—the staff are concerned when their needles bend and break on his skin, and it isn’t long before Kilgrave’s pet police officers arrive to make trouble.
Jessica has to get him out of there again, but she’s made an unexpected friend—an unflappable ER nurse who has seen all this before and knows superhero detritus when she sees it. YOU GUYS IT’S CLAIRE!
JESSICA: Look I know that we scare you and you’ve never seen anything like us, but this is a good man.
CLAIRE: And what are you?
JESSICA: I’m an asshole.
CLAIRE: You don’t scare me. And you’re not my first.
Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) has done her time picking broken glass out of Daredevil’s abs (and the rest), and now she has an unconscious Luke Cage to care for. She helps Jessica smuggle Luke out of hospital, and even takes him back to the apartment herself when Jessica is distracted by the fact that Kilgrave has turned the hospital into a siege.
Fun fact about Kilgrave’s new powers: not only can they last up to 24 hours now, they also work via PA system. That’s… not good.
After fighting off the entire population of the hospital, zombie apocalypse style, Jessica returns to her apartment to find Claire sitting on a convulsing Luke—she has to drain the excess cerebral fluid from his cranium by syringing him through the eye socket. At least I think that’s what happened, I was hiding behind my fingers and hyperventilating.
Jessica begs Claire to stay and nurse Luke so she can save the world, and despite having a real job to go to, Claire agrees. Oh Jessica, if only you had neighbours who could help out with your unconscious boyfriend, but you’ve alienated almost everyone you know!
Before she leaves, Jessica cuddles Luke and admits to his unconscious body that she wanted to take him on a proper date.
JESSICA: You’re the first person I ever saw a future with. You’re also the first person I ever shot in the head.
Kilgrave, still treating everyone around him like dirt, insists his father performs a radical operation to increase his powers even more, despite risking death. The veins in his face turn purple! Woo purple!
Jessica and Trish track down the apartment where Kilgrave is staying. Waiting in the car, Trish asks Jessica to come up with a code—something she would never say even in a text message—to prove that she hasn’t been “kilgraved.” Jessica, who has been thinking a lot about lately what an asshole she is, decides dryly the obvious choice is “I love you.” It’s a sweet moment, which plays off beautifully in the final act.
Inside, Jessica finds blood everywhere, Albert dying and armless on the floor, one of the apartment’s owners dead from drinking drain cleaner, and his partner (Justin Boden) still trying to ‘remove Dad from the face of the earth,’ one limb at a time in the garbage disposal. It’s awful.
Malcolm (who still hasn’t left, I notice!) checks in on Jessica’s broken flat and ends up having a heart to heart with Claire about what it’s like to be the all too human auxiliary support crew for super friends. They bond, and he takes a turn watching over the unconscious Luke.
Claire’s role in this episode is to have intense emotional conversations with complete strangers, while dispensing occasional medical aid.
Before the final showdown, Jessica calls Jeri Hogarth and lets her know that Kilgrave now has far more extreme powers, thanks to her little power play with the foetal tissue she took from Hope. Jeri is wrecked—Pam is being charged with murder and won’t see her, and her career is on the verge of imploding. Jessica orders her to survive (professionally at least) because she has to defend Justin, the poor guy who killed Albert. Doing the occasional good thing is the only way to live with the self loathing.
Bedecked in an emo hoodie, her raggediest skinny jeans and a pair of stereophonic headphones, a downcast Jessica goes to meet Kilgrave in an abandoned station where he’s hanging out… but no, it’s not Jessica at all, IT’S PATSY!
Patsy cosplaying as Jessica Jones to cause a distraction is very high on the list of awesome Trish Walker things in this episode.
Jessica fights off Kilgrave and his army of cops, and we finally get to see her mostly fly—leaping and falling with style.
She chases Kilgrave out to the waterfront, to face a crowd of workmen and other civilians. Kilgrave orders them all to start killing each other, while he makes his getaway in a yacht… but he just can’t resist trying his powers on Jessica as she powers after him…
He yells ‘STOP’ and the crowd stops killing each other. Jessica stops, frozen, obedient.
Kilgrave doesn’t believe that she is really controlled, much though he wants to, and tests her by taking Trish (whose protective headphones have fallen off) under his power. There’s a kissing scene. It’s super gross. Move on quickly.
