Headscratchers / Jessica Jones (2015)

New entries on the bottom.

Season 1

Simpson, I Was Told to Deliver a Bomb to You

• So Jessica's neighbor is ordered by Kilgrave to blow herself up along with Simpson and his buddies. Kilgrave was hit by the anesthetic. I was under the impression that the certain anesthetic negated his mind control. So the neighbor shouldn't have any reason to blow herself up, or am I mistaking something?
  • She probably didn't know there was a bomb in there.
  • I mean, why did she walk up to Simpson and activate it in the first place? According to my understanding, the moment Kilgrave was doped, she would have lost all reason to go speak to Simpson.
  • Given that he threatens Jessica with the possibility of people having triggers that could activate after his death, its likely that the sedative only prevents him from giving people new orders (while unconscious and for a while afterwards, because of the effect on own brain chemistry). His mind-control takes up to 10 hours to wear off from other people once given their orders if they have no other contact with him, but it still works during that period regardless of if he's conscious or not.
  • It is never actually proven that the sedative negates his mind control. Kilgrave clearly thought it would when he instructed his surgeon, but it's possible he was just being overly cautious.
  • To me it seemed more like he couldn't use his mind control power when he got injected with the sedative, but anyone who had already been under his control would stay that way until the time limit was up. I think he didn't let the doctor use the anesthetic so that way he could ensure the doc's mind control wouldn't wear off.
  • No, it's simply a misunderstanding about how much time has elapsed from when he was tranq'ed to when he controlled the neighbor. The sedative knocks his powers out for about a day. He was basically in an isolation room when he woke up. He was there for an indeterminate amount of time. He left, after hiring a new security detail, and bought Jessica's childhood home. There were a couple days (at least) of renovation as he transformed it back into how it looked when she was a kid. So several days (at least) passed between the "Black Bag Kilgrave" abduction and the time Kilgrave drops the mind-whammy on the neighbor.
  • I think you're confused. No one is talking about residual effects from the first time Kilgrave was tranq'd (in the street and dragged to a van) as you're right, that happened days earlier and he had plenty of time to recover. The other events you're referring to (fixing up Jessica's house) also happened before the events the OP is talking about. The OP thought Kilgrave's control was immediately lifted once he was tranq'd outside Jessica's childhood home, after he'd already ordered the neighbor to deliver the bomb, so the neighbor would no longer have been compelled to deliver the bomb. As someone else explained above, the anesthetic presumably disrupts his ability to give new orders but has no impact on previously given orders, provided they are carried out before the mind control elapses over time.
  • If the only effect the anesthetic has is to prevent him from giving new orders, what's the practical difference between it and hitting him over the head with a brick?
  • Mashing his brainbox with a brick has a much greater chance of permanent damage than sticking him with sleepy serum. Considering how much JJ wants to prove his existence and power to get Hope off the hook AND at least stay semi-legal about it, outright violence wouldn't help her case that much.
  • On a related note, I don't recall "predicting the future" being among Kilgrave's powers. According to the neighbor, he asked her specifically to give that to Simpson. When did he have the time or opportunity to do that? Simpson didn't show up until after Jessica knocked Kilgrave out. Did Kilgrave just tell her "If this specific police officer shows up and causes trouble, give him this bomb?" Also, she doesn't even know what Simpson looks like, so how is she supposed to know who to give the bomb to? Does Kilgrave have some pictures of him that we don't know about?
  • When Kilgrave first used Simpson, he was in his police uniform which had his last name attached. The second time he saw Simpson, he helped Jessica abduct him, Kilgrave seemingly recognized him when he approached him before he was abducted. Simpson shooting Kilgrave with tranqs most likely left an impression. Also when Jessica came to live with him, Kilgrave had the presence of mind to hire bodyguards. It is not unimaginable in his paranoia for him to be prepared just in case if Simpson should show up again. So he sets up Mrs. De Luca to keep an eye out for a blonde, lantern jaw Alpha male in black and hand him the special bomb/gift, after asking "Is your name Will Simpson?" Heck, he may have even heard of Simpson's military background when the guard that Jessica and Simpson captured got back to work and handed in a report, citing Simpson's tactics and training. Enough details that would make Kilgrave take extra precautions.
  • There's also the fact that someone has infiltrated the house and planted a bomb, causing Kilgrave to change out his whole detail. For extra irony, the bomb used was the very one that Simpson had tried planting. Kilgrave could have just made the logical connection that Simpson is trying once again to get back at him, and set up the contingency "If some black ops dude is wandering around the property, go give him back his bomb."
    • Hell, Kilgrave's security may have seen Simpson staking out the location, and told Kilgrave about him, who then decided to put a contingency plan in place should anything happen to him. Simpson wasn't exactly the most hidden guy in the world during his stakeout. In fact, it sometimes feels like he'd been Kilgrave'd again when he was talking about being missing.

Gifted nomenclature

• The term "gifted" as a euphemism to refer to people with superpowers was an internal S.H.I.E.L.D. nomenclature, one that they've since abandoned in favor of "enhanced" and "Inhuman". At first glance the fact that everyone in New York City is familiar with it could be attributed to Black Widow dumping all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files onto the internet during Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but then in a flashback, teenage Trish uses it at least 15 years before the events of the show.
  • It's one person using the term beforehand, it's probably a coincidence. She was trying to use a word that would sound positive when referring to Jessica.
  • Common people would still need a term for people with superpowers, as their existence is of public knowledge. Why "gifted" in particular? Perhaps there's a popular film franchise within the MCU about "Jean-Luc Picard's School for Gifted Youngsters".

