“I just need sleep”, Jessica says, trying to banish these visions of her tormentor. She’s exhausted of doing puff pieces on her radio show and she wants to be a real journalist. And when Trish goes to confront Max, he shows no remorse.
Advertisement
Sexual abuse is a common theme in female-led thrillers, often acting as the origin story for a woman’s empowerment. Sure, Jones herself showed up in The Defenders, but in the time since she had her own show a lot has happened: the sexual misconduct allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein; the #MeToo movement; the Women’s Marches protesting the administration of President Trump. She also didn’t like finding out that not only was her daughter still alive, but that her daughter believed her mother was dead. Surprisingly Jessica softens her heart and takes Hogarth’s case. The details would have stayed hidden if Trish hadn’t discovered this in Jessica’s files. She threatens to expose him as an abuser, meaning she’s willing to keep quiet in exchange for a favor.
She ups her Super-Alienating game until no one wants anything to do with her.
Five years passed, with Alisa in a medically-induced coma while she underwent extensive DNA restructuring and totally illegal medical tests (that’s why Dr. Malus faked her death and shipped some generic ashes to Jessica to “help her move on”). She drinks too much. She dates it. She befriends it. Jessica, on the other hand, represents power that can’t escape its own lethal potential.
It suffers from a lack of Kilgrave, or more plainly just a lack of any central antagonist, but the biggest problem with the show is one that’s all too familiar to anyone who’s watched even just one of the Netflix Marvel shows before. She’s not, of course, but she springs to action by paying the three prostitutes and clearing them out of her place. Trish’s mom, Dorothy Walker, knew about this but didn’t tell anyone because she thought it was an unimportant charity write-off.
It’s nearly like she’s acting out like Jessica, but it’s Jessica that’s out doing some important fieldwork and at the Kozlov funeral learns that Will Simpson is still alive and he’s the one who killed Kozlov. The snarky, blasé private investigator with super-human strength was the refreshing highlight of the aforementioned superhero mash-up, with whip smart put-downs cutting through the male heroes who whinged about their insecurities. You can’t defeat rape culture by punching people.
This meeting goes about as well as we expected. We said in our review that you couldn’t be blamed for scrolling through Twitter on your phone instead of watching the series when you see “Danny Rand chasing someone through a sewer”.
But then another voice interrupts her.
Showrunner Melissa Rosenberg explains where we find Jessica at the beginning of the new season. That doesn’t make a murderer, obviously, but the trauma of the accident and the loss of her family could have pushed her to the point where she just doesn’t care anymore – and that’s not the same as brain damage. But the door is open for other powered people to come into Jessica’s life who got their abilities from Malus. He knows he can get away with it.
Advertisement
Jessica shares a very Sylvia Plath moment from her past with Trish, as they look out onto the water where they dumped Simpson’s body. When you can lift a refrigerator like a cardboard box or put your fist through the hood of a auto, people tend to want and expect things from you.