Jessica, docile and obedient, is willing to let him take her sister. Kilgrave promptly forgets Trish exists, and dances around Jessica, gloating his head off.
He tells her to smile, and Krysten gives her her creepiest beauty pageant smile yet, all teeth and sincerity.
Kilgrave orders him to tell her that she loves him, and Jessica happily says the words—over his shoulder, to Trish. And then she grabs him by the jaw, tells him to smile, and snaps his neck.
BOOYAH.
I have honestly never been happier to see a David Tennant character dead, and that includes the super long regeneration scene in The End of Time.
Luke Cage awakes in Jessica’s apartment to find a stranger—Claire—has been taking care of him. She lets him know that Jessica is in jail for murder (there were soooo many witnesses), but the good news is, the person she murdered is Kilgrave, HOORAY.
While Claire is working her way through to her third meaningful pep talk of this episode, Luke bails. He has his own show to get started on!
Jeri Hogarth proves what a shark of a lawyer she is by arguing with the DA that Kilgrave is a verb—she’s already planning to prove his mind control powers by multiple witness statement in court, and she’s throwing in a claim that Kilgrave’s death was suicide by Jessica Jones.
In one of the most impressive pieces of character development yet seen in this show (which is saying something) Jessica manages to keep her mouth shut through the proceedings.
After a hug from Trish, Jessica returns alone to her smashed up apartment. Malcolm is waiting for her (he’s either cooking or cleaning her kitchen, it’s adorable).
She barely has the energy to plug her phone into the charger and once she does, the messages start pouring in—from potential clients, desperate people begging for help. Jessica starts deleting the messages but runs out of energy even to do that—and when her phone rings, Malcolm answers it for her in a simple statement that pledges his eternal friendship while also serving as a job interview.
“Alias Investigations, how can we help?”
COMICS & CONTINUITY
Oh Luke Cage and his unbreakable skin. His beautiful unbreakable skin. There’s a storyline in the New Avengers during the Dark Reign era when Luke needs urgent medical care after going into cardiac arrest—and as in this episode, ordinary medical instruments are no use!
Netflix Luke doesn’t have established friendships with the Wasp and Doctor Strange so they can perform emergency surgery on him via miniaturisation—what he has is Night Nurse.
Claire was introduced to the Daredevil Netflix series as an amalgam of two characters—Claire Temple, a love interest for Luke Cage (noooo leave my ship alone) and Linda Carter AKA Night Nurse, another refugee from “girl comics” (as was Patsy Walker) who became known as the dispenser of first aid to battered superheroes. In Daredevil, Claire patched up Matt a bunch and they had a brief romance.
It’s an odd sort of choice, to introduce a guest star from the successful sibling show for the season finale, right as the story is wrapping up—not quite as awkward as that time Hercules turned up for the birth of Xena’s baby, but it could easily have gone that way.
Claire and Jessica bond quickly through a mutual interest in doing the right thing, and a shared sense of dark humour. Claire’s life advice for the lovelorn, superpowered and the human sidekicks is all informed by her experience on Daredevil, while making very few actual references to the other show. I think we can all be super grateful she didn’t call Matt in, as his body under Kilgrave’s influence would have been terrible!
Consider that Claire is down to be a regular in the Luke Cage show (currently filming), I guess this plot thread is close to a backdoor pilot? In any case, her scenes provide some welcome thoughtful discussion and quiet moments, to balance out the drama and angst of everyone else in the show, precisely because she’s not that invested in these people and their lives.
Other continuity references include the scene where Kilgrave orders the crowd to kill each other, a direct reference to the last conversation he and Jessica had in Alias before she beat him senseless.
Jessica’s leap-and-fall method of mostly flying in this final act is pretty much exactly what we see in the Alias arc “The Secret Origin of Jessica Jones,” when she first learns how to use her powers.
DAMAGE REPORT
Jessica Jones 1, Kilgrave 0.
And that’s it! Thanks for reading, it’s been fun to burn through these with you all, and to hear all the commentary about this dark, crunchy gem of a superhero show.
Tansy Rayner Roberts is a Marvel Comics tragic, and a Hugo Award winning blogger and podcaster. Tansy’s latest piece of published short fiction is “Fake Geek Girl” at the Review of Australian Fiction, and she writes comics reviews on her own blog. You can find TansyRR on Twitter & Tumblr, sign up for her Author Newsletter, and listen to her onGalactic Suburbia or the Verity! podcast.