Cellphone number

• So, Jessica has Kilgrave's cell phone number...she does realize these things are trackable, right?
  • She tracks him down pretty quickly after getting the call, so it probably would have been harder/taken longer to do it that way.
  • There's no indication that Jessica has the skills or resources to track a cell phone. Hollywood Hacking aside, you typically need either the cooperation of the cell phone company, knowledge of the user's account or physical access to the phone itself to manage it. Jessica would have none of these.
    • Jessica has a tracking app on her phone. It's how she followed Simpson back to Kilgrave from Trish's apartment: she slipped Trish's phone into his jacket pocket. In season 2, it's suggested she also had it installed on Malcolm's phone as well, given her attempt to find Malcolm that way after Trish knocked him out and put him in the trunk of Dr. Malus's car.
    • Such an app requires access to the phone you wish to track, not just knowing the number in its current SIM card. That's why she had to slip Trish's phone into Simpson's jacket despite the fact he doubtless had a phone of his own. Unless she had unobserved unrestricted access to Kilgrave's phone, in an unlocked state, she wouldn't be able to track it.

Jessica's Susceptibility to Kilgrave

• So it's revealed in the ninth episode that Jessica's immune to Kilgrave...but hadn't this whole thing started being that she wasn't immune to him? What happened?
  • Jessica managed to break through Kilgrave's control in the past after he made her kill Reva. She escaped but didn't realize she had permanently overcome his influence. Jessica (and the audience) still worry that Kilgrave could control her at any time so the reveal that he can't is a big deal. However, Kilgrave points out in the next episode that he knew all along (which is why he spends so much time trying to get Jessica to be with him willingly) and thought Jessica was very slow on the uptake.
  • Killing Reva was so traumatic to Jessica that she snapped and went into extreme dissociation. Kilgrave's commands didn't affect her because she couldn't comprehend that he was talking to her then he got hit by a bus and couldn't give commands anymore. But this doesn't explain why her immunity lasted past that incident.
  • Perhaps its the dissociation that caused the immunity? She didn't recognize that he was talking to her, but her body did. Maybe when it wasn't compelled to follow his command, her WBS realized how to fight the virus.
  • Thank you.
  • The precise mechanism of Jessica's immunity is left vague. Since Kilgrave's power is ultimately revealed to be carried in a virus that he secretes, it's more likely that Jessica was able to overcome it as a result of her immune system adapting to the virus over the year (or more) he controlled her. It is possible that Kilgrave had never continuously controlled anyone else for that long since he usually prefers to use and discard people over the course of days or weeks at the most, or that Jessica's superpowers allowed her to develop resistance when removed from his influence for an extended period where a normal human could not.
  • I certainly hope that was the case, though I wish something better was made to explain this immunity probably tied to the new origin story. Ok the comic storyline wasn't possible (though it would have been freaking awesome for an Iron Man fight and for Scarlet Witch to have stopped the mind control), but the way things seem there has to be some Unfortunate Implications here. Killing someone against your will is horrifically traumatic, but Kilgrave makes people do equally traumatic things about five times before breakfast so I'm not feeling the shock factor here. People should be breaking his control all the time in that case. Unless we're implying there trauma wasn't "strong" enough.
  • There may be a line between abuse dealt to self and abuse dealt to others. Most of Kilgrave's victims are seen doing or accepting damage to themselves. The cases of victims directly attacking someone else on orders are Simpson, the penthouse couple, and Luke. Simpson was a former soldier and probably familiar with killing and may find it less traumatic than the average citizen. The penthouse couple, though apparently given the same order, executed differently when one kills himself while the other did the murder, possibly due to dissimilar trauma tolerance. Alternately, it may just be Jessica's saving grace that she regards murder of an innocent as so wrong that it shocks her to break.
    • Jessica, while not unaccustomed to using questionable methods, is shown to have a strong moral compass when it comes to murder and violence. She rarely actively attacks people - most of the fighting she does is defensive, either of herself or an ally. It's notable that, when Audrey tries to kill her (and actually shoots her), Jessica stops attacking her once Audrey stops being a threat, preferring to smash up the room. About the only time she directly attacks someone who isn't a danger to her is when she threatens Wendy, and that is at a time when she is absolutely plastered, and in an incredibly angry and depressive state. To add to this, when she does fight, she tends to rely on throwing and pushing, rarely punching, as although she can pull her punches, she may not be able to reliably moderate the force she uses. So, actively harming someone who posed no threat to her by punching her so hard in the chest that she's dead before she hits the floor would definitely be the most traumatic thing for Jessica to be forced to do.
  • Also note from what we see Jessica may have been under Kilgrave's control longer than anyone. Usually, he seems to get bored of one toy and discard it when no longer useful or fun (like the two women he discarded when they first met) or kills them to cover his tracks. Kilgrave's obsessiveness with Jessica may be down to time spent together. In flashbacks, we see that they spent time enough together that, in his twisted mind, it counted as his first real relationship. His other toys never lasted that long before he disposed of or forgot about them. Considering that Jessica spent months under the influence of the virus, now add in her superhuman physiology. It is possible that she even has fast healing capabilities, since she got shot in the arm by Audrey in episode 4, but was seemingly none the worse for wear a few days later. So we have a person who has been under Kilgrave's intense influence for months. Add to that her advanced metabolism that allows her to drink like a fish and be none the worse for it. You have a woman who is building a tolerance to the mind control virus bit by bit. The trauma of killing an innocent person may have been the adrenal shock to her system her body needed to shake free of the virus' influence once and for all. Remember, Kilgrave pretty much had to control her 24/7, that is a lot of exposure to his virus. Enough time to build a tolerance to it. Her PTSD may have prevented her realizing later that was why she was able to walk away from him that night.
  • Jessica does make a comment late in the series that she heals faster than other people, so there's definitely a case for an improved healing factor, which is likely related to her power. Could be pretty likely that she's the only one that built an immunity from a combination of prolonged exposure and a super-boosted healing factor beyond natural human range.

Why does Kilgrave need money?

