Following her appearance in Defenders, Jessica Jones is back on Netflix for a second season. As ever, we’re going to be reviewing every episode of the series – one per day – providing analysis, easter egg spots and speculation for those who aren’t planning to binge it all in one go. All discussion is welcome but please don’t spoil future episodes in the comments.
This review contains spoilers.
2.2 AKA Freak Accident
Episode 2 is very not subtle on the theme of this series: addiction, and the ways people either give in or distract themselves from it. So we get Jessica and Malcolm finding ways to have meaningless sex so that they stop thinking about their drugs of choice, while Hogarth gives completely in to both. The first series of Jessica Jones was pretty strong on its PTSD theme, and it looks like this is how season 2’s going to move those ideas on.
I’m actually a little surprised by how little Kilgrave has featured into the show so far. We did get Jessica once again reminding us that she’s a “super-killer” but it’s not like his name comes up. Instead, we revisit her other traumas – her screwed up adoptive mother, dead family, and IGH experimentation. She’s not exactly short on material, that’s for sure.
I’m also surprised that the somewhat-inevitable reveal that Simpson was following Trish turned out to be a bait-and-switch. Not only was he not dangerous, he ended up as the second super-powered victim of whomever (or whatever) is taking out IGH subjects. Gotta say, I was expecting him to awkwardly stick around in the cast just because he was in the first series. It’s kind of a shame that THAT’s how the infamous Nuke finally gets dispatched, though!
Trish in general is being a lot more active in her own story, though I’m a little suspicious that anyone who spends as much time as her out of the office could hold down a radio presenter’s job. Does she just do Saturdays now or something?
It is interesting to see the contrast between the three main female characters so far. Jessica, Trish and Hogarth all mirror one another’s situations – traumatised in different ways, untethered from their own lives – but each is dealing with it in a different way. It’s rare to see this kind of material given to one women, and Jessica Jones’ strength is clearly that it has the space to explore these ideas in a genre women don’t get a lot of spotlight in.
The only real drag, two episodes in, is that we haven’t really seen an actual villain yet. Sure, Will’s presence was threatening, Cheng was a dick, and Trish’s mother is a snake, but none of these people are Kilgrave, and IGH’s facelessness doesn’t quite cut it as a replacement. I hope we get to put a face to the evil sooner rather than later – even Kozlov is dead now (again, nice twist that the people in suits turned out to be at a funeral rather than spooks).
Reference-wise, I only really spotted the big one: when the Whizzer says “with great power comes great mental illness” it is, in case you’ve been living under a pop-culture rock for the last 50 years, a nod to the famous creed of Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, as first spoken by the omniscient narrator (and not Uncle Ben) in Amazing Fantasy #15 (1963). Of course, this guy technically shares a universe with Peter Parker (no, no, really. Stop laughing.) so there’s a chance he learnt it from him directly. Could we be able to witness a Tom Holland cameo in Jessica Jones? Hell to the no, we could not. But it’s nice to pretend sometimes isn’t it?
Oh, and Emil the mongoose is perhaps my favourite addition to the MCU in YEARS. The petition to get him on the Avengers starts now.
Be back tomorrow for our discussion of Episode 3…
Read James’ review of episode 1, AKA Start At The Beginning, here.