So, in episode 11, when Daddy Kilgrave puts on the cologne/antiviralwhatever, Kilgrave gives him an order and he looks at Jessica and smiles. Then Kilgrave says “now!!” and Daddy Kilgrave steps forward obediently.
I was convinced that this meant Daddy Kilgrave was faking in order to lull Kilgrave, and even the hand-in-the-blender thing was an act.
Sadly, I was mistaken.
Also, the super adorable gay apartment owners are also super tragic and made me very sad when one killed himself in such an ugly way. I’m really sensitive to gay characters, even when they’re as small as these two were, and that part made me really sad.
Also, I don’t think Kilgrave’s powers work over phones/PA systems cold. Luke had the viral whatever in his system, since it lasts for an extended amount of time now, so Kilgrave’s orders over the phone still landed because of the presence in Luke’s body. He also made a point of traveling throughout the hospital, giving off his viral em…issions? emanations? So that his PSA would have receptive bodies to impact.
You’ll recall in your last review that you said Luke and Jessica would have to talk about their feelings. Having finished the series by that point, I almost died. Sure, Jessica talked about her feelings but Luke just read from Kilgrave’s script. I think my ship has had scuttling charges laid. I’m not giving up though. *starts humming The Mary Ellen Carter*
I liked JJ better than DD, because of plot reasons. I mean, Daredevil has beautifully coreographed fights, while JJ’s are cruder. Of course, there’s a reason for that: each style fits its show’s atmosphere and genre nuances. But plot-wise, Jessica Jones more fully embraces the larger universe it exists in. Sure, Daredevil had Kun-Lun references, the Hand, etc. But Jessica Jones has supersoldiers (both Luke and Nuke, it rhymes), evil corps doing experiments, Patsy Walker future Hellcat, etc, etc, etc. I just felt it was a larger universe, while still focusing on Jessica and her issues.
I’m still not sure what I think about Jessica killing Kilgrave. I don’t hate it, but I don’t like it. I guess that’s how I’m supposed to feel? It did surprise me. Is he actually dead, though? Is it unthinkable that, even in this toned-down corner of the MCU, his body died, but he somehow transferred his consciousness to one of the person’s he controled at the docks? How different is consciousness transfer to mind control, particularly after how much his powers grew with the stem cells? Not only that, but he has a healing factor in the comics, and here, Jessica, Nuke, possibly even Luke, and Kilgrave are linked to IGH, who have obviously been trying to create supersoldiers. I’d love to see Kilgrave return in the future (not necessarily in season 2), in another body (played by someone else). We would doubt wether this is someone whow was controled by him and retained an “echo” of his powers, an actual offspring of Kilgrave, or Kilgrave himself in another body (the wink wink to Doctor Who’s regenerations would also be there).
“I wrote it.” was a OMG moment. And I had totally missed the kid standing there 24 hours later… And yeah, I thought of Walter, Belly, and Cortexiphan.
As for Luke being one of the children experimented on… is that on the footage and I missed it, or is it something you’re inferring, Tansy? Also, I’ll have to watch that episode again, but I’m pretty sure Jessica doesn’t break her brother’s gameboy with super strength.
Somet things I jotted down while watching the show:
* How the fuck do Audrey and her husband know Jessica has powers? Did I miss a reference to Kilgrave telling her?
* What is up with Marvel/Netflix and having older, black men dying? First Ben Urich in DD, now Detective Clemons?
* Interesting how, when commanded to answer “Who the hell are you?”, Luke says “Luke Cage”, and not “Carl Lucas”. Is Luke Cage his real name in this universe, or is he so immersed in his new identity that a casual command from Kilgrave can’t actually get him to reveal the deeper truth? He obviously does have a checkered past and hides from the law.
* Kilgrave’s powers in the comics are manifested through pheromoneIs a virus less silly than pheromones?
* I hope Kilgrave didn’t actually love her, and just thought he did because he couldn’t have her.
@1 – SunDriedRainbow: You’re on to something there, Kilgrave needed to seed places with his virus. Just phoning Obama and telling him to blow up Russia won’t work.