• ...when he can get everything for free? Like Jessica's old house, why did he pay for it? Even weirder when he made the man go away after he paid him.
  • In that particular instance Kilgrave specifically says it's because he doesn't want "seller's remorse". i.e., he doesn't want this guy coming back to get his house back. If Kilgrave just said "leave", the day after his power wore off the guy could come back saying "What the fuck, man?! Give me my house back!" Even if Kilgrave had forced the guy to take the money the guy could have come back for sentimental reasons or resentment over having been tricked out of his home, as not everybody would value money over attachments. Kilgrave was trying to build his sick and twisted fantasy life with Jessica, he didn't want any interruptions or difficulties, which is why he made a point of asking if the guy was happy with the deal so there'd be no problems down the road. Killing the guy also would have brought up its own issues; Jessica would have hated somebody being killed in her old house, he would have had to deal with family and friends coming by, maybe even a police investigation, etc. He could have dealt with it all using his powers, but his point was that this time he wanted to make sure none of those issues arose. In general, Kilgrave clearly doesn't need money, and nothing in the show says that uses it except for certain specific instances. He paid his security team in money because he wanted to make sure they'd act even if he had been disabled, and he tipped the attractive woman at the poker game because he was enjoying playing the role of High Roller, but in general he is not shown spending money.
  • And he used his powers to send the man away because their business was finished. The man had his money and was happy, and Kilgrave legally owned the house. Kilgrave didn't care about the man anymore, so he sent him away.
  • Kilgrave's power doesn't work over phone lines or the internet, at least for most of the series. If he needs to buy something and can't physically approach the person who possesses what he needs, he'll need money to acquire it. Not too difficult to get anyway. He can easily walk into a bank and walk back out with all of their money and no records of what he's done or, as the series itself shows, just destroy a bunch of rich guys at a poker game.
  • My personal belief is that he did it for two reasons: one was to impress Jessica, so he could tell her "look, I've turned over a new leaf, I'm nice now, I don't force anyone to do anything they don't want to" (which is something we know he does, because he makes a big point of how he pays all his "employees" and doesn't just order them to work for him for free). The second is that he's testing himself. He knows (we don't yet, but he does) that he's about to spend some time dealing with a person he can't control using his powers, so he wants to see if he has the ability to do that by trying it out on the guy he's buying the house from.
  • Additionally given that his power is actually an infection there are probably random people who are randomly immune to his power of mind control. Also, it's probably easier to stay off the grid and not leave fingerprints when you mostly behave as normal instead of having to whammy entire crowds.
  • To add to the original point, Kilgrave wanted the house legally. If the seller indeed had his Kilgrave control (TM) worn off, he'd go straight to the authorities to try to get the house back, attracting undue attention to Kilgrave. And while controlling one or two people was fine for him then, he sure as heck couldn't have commanded a judge to forget his existence and the fact that some British dude in purple talked a man out of his house and was living there in his stead.

Break Kilgrave's Leg(s)

• When they had Kilgrave locked up in their trap in episode 9 and had him unconscious, why did it not occur to Jessica to break one or both of his legs? That way, in the event of him somehow getting out, like Patsy emptying her gun into glass, he still wouldn't be able to go anywhere. Hell, considering her super strength, why not break his back? He isn't going anywhere like that.
  • It changes nothing: even without legs, he can still order someone to carry him. Or to steal a wheelchair for him. And he wasn't expected to leave the cage, anyway.
  • From a purely practical point any extra steps you throw at Kilgrave could be a good thing. Sure he could have had someone carry him out but Trish and Hogarth would have a difficult time of it. The real thing here is that Jessica and the others were still kinda/sorta trying to find a way to work within legal confines because they wanted a confession out of him that would be admissible in court.
  • Exactly, or rip out his tongue. Can't give commands if no one can understand what you're saying.
  • As stated, they wanted incontrovertible proof that mind control exists, this man can do it, and it's the reason Hope killed her parents. Every extra step they take to ensure his co-operation is another step a defense attorney can use to cast reasonable doubt. Even with what they did do, Jessica could very well be up on charges of assault, kidnapping, wrongful imprisonment, and so on. Breaking his legs would add aggravated assault while cutting out his tongue would move straight into Cold-Blooded Torture, whatever the legalese for that is (and Kilgrave legally could sue for that stuff).
    • In England, torture's classified as malicious wounding. Not sure about American terminology.

Kilgrave & Cage

• Something doesn't sit completely right with me about Kilgrave's relationship with Luke Cage in the final two episodes. We learn at the end of Episode 12 that Kilgrave has been controlling Cage for an extended period starting a while before he blows up his bar, but there are a few details of this which are confusing me. Firstly, how thorough must his instructions to Cage have been? Obviously he knew about his powers, because he wouldn't have told him to blow up his bar with him inside it otherwise (since he needed him alive as part of his plan to beat Jessica), but when Jessica asks if Kilgrave knew about his powers, Luke tells her "no, that's not the sort of thing you generally ask about". How did Kilgrave find out about Cage's powers (which are an integral part of his plan to kill Jessica, and presumably the reason he takes control of Cage to begin with) and how could he have had the foresight to tell him "listen, if Jessica asks if I know about your superpowers, tell her I don't"?
  • Kilgrave probably just asked, "Is there anything that would be important for me to know?" or "What would you like to keep a secret?" and Luke Cage would have told him A) about his powers, B) that his real name is Carl Lucas, and C) he's on the run from the law (B and C are irrelevant, but if that's what Kilgrave asked, Luke would have surely mentioned them and maybe a little bit about Shades, Comanche, Rackham and Squabbles). We see something similar happen on-screen with Jeri when he sarcastically says, "Tell me something I don't know" and she then tells him about the fetus. Kilgrave wouldn't have needed to know about it to ask for generalities if he was just doing general digging. Regarding his specific instructions to Luke for the rest of the action, it would have needed to be careful, but he could have covered everything like this: "If Jessica asks what I know about you, don't mention that I know about your powers. Or that you're Carl Lucas from Georgia. Tell her I didn't ask about them and you didn't volunteer any information. Then, I want you to act like you would normally, except for THIS and THIS and THAT." Kilgrave's been controlling people for over 30 years. He's probably had a lot of trial-and-error over the years to work out how to bury a lot of contingencies in his instructions.
  • Could be possible that there actually wasn't any exchange of dialogue related to it, making the line 'That's not something people think to ask about' genuine AND deceitful. Considering Ruben's case, Kilgrave could have initially wanted to make Luke kill himself in some simple manner, i.e. 'stab your throat out'. Ten bent knives later, Kilgrave would be like, "You know what? Ix-nay on the ut-throat cay," and given Luke his new directives as a super-pawn and just instructed him to dodge the question if he was asked about it.
  • Also Kilgrave's plan was to trick Jessica. He wanted her to think that he didn't know Luke had powers and therefore also thought Luke was killed in the explosion. If Luke tells Jessica that Kilgrave knew about his powers, then she might get suspicious.
  • Not that it would have helped. To Jessica's credit, she made Luke sleep it off just in case there was something she wasn't smart enough to figure out on her own. She didn't count on his power boost significantly extending the amount of time he had control of a subject, however.

