Jessica Jones, S2 - March 12

…While AoS is going the same way that it always went, let us mention ‘Jessica Jones’ (JJ) for a change. This show released its’ second season last week. And?

And some things have become obvious about JJ, so let us talk about them. Firstly, as far as superheroes go, (especially Marvel™ ones), the titular heroine is… a Vampire Slayer, more precisely – Faith the Vampire Slayer, who appeared in the 3^rd season of BtVS onwards. (She appears on AtS too). Both Faith and Jessica tend to be crude, abrupt, have issues with booze and drugs, and are morally shady – Faith moreso than Jessica, because Jessica was forced into darkness by Killgrave, (who’s a different villain from Black Panther’s Killmonger, BTW), but both Faith and Jessica have to struggle with their inner darkness, while trying to be heroes (heroines), however reluctantly… why?

Because being villains (villainesses) is worse for them. Neither Faith nor Jessica asked to be heroine, but they became…someone special all the same; Faith because Kendra (the previous Vampire Slayer) died (at the BtVS S2 finale), Jessica because of an accident in her childhood, but get them they did, and the powers…are basically the same – super-human strength, speed, dexterity, etc. Jessica is a Vampire Slayer in a world without any vampires (or other supernatural monsters)-

Yes, fine, MCU does have vampires, starting with Count Dracula; back in February, when the discussion about Black Panther and his movie was at its’ peak, it was mentioned that some of the first Marvel movies were about Blade, a vampire hunter (and half-vampire himself), a movie series that concluded with Blade killing Dracula himself – and what is worth noting is both the titular character played by an Afro-American actor, Wesley Snipes and that the movies’ format was similar to the modern MCU movies, which included the feature of all the villains dying in every movie, so that new ones would appear in the next – and this brings us back to JJ. And MCU’s villains.

For a while, a lot of noise was made about Black Panther’s Killmonger, how he was different from the earlier MCU villains. That is debatable, but what matters to us now is that regardless of these differences, Killmonger still died at the end of the movie, just as the other MCU villains tend to, (except for Loki), so the movie formula is still the same, regardless of Killmonger’s own differences from the rest of MCU’s villains, (whatever they are) – and then we got JJ the series.

In JJ S1 Killgrave was a different sort of evildoer from Killmonger, or Wilson Fisk, or Madame Gao, etc., but just like the rest of them, he was defeated (and killed) all the same, following a formula that is not very different from MCU movies, or AoS, or even BtVS. In S2 JJ did something different – there was no concrete villain, what we had instead was something that some people call a dark mirror – an evil (well, eviller) counterpart to the titular heroine, and it was her mother.  

Folks on IGN and similar sites/YouTube channels have already discussed about how the ‘villains’ of JJ S2 weren’t really evil, more like morally shady, just as Jessica was. AoS too has played with this concept, especially in the first seasons, but they handled it very badly, and the show has never regained its’ initial highs. JJ did it better, both in regards to the villains themselves and how the titular character – the heroine of the show – dealt with them. Spoiler alert: when it came to her mother, JJ needed help from her girl Friday at the end, she just needed help period. What is next for her?

She is going to try to live a more normal life…and we know that it is not going to work simply because she is one-fourth of the Defenders™, without her, there is no team. (Plus on ‘Defenders’ S1 she had some chemistry with Daredevil, so yeah). Since Disney & Netflix showed no sign of changing the Defenders™ formula, JJ’s foray into a more normal life will not succeed, and she’ll be back to being a hero or a villain, (the dead Killgrave isn’t helping things any, and remember the First Evil from BtVS S7? This is so its’ M.O. that it is not funny), or she will succeed…and lose her super-powers instead, because this is how this sort of narrative works.

So, this is it for JJ for now; see you all soon!