I know it’s almost certainly not going to happen, but, in the comics, there was a character in Alpha Flight (the long-running Marvel comic that focused on a Canadian superhero team, which is one of those weird facts that if you made up as a detail of an alternate history, people would think was bizarre and implausible), the Purple Girl (later renamed Persuasion), who was the daughter of Kilgrave via a mind-control rape and who, at 13, inherited his powers (with some twists… she was purple, like Kilgrave, but unlike Kilgrave the people she controlled also turned purple briefly, at least at first). But she was, or at least tried to be, a hero (although most of the time I read her, she was a hero-in-training). She was one of my favorites, and Alpha Flight would almost certainly never make it to the MCU, much less one of the far more obscure Beta Flight members, so it would be cool to see her show up in a future season of Jessica Jones, the result of her mother and a teenage Kilgrave who never knew about her, and who puts the pieces together about her origins and her developing powers after hearing about the news, and runs off to New York to find Jessica and try to get some closure/advice/even a cure for her powers, and maybe do something really unique with her status.
It was really fun reading these along with you, thanks. Loved the show and your articles made rewatching it along with you a fun ride.
Kilgrave was a sick twisted awful awful person, but I hate that he died. Because I didn’t know until this show that I just need David Tennant using his Doctor voice in my life, even if its being used for truly a repugnant character like Kilgrave, I just don’t want him to go.
I found it odd that Reva was the only person that Kilgrave made Jessica kill. Did he have her for as long as he did in the comic? You’d think he have her showing her strength a lot more often and more brutally. I also find it unconvincing that murdering someone would be enough to break his hold on her, some of the other things we see him casually make others do are far more horrific but no one else ever seems to gain a resistance from it. Simply implying that murder is such an anathema to her because she’s really a hero seems way too … comicbooky.
Using the police car door as a shield was pretty cool… but the last guy ripped the whole car in half and used the two pieces as boxing gloves
The home owner did not swallow the bleach he injected it, I wondered why his mouth was not a mess until I saw the syringe at the side.
After she killed him I was immediately shouting “SET FIRE TO HIM RIGHT NOW” “BURN THAT CORPSE!” I really did not want to chance him recovering somehow. Oddly enough I’d watched something else that week where I had the same advise, can’t remember what though.
@5 – Biter: I found it to be the complete opposite. I love Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, but I really disliked him using the same verbal tics with Kilgrave, particularly in episode 5.
@6 – ChocolateRob: And who took his body? Because IGH is still around, and if Jeri took the foetus, many others would want to take Kilgrave’s corpse. Jeri herself, to start with.
Now I wonder how Reva and Luke met. Since she told him about the USB but didn’t show him, I think it means she hid it before she met him. So did she meet him as a gifted person, or was it a coincidence? And how did she get the USB? Was she part of the project? A subject herself? Maybe we’ll find out in Marvel’s Luke Cage…
I hope Malcolm and Claire become best friends… And that Foggy will be there too!
So, Chris Eccleston was Malekith, and David Tennant was Kilgrave: which MCU villain is Matt Smith going to play?
@3: Audrey learned about Jessica through the guy she threatened with her “laser eyes” in episode 1.
@6: Kilgrave prefers having people kill themselves in ways that are amusing to him. But for Reva, I think that since it was about his secrets, he wanted to make sure she died fast, so he asked Jessica.
re: 3; * “How the fuck do Audrey and her husband know Jessica has powers? Did I miss a reference to Kilgrave telling her?”
IIRC, they found out via the jerk in the expensive car she threatens with her non-existent laser eyes.
@7 lordmagnusen: See I don’t get that complaint, not that I’m saying your wrong for seeing it that way. But for me I found it to be a smart choice. Of course any right thinking person will not agree with Kilgrave’s orders. But when MurderCorpse says jump you jump, and with him using that voice it gave him that extra bit where I wanted to sympathize with him, of course I don’t, but if the Doctor says Run! I run, I don’t ask questions or debate the merit of his suggestion, I just run.
@8: Is it weird that I kinda want Matt Smith as M.O.D.O.K
@8/9: Ah, I had forgotten that. Thanks for reminding me.
@11: Guy Pearce already got to be MODOK. Just without the MODOK-ness or having his hench-nerds dress as beekeepers. Stupid Iron Man 3.
i feel Iike this last episode (possibly) confirmed something for me: Kilgrave’s orders can be interpreted how the VICTIM chooses to do so, and what they convince themselves it means. He told Jessica to “take care of her” referring to Reva, which Jessica (and most people probably too) took to mean “kill her.” But he was right in that he never told her to kill Reva. It’s still all entirely his fault, but Jessica took the most logical interpretation of what a sadistic man without mercy who wants a secret kept with no loose ends to mean.