Opportunities

• In episode 3, Jessica spots Kilgrave through a glass roof. If she'd had a gun, she could've killed him right then and there.
  • At that point, we didn't know she wanted him alive. Really makes you ask "WTF"?
  • Would've made for a much shorter series.
  • But she didn't have a gun.
  • She could have grabbed a piece of pipe or a chunk of concrete, then used her super-strength to throw it at his head. At worst it'd knock him out, and at best it'd be Boom, Headshot! and a quick end to her troubles. Then again, Jessica's repeated unwillingness to simply kill Kilgrave outright takes the story into forehead-slapping levels of stupidity at times.
  • Subverted because she is earnestly trying to save Hope and needs Kilgrave both alive and capable of demonstrating his powers.
  • This actually plays into the main theme of the season, that of abuse and recovery. Jessica never thinks clearly where Kilgrave is concerned, because even though she's immune to his mind-control power, he still controls her life to a debilitating degree. Seeing him again paralyzes her, even though she was braced for it some degree, because this man took away everything she had, even herself. Many abuse victims never get to the point where they can confront their abusers, even to report them to the police and let the legal system handle it, never mind squashing said abuser's head like a grape.
  • Jessica wanted some sense of closure. Not just for herself, but for everyone that Kilgrave had victimized. Without proof of Kilgrave's existence, people would think that his victims were just drunks, drug addicts, or weak minded idiots who screwed up their own lives. You have to remember that Jessica is not the only person who suffered because of Kilgrave. She's just the most notable one as the show is about her. We know from the support group scenes that there are people who lost jobs, friends, marriages, and families because of the things Kilgrave forced them to do. And it's a horrible burden for someone to live with that kind of shame and ostracism. If Jessica just killed Kilgrave, all those lives would remain in ruins. By showing the world that Kilgrave is real, those people would at least have a chance to piece their lives back together.

Kilgrave's Powers and how they work

• Kilgrave's powers seem to have some very interesting inconsistencies that don't seem to make sense. The first and largest is how does the target know it's the target? Presumably everybody inside Kilgrave's radius is infected with the virus so why do only certain people respond? The two best examples that contradict each other are the scene at the bar and the fight on the docks. At the bar he says step forward. Hope and Kilgrave's father are both present and under his control and don't step forward. Hope may have known it didn't apply to her but his father had no reason to think that. Later on the docks Kilgrave shouts 'stop' but is clearly addressing Jessica but everybody stops what they're doing at that point.
  • Considering that its been shown that people can resist Kilgrave's commands through technicalities, I would assume logical technicalities work as well. People didn't react because their brain knew that he wasn't talking to them just like you would answer a question that had been aimed at someone else. However, post-powerup, Kilgrave was so powerful that even this logical fallacy was overridden by the desire to do what he said.
  • At the docks, everyone was busy trying to kill each other; they weren't looking at Kilgrave or paying attention to who he was talking to. When they suddenly heard him yell "Stop!" it was only natural for them to all turn and look towards him to see who he was talking to, at which point they'd already stopped what they were doing and would seize the excuse to wait for new orders instead of resuming trying to commit random murder.
  • A bigger question for me, is how does the virus make the victim suggestible only to Kilgrave? I can fathom a virus that makes people suggestible, but to one specific person is a bit of a stretch.
  • Maybe it works symbiotically with Kilgrave's unique vocal patterns. Everyone's voice is different, and the virus may code a person's brain to respond in a specific way only when they hear Kilgrave's voice. It's very possible that someone who could do a flawless imitation of David Tennant's Estuary English accent could end up controlling someone. A recording of his voice, might work, depending on the quality. It would explain how Kilgrave eventually gets the power to control people over the hospital PA system, assuming that he had traveled enough in the hospital to expose them all to the virus, then their brains recognized his vocal pattern when spoken to them electronically.
  • There's nothing to suggest that Kilgrave's actual voice has any power. The "power" seems to come from the pheromones he emits (as his father explained). Once someone is submissive to Kilgrave, he can probably control them not just by verbal commands as described above (the quickest/easiest approach in most cases) but also written (text messages to Luke?) and non-verbal commands (like Hand Signals).
• I suspect that it's a combination of factors unique to Kilgrave. For example, people have to have been exposed to the virus (or phermones or both) in order to become vulnerable to him, but Kilgrave also has some degree of telepathic influence as well. The telepathy itself would not be enough to control anyone, and the physical effect itself would not provide any direction to a person's actions, but when he combined the two, he was able to exert total control. It might be that there is some other person out there with telepathic influence, who would be able to exert the same degree of control if they encountered people who were exposed to Kilgrave's physical effect; they just never happened to be in the right (wrong) place at the right (wrong) time.

Kilgrave's powers, Jessica, and the building

• Once we know that Kilgrave's power is a virus it explains why his powers don't work through speakers. However Jessica immune though she is to his powers should have effectively carried it out to Trish and Hogarth and yet the written 'help me' doesn't work. Later in the hospital however he nails an entire building. That's multiple floors and lots of physical barriers that even with air circulation should not have hit that many people that quickly.
  • Kilgrave has spent at least a day trying to increase his powers and the drugs he using to do so are clearly working. He did a check the night before and could immediately get people with 100 feet of him to do what he wanted. It's not unrealistic to assume, post-power up, that that hit 300/400 feet radius and that the ability for him to manipulate people now extends to after he has left the room. With this in mind, him infecting the vast majority of people in the hospital as he's making his way up to the security station to access a microphone isn't too far-fetched.

Charisma

• Even when he's for some reason unable to use his actual powers, Kilgrave is still a highly charismatic person and capable of manipulating others to some extend. How on earth did he learn that? Without superpowers charisma and influencing others is a skill set you learn through life. Due to Kilgrave's abilities, he had no reason or opportunity whatsoever to train any of that.
  • Natural Charisma is a thing. It relies on being energetic and appearing non-threatening (two things that David Tennant is perfect at, seeing how Kilgrave could be considered an evil version of the Tenth Doctor). Kilgrave is naturally energetic and is a skinny guy who never actually makes threatening body language (he's too use to not having to.) The result is the image of a Stupid Rich guy who can say whatever he wants because he and his money will make it go away (entertaining when it's not pointed at you.)
  • Also, as Kilgrave pointedly remarks to Jessica, he's had to learn to be very precise about his instructions (the "tell a guy to screw himself" scene, I think), which means he would have had to develop considerable powers of observation. On top of everything else, he is also likely to be clinically sociopathic, a group skilled at cognitive empathy while severely lacking in emotional empathy.
  • Additionally he's most likely had to hone to some extent his ability to get people to think his instructions we're their idea. We don't know how quickly his powers developed in strength or duration. Sure he can effectively fend off any attack he sees coming but if Luke Cage (or any of his victims) had decided to shoot him or simply act before he noticed them he'd be in a world of hurt.
    • While Kilgrave is probably safe from most threats to his life (it's hard to kill someone instantly, and most people would not shoot him for no reason), he's able to force people to do (and want to do) whatever he says. That does not mean, as the belligerent guy at the poker game shows, that people automatically like or respect him. It's possible that when he was younger and relying on his powers and nothing else, he had incidents when a person he controlled was smart enough to think "hey, this guy keeps telling me what to do! What an asshole!". It's possible Kilgrave had a few unpleasant situations where an angry victim punched him in the face or something (before he ordered them to kill themselves). It would've been more than enough for him to learn to read people - if nothing else, learning people skills would give him a feel for when people were a threat to him and needed to be commanded with his powers.
  • Some potential Fridge Brilliance: Kilgrave's charisma developed hand-in-hand with his abilities. The more precise and effective he got with his mind control, the more charismatic he got. Charisma and manipulation are simply getting people to think what you say is right, so the more Kilgrave learns to word his commands to get exactly what he wants with no unintended consequences, the better he gets at manipulating people without his powers. Think about a character with superstrength taking up weightlifting. Unless the gym has some ridiculously heavy weights, they won't actually increase their muscle mass or tone (and thus their strength), but learning how to properly lift weights and move their body increases the effectiveness of their strength.

Pam's Murder Charges and Jeri represents her?