Later he tells Patsy to “put a bullet in your head,” so Trish begins firing off an empty clip against her head, and then tries pushing a bullet casing through the side of her head until Jessica makes her put it in her mouth, and opens her eyes to this different interpretation of having a bullet in your head.
Then we see the guy from the couple who is to “remove all traces of my dad from this earth.” Who’s to say that a clever mind who wasn’t in a state of wholesale terror, and expected that Kilgrave wanted the worst possible outcome, couldn’t have just lifted him into the air (like one of Hercules’ fights during his Labors) to “remove him from the earth.” It would take some convincing perhaps, but that would have satisfied the order short of explicit instructions on how to carry it out.
All this is to say that in the Reva incident, Jessica very well could have fulfilled Kilgrave’s order by literally taking care of Reva the same way you do a baby, pet, plant, or tomogachi.
*sidenote: I’ve never seen an episode of Dr. Who, so I feel for those of you who couldn’t fully enjoy Tennant using that voice here, because for me it was simply perfect.
@14: Yeah. In fact, that’s my pet theory about the true reason Jessica became immune. It’s not because she just disliked killing so much that that turned her off Kilgrave. That certainly horrified her, but it wasn’t distinctive… plenty of people have done things that are against their fundamental nature. I think it was because she realized that she had slipped over into doing what she knew he WANTED rather than what he specifically commanded… but as horrifying as that was, it also had a benefit, because she did, technically disobey his order: she didn’t take care of Reva, she ‘took care’ of her. So her body/mind had learned, in a sense, what it felt like to actually defy him, something nobody else had managed, and she could, unconsciously, repeat it.
In essence, every time he commanded her, her mind put air quotes around it and interpreted it as potential sarcasm.
@15 I like that, oddly logical.
@1 Sundried Rainbow, I totally thought he was faking too! And I guess he could have been, actually, all along, but desperate not to “break character” because he was scared. The story works whether he’s faking or not- it shows how fear can control people as much as Kilgrave’s genuine power.
@2 noblehunter – I feel you. My ship, MY SHIP. I am concerned that they’ll be giving Luke Cage other love interest/s in his own show and maybe he won’t see Jess again until the Defenders. Wahh.
@3 I don’t like Jessica killing Kilgrave either, but that’s OK because Jessica also doesn’t like it – and that makes me like her more. I agree it could work with him making a comeback though I’d like to see a series of Jessica Jones without him – maybe with his return being the nasty cliffhanger at the end – because she needs a break! And I think it will be important to establish her as a character separate from him, because he was so integral to her comics self. If he comes back, maybe he can be more purple to silence the haters :D
The bit about Luke being one of the kids is an inference, but based on him saying “she was trying to protect me” when Jessica tells him Reva had the footage of the kids, and also the “experiment” line. I think it’s a pretty reasonable reading of the text!
* Audrey had tracked her down because of that asshole with the shiny car back in episode 1 – the one Jessica scared by telling him she had laser vision. So that one was totally on her.
* I agree about the killing off black characters thing being a problem. On the one hand, this is at least partly caused because the Netflix shows have wider diversity than the original comics – Ben Urich is white, for instance, and could easily have been cast as an old white dude – but on the other hand, Ben Urich doesn’t get killed off in the comics when he’s white. I think it’s less problematic in JJ because there are so many characters of colour still standing by the end of the series, but that’s my take on it as a white Australian whose local TV shows are pretty damned whitewashed most of the time.
* Luke Cage seems to be how he identifies himself – Kilgrave’s powers often seem to demand the personal rather than literal truth, so I guess that question might be answered (or not) in his own show.
*virus is less silly to say out loud, perhaps?
* what is love? the world is full of people who say they’re in love with other people, who don’t return the feelings – and particularly people who claim love in order to control others. Kilrgave might genuinely have felt loving feelings for Jessica, but that doesn’t make him less creepy, considering what he did. He would definitely not be the first rapist to think he was acting out of love, or that his loving intent cancels out his victim’s autonomy/feelings.
@@.-@ ghostly – that would be a fantastic way to follow up the Kilgrave legacy in the show, particularly with all the baggage Jessica (and others) would have about those powers and how they should/shouldn’t be used.