• Jeri's scene with Pam in the holding cell confused me a little bit- isn't she the only witness? Why is she trying to be Pam's Defense Attorney when there's an obvious conflict of interest there? Also, why is she trying to guilt Jessica with Pam facing murder one in the last episode when it seems like a dead certainty Pam will get off- Jeri's and Jessica's testimonial and forensic evidence should prove Wendy was trying to kill Jeri and Pam had to kill her, right?
  • Thank you. Wish I could offer some insight but it makes no sense to me, either.
  • As for the first part, Hogarth doesn't strike me as the kind of person who'd let "conflict of interest" or "legal ethics" get in her way, even if I don't see that flying with an ethical judge or jury. For the second. . . yeah, it seems a pretty clear-cut case of self-defense, and the only thing I can think of is that sometimes such cases run into unexpected problems. Even if it seems inevitable that Pam will be cleared of charges, there's still the possibility of her being charged, and the case going to trial, which could be devastating for a promising young woman just starting her career (especially when it comes out that the only reason she was there was because she was involved with her married boss.)
  • For the first point, it was less about the ethics, more about the logistics- is it even possible, in a court setting, to serve as witness and legal counsel? And, if not, why was she prioritizing representing Pam when her testimony would be more likely to make the difference, especially in a case like this. I cede your point for the second question, and I sincerely appreciate it.
  • Back to the first point. . . probably not. But then again, Jeri may have been "stand-in defense" for both her and Pam (since they're both, at minimum, persons of interest, if not suspects/witnesses) and just handling things until she can get another attorney from her firm to come down and start taking full charge of the defense. In other words, Jeri just wanted to be there to make sure Pam didn't say anything incriminating before she could arrange real, ethical, legal representation for them both and start handling the case.
  • Again on the first part, Jeri being Pam's defense attorney when she's also the key witness would be a violation of Attorney-Client privilege. Anything Pam says to Jeri, Jeri cannot reveal to the courts. Even in the Stand-in defense scenario above, Jeri could be disbarred for testifying when Pam has a new defense attorney.
  • Well, Jeri clearly was able to find some way to resolve her legal problems, since in season 2 of Daredevil, which takes place shortly after season 1 of Jessica Jones, she's still a name partner at HC&B and was behind hiring on Marci Stahl and later Foggy.
  • Technically, isn't Wendy's death self-defense? I believe Article 35.15 of the New York penal law pertains to self-defense and Pam's actions here constituted "self-defense of a third party".
  • Most likely, the version of the story that Jeri would tell the police would be something that runs parallel by the truth: she just claims that she and Wendy had a heated argument, Wendy grabbed the knife and started cutting at Jeri with it. Pam and Jessica happened to be coming by to deliver documents or something and saw their boss being attacked, so Pam rushed in and used lethal force on Wendy to stop her from inflicting further injury to Jeri. Jessica certainly would go along with this tale, but it might take some persuasion for Jeri to get Pam to go along with this.
  • Per a blog by legal experts, there is certainly a case for self-defense. Pam entered Wendy and Jeri’s townhouse to find Wendy attacking Jeri. Pam objectively could see multiple cuts to Jeri's face and a significant amount of blood. Pam was justified in striking Wendy, because under section 35.15 of New York law, a person “may use physical force upon another person when and to the extent he or she reasonably believes such to be necessary to defend himself, herself or a third person from what he or she reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of unlawful physical force by such other person…” Pam could reasonably have believed Jeri was the victim of the “unlawful physical force” by Wendy from the number of cuts Jeri had sustained. Moreover, Pam caught Wendy in the act of attacking Jeri. As such, Pam hitting Wendy on the head would have been justified to stop the attack on Jeri.
    • Pam did not intend to kill Wendy. While it is highly suspect for three people in a love triangle to have a fight where one ends up dead, Pam would have a very strong defense. The only thing that could undermine Pam’s “reasonable belief” about Wendy’s threat to Jeri, would be if Pam were aware that Kilgrave had ordered Wendy to kill Jeri. If Pam knew Wendy was not in control of her actions, this complicates the analysis. Pam could be seen as taking advantage of the situation to kill the estranged wife who was making unreasonable divorce settlement demands. Pam’s “defense of others” could suddenly look like murder.
    • Consider this alternative: If Pam had backhanded Wendy with the blunt instrument, hitting the left side of Wendy’s head instead of the right, Wendy would not have hit the table with the left side of her head. Would that have been remotely reasonable? It is not often people find themselves in life or death situations. Pam taking a normal swing with the first object she grabbed likely was the reasonable action in order to save Jeri.
  • Jeri had like 30 huge cuts on her. Wendy's fingerprints are on the knife. It's obviously defense of others. It's the story of two people vs. the story of a dead person that has all of the signs that she was the aggressor. If the cops suspected murder, then they would have been arresting Jeri alongside Pam. That's the only explanation for why Pam is locked up and Jeri is not. Especially considering that in Jeri's intro scene in season 2, it's mentioned that Pam was in jail for all of three days, which seems like a reasonable amount of time for the police to process the crime scene, collect statements from Jeri, Jessica, and Pam, consider the evidence, determine what charges could be brought, then tell Pam "There's nothing we can charge you with, you acted in self-defense of a third party," and let her go.

Simple Solutions

• Much has been said already about how Jessica keeps carrying the Idiot Ball in the story, refusing to simply kill Kilgrave despite knowing firsthand how dangerous he is. But even if you accept her reasons to spare him, it makes no sense why neither Jessica, Trish, or Simpson think about taking basic precautions against falling under Kilgrave's control. Even before learning that his powers were biologically-based, Jessica knew that one has to hear his commands, so why did it take thirteen episodes before figuring out that he could be thwarted with loud headphones or a set of $3 earplugs? And even if Jessica insisted on bringing Kilgrave in alive, why not just break his larynx or shove a ball gag in his mouth to keep him quiet?
  • On the last point, she needed proof of his powers. Were you not paying attention to the several episodes spent trying to get evidence of what Kilgrave could do?
  • But that was all just to get Hope freed, which was all for naught in the end anyway. It would have been easier to kill Kilgrave, proof be damned, then either have Jeri make her best efforts at a legal defense that would exonerate Hope, have Jessica use her super-strength to break her out of prison, or come up with some other resolution after-the-fact that didn't involve letting an unrepentant sociopath with a horrifically dangerous mind-control power on the loose.
  • I can't speak to why they never gagged him - particularly since that's how Peggy Carter dealt with the hypnotist - but I have some ideas about the other points. Earplugs/headphones render you immune to commands, but you also have no warning about what everyone around you is being commanded to do. Trish had to walk in a straight line for about 10 seconds knowing that Jessica would be enacting the main part of the plan. She didn't need to react to much. (Though personally, I wonder what they would have done if Kilgrave had told his guys to shoot Trish out of spite).
    • YMMV on the effectiveness of earplugs. Earplugs (the normal ones you can buy in most drug stores) and noise-cancelling headphones don't block sound completely and you can still understand what people are saying if they're talking loud enough. All Kilgrave would have to do is just speak with a louder tone of voice and that's out the window. Not to mention that in the show, Jessica didn't even think the earplug approach would be foolproof. She warns Trish not to look at Kilgrave even when she has the headphones on. While it's possible that Jessica was just telling Trish not to look at Kilgrave so that he doesn't realize it's not Jessica, I had the feeling that Jessica thought that Kilgrave would just resort to using hand signals to carry out his commands.
  • As for Jessica never killing him, she already carries an extreme level of guilt for the deaths in her life. I mean, no one sane wants to kill anyone, but having spent most of her life carrying guilt for the deaths of her family, then the horrific trauma of being made a willing slave, then the guilt of committing murder, then the guilt of believing that murder is the reason she was free, then Kilgrave setting up the situation so she feels guilty for the deaths of Hope's parents and Ruben. . . I don't think it's unreasonable that she wanted to solve the problem and be the hero without killing. Plus (and I'm treading lightly here) victims of prolonged psychological and emotional torment and manipulation have complicated feelings toward their abusers. It's not as simple for her as it is to us.
  • The issue is that Kilgrave's powers are slightly erratic as listed above and Jessica clearly wasn't one hundred percent certain how they functioned. She knew for example that it wasn't his voice that did it. He can't do it through speakers or even shouting through the glass. Also Kilgrave is sufficiently dangerous that nobody is going to test his limitations one by one and blasting death metal on your way to a fight sounds stupid even if you know it would work.
  • When your average person kills another human being, self-defense or otherwise, it weighs heavily on their soul. It’s a difficult burden to bear. Matt is conflicted about the possibility of having to kill Fisk, Karen still feels the weight of the deaths of her brother and James Wesley years after they've happened, and Jessica still carries a lot of guilt years after Reva's death. Therefore, it makes sense that Jessica didn’t go for murder from day one. She exhausted every other option, trap him, get evidence, make him better, reason with him, she tried everything. In the comics, there were a few people that could resist him, but within the universe established in the show, she was the only one who was immune to his abilities. She tried to save Hope, and failed, Trish was the last straw. David Tennant was so good that it can be easy to forget, this is Jessica's story, and Jessica learned that sometimes the right thing isn’t pretty. I actually found it very fitting for her character and character development.