@5 there are many other ways to access David Tennant’s Doctor voice! There’s a new series of Ten-and-Donna audio plays he’s doing with Big Finish for a start. Also I highly recommend watching him in shows like Blackpool and Casanova, to wipe Kilgrave from your thoughts.
@6 & @7 – the legal proceedings at the end implies that Kilgrave’s body is in police custody (for now)
@14 – I think tone of voice actually does have an effect on how the order is received – his meaning was clear with Reva and Jessica took it as such. Likewise, his meaning with Patsy was clear – it took Jessica’s persuasive voice to allow the less obvious meaning to work. I think people (especially women) are likely to read more than the literal word meaning of his orders in the first instance, and need another interpretive voice in order to get ‘creative’.
@15 great theory! It holds up, I think. I especially love the idea of sarcastic listening being her secondary superpower.
While I appreciate the need not to over-explain Kilgrave’s power, I’d love to know the fine details of it. How much does what Kilgrave mean have? It seems to matter because we see a number of non-literal commands work “fine.” What about Kilgrave’s desires? Will people tell him what they think he wants to hear? How hard is it for him to not command people?
@17 I really want the shows to seriously engage with Jessica/Luke. I’m not sure they could have overcome their original problems but Kilgrave’s enslavement of Luke seriously complicated things. I’d really like to see a story of how they work it out.
@17 – Tansy:
“* what is love?”
BDHMNM.
@19 – noblehunter: I think we needed Luke being controlled by Kilgrave so he’d know how Jessica didn’t actually have control over what she did to Reva. I still don’t see how they could get together, if someone killed my wife even by accident or forced by another person, I couldn understand that, and not blame them… but I wouldn’t want to be around them, much less be in a relationship with them.
@8 Matt Smith is Skynet in the last and probably next Terminator film.
And Michelle Gomez (Missy/The Master) has a gang of assassins in “Gotham”.
While “virus” as the mechanism is dumb, at least it makes Jessica developing an immunity to it plausible, just by being exposed to it for longer than anyone else.
I thought Albert was immune and playing along too, but he had a chance to kill Kilgrave when he injected him — could have pumped a big air bubble into his brain and given him a stroke on the spot. He didn’t, so it seems his vaccine didn’t work.
Wow. Whew. That was a LOT darker than I expected. Daredevil was tormented but still had moments of light. This one started dark and stayed downhill fast.
And as for Will Simpson … he might be a villain to be, but I *really* want him to get a comeuppance. When he shot Clemons I had to stop watching for an hour, it was just a whole lot darker than I expected the show to go.
On the other hand, it literally meant that Jess had nowhere else to go – the only independant witness to Kilgrave’s powers is now dead, the evidence is gone up in smoke, and with Hope gone, she’s left with only the dark path we see.
Even the end is barely a glimmer of light. The dead have piled up, Jeri is alone, Malcolm hoping he can redeem himself, Luke gone wandering and Jess is exactly where she started but with a trashed apartment. Again.
Yeah, but Jessica is not alone, she’s got Malcolm (and still has Trish), plus she gets to help other people who think she’s a hero.
All in all, I’m not particularly put-off by JJ killing Kilgrave. I understand the moral quandry, but my rationale is more logistic than anything. Mind control powers are a very unique sort of superpower and in my view, best done with a light touch. There’s little resort to an intelligent and amoral and sociopathic character, and this season displayed that brilliantly, especially with JJ’s attempts at getting Kilgrave to implicate himself.
In truth, Kilgrave DID kill himself at least inadvertently, by becoming obsessed with JJ. This introduces the flaw and wedge needed to overcome him.
However the fewer MC characters around the better I think. Power creep is a really bad thing in a long running serial story. The writers for the Peter/Sylar characters in the Heroes universe took this story flaw to the limit, making them near godlike until the ham-handed attempts to dial it back.
In another vein, JJ killing Kilgrave sets up an interesting dynamic with the second season of Daredevil. DD refuses to kill, exploiting any avenue possible to avoid it. Elektra and Punisher has zero qualms about killing an enemy, apparently viewing it as a utilitarian best route to a goal. Jessica Jones pursued every angle she could think of, in the end feeling being forced to do it, but not happy with the decision. If/when they all team up, it’s going to make for interesting bar conversation.
And we’ve seen these shows have place for good conversations.