How did Reva get the videos?

• We eventually find out the reason Kilgrave made Jessica kill Reva was because Reva possessed a USB flash drive which contained videos of experiments done on kids, including Kilgrave. But how did Reva have those videos to begin with? For all we know she was merely a bar owner in Hell's Kitchen, not someone with access to classified medical files. Obviously she knew that they containted sensitive information, otherwise she wouldn't have taken such care in hiding the thumb drive. So what is Reva's story? And why doesn't Jessica ask Luke where Reva got all those files?
  • When Jessica tells Luke about them, Luke makes some comment about them being "insurance, to protect him." The implication being that Luke was also on that flash drive, and Reva had it to keep the people interested in seeing how their experiment turned out off his back. As to how she got them in the first place, well, Luke Cage (2016) reveals that the USB was one she had when she and Luke fled Georgia in light of Luke's breakout from Seagate.

Cage vs. Internal Injuries (final episodes spoilers)

• Jessica manages to subdue Cage by shooting him in the head, because despite his skin being impenetrable, he's still susceptible to internal injuries. Then how the hell did he survive two explosions (his bar, and Cottonmouth's bazooka attack on Genghis Connie's in Luke Cage) point-blank with no injury at all?
  • He's not just a regular guy beneath his impenetrable skin. He is super-durable and strong. Besides, it would have killed him if he didn't receive the emergency medical attention that Jessica and Claire Temple gave him.
  • That's not an answer to the question though. The question is, why was Luke fine after the explosions, but needed medical treatment after the gunshot? In both cases he was hit by a tremendous concussive force from a point blank range, so why didn't the explosion give him internal injuries like the gunshot did?
  • The concussive force of gasoline igniting is significantly less than a point-blank shotgun blast to the chin. Gas igniting is a lot of fire but little force, and what force there was was evenly distributed all over Luke's body. Same goes for the RPG, because even though it had more strength than the gas bomb at Luke's bar, what force was hitting Luke was evenly distributed (not to mention he was shielding himself and Connie). This is also why Luke survives Arturo Rey's attempt to kill him in the first episode of Luke Cage season 2 (when Arturo tries to blow him up in one of his trucks). The shotgun blast was focused on one point, and the concussion went straight to a very vulnerable area (the brain.) Encased as it is in solid bone, the brain does not react well to internal pressure, since the pressure has nowhere to go

Hogarth's lies in the epilogue

• When she begins to lie to Reyes on Jessica's behalf, stating that Kilgrave wanted Jessica to break his neck and commanded her to do it.. Why is this necessary? With Kilgrave dead, he left a trail of blood and bodies and manipulated people in his wake who he would have spoken to and commanded on an individual basis; there is also the evidence from the flash drive which shows Kilgrave using his abilities as a child, and the evidence left behind from Kilgrave's father and the experiments he was conducting to improve his abilities; why is it necessary to lie on Jess' behalf? The scale of Kilgrave's crimes are basically equal in their monstrosity to the Joker on his worst days; with the amount of existing evidence regarding Kilgrave - even without his being alive to confess or be put on trial, why is it necessary to lie on Jess' behalf? No-one's going to throw the book at her; even if the science is tough to understand, they live in a world with Iron Man, the Hulk, Asgardians and sentient AI beings.
  • You're thinking like someone who has never encountered law enforcement in any serious capacity or even read much in the way of news stories. Just because someone's clearly innocent doesn't mean a district attorney won't try just because it's an election year, or for good PR, or just to make things simpler. The same goes with law enforcement. Corruption's the name of the game.
    • At one point in season 2 of Daredevil, Marci Stahl mentions that Reyes is intending to build a mayoral campaign platform off of Frank Castle's conviction, and also mentions that Jessica is under intense scrutiny. Likely, Reyes wasn't too pleased that Jessica walked free on murder charges for Kilgrave's death.
  • If Hogarth argued self-defense, Reyes could've counterargued that Jessica had other choices, such as knocking Kilgrave out and gagging him to keep him from speaking and then argued that Jessica chose to disregard the law for revenge. Hogarth quite likely thought of this possibility.
  • Self-defense law in New York is apparently a little tricky. Remember that Matt and Foggy defended one of Wilson Fisk's assassins who was claiming "self-defense" on a pretty obvious murder, and Foggy points out that the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not justified in using lethal force. Comparing a woman with superstrength to a guy who may or may not have mind-control powers? That would be a pretty steep burden of proof on the defense to shoot down the prosecution's case.
  • Technically, Jessica is a vigilante. She hunted down Kilgrave; and snapped his neck. While she might have been justified in killing him; she was still breaking the law.
  • I'm pretty sure that whole song and dance was less about saving Jessica and more throwing a bone to Reyes. If this went to trial, Jeri would have to point out all the people and police who attacked Jessica under mind control. Reyes would have to admit the mind control aspect to pardon them and suddenly every criminal and their dog claims they were mind controlled while the public panics even more at how helpless they really are. In short, no one is happy, no one wants to prosecute Jessica or go forward with a public trial and they are all eager to put this whole thing behind them and forget it. Jeri just puts forward a good story for them to take advantage of. It fits with everything that has come before in the story: Kilgrave never really gets the condemnation he deserved and his victims don't get the justice they deserve because people prefer not thinking about it. Like Jessica says, people would rather believe a lie then accept a disturbing truth. We know that even after death, people still didn't believe Kilgrave was real: in Luke Cage (2016), Mariah Dillard exploited his death as part of her and Diamondback's scheme to supply the NYPD with Judas bullets.

Believing Hope

• Why don't the police believe Hope when she tells them Kilgrave made her do it? He's shown no restraint about using his powers in public and has had them for years.
  • Because mind control isn't a really obvious power (especially since, unlike Loki's power, Kilgrave's power doesn't leave any visible physical changes on the victim), and even the people who got Kilgraved weren't entirely sure what had happened. Of the few survivors Jessica found, many more either didn't really understand what had happened, or just didn't want to talk about it. Many sexual assaults go unreported because the victims just don't want to talk about it, don't want to report it, don't want to even think about it. And when thinking about the victim-blaming that rape survivors often get, even from people who should know better, trying to explain Kilgrave ramps the whole thing up to eleven.
  • Maybe a better question is, after Kilgrave controlled an entire room of cops to point guns at each other or their own heads, why couldn't they be called as witnesses?
    • Witness of what? Lieutenant Evans is a riot, sometimes his pranks go a bit too far, but that's not worth reporting to internal affairs.

Kilgrave and S.H.I.E.L.D.

• If the series is set in the MCU, why does S.H.I.E.L.D. not intervene with the Killgrave situation?
  • Kilgrave's existence doesn't even qualify as rumor until Hope kills her parents, and even then its clear that practically nobody takes her claims seriously. By the time enough concrete evidence exists in the system to indicate that Kilgrave might be real after all, things have come to a head and Jessica has already killed him.
  • Actually, it's simpler than that. Jessica Jones takes place in the early parts of 2015, according to that time she broke into the hospital (the bus accident was January 2014 on the screen, "a year ago" according to dialog). In this time period, Coulson's SHIELD is dealing with Daisy's parents and the mess around them. It's quite possible that when one of New York City's biggest talk shows talked about him, Coulson sent an agent or two to investigate, but said agent was quickly Kilgraved into telling Coulson that their investigation turned up nothing. It's also possible that their investigation turned up nothing, because it's New York City. Coulson himself couldn't go investigate, because it seems like he still hasn't told The Avengers he's not dead yet. Lady Sif offered to tell Thor, and he said he wants to do it himself. Additionally, SHIELD's official policy is that psychic powers (and I think magic) don't exist, which should make Doctor Strange's debut funny. Coulson could write Kilgrave off as "just another bs psychic powers thing" and not investigate it, because he wouldn't know that it's a virus.

Is Kilgrave's 'power' technically mind control or will control?

• Both? They're kinda the same thing, or at least very inter-linked.
  • Both, although it varies. The series has the victims describe it as wanting to do what Kilgrave tells them to do, so once he's told them to do something, he's basically commanded that and overridden their willpower so they think they want to.

Can other things naturally override Kilgrave-control?

• Getting killed off before you can complete the command aside, would Kilgrave's powers dull your natural reflexes? I'll use, as a scenario, Kilgrave sending Simpson to kill Trish. If, while on his way there, a car accident happened in sight of him or a gunshot rang out, would Simpson just continue on his way to Trish's apartment or would he stop to investigate the noise/rush to provide aid to any injured people, then go to Trish's place?
  • The answer is, generally? No. He might be able to, you know, take a SLIGHTLY different route to it, or go slightly slower...but, yeah...generally he'd probably go and ignore anything in the way. Not full-fledged Terminator, but definitely...unwilling to compromise.

"I once told a man to go screw himself, can you even imagine?"

• It's actually a good question. What do you imagine the man did when Kilgrave told him to screw himself?
  • Depends how the man interpreted it. He could have quite literally screwed himself onto a wall. None of the possibilities seem pleasant, really.
  • This question is answered in Preacher, where the main character has pretty much the same power as Kilgrave. At one point he tells a nasty redneck sheriff to "go screw yourself", without thinking of the implications. Later on he finds out that the sheriff cut off his penis and put it in his anus, then died due to the resultant blood loss.
  • This is what I thought of immediately. Not within Kilgrave's general range of possibility, but that didn't stop my headcanon.

Trish's apartment security

• I am kinda curious as to why Trish needs such an elaborate security system at her apartment. Was it because of what happened to Jessica as a result of Kilgrave, or something else like a deranged fan/stalker?
  • Trish has been famous ever since she was a teen, so it seems quite likely she's had some stalkers, as most big female celebrities have them. So that would explain the security.
  • It's implied that she did it at least in part because of Jessica's experience. Same with her krav maga lessons.

Death Of A Thousand Cuts

• Kilgrave tells Wendy to kill Jeri through a death of a thousand cuts. She literally begins counting each slash out (or is it Kilgrave doing the counting? I can't remember). Now...suppose that Pam didn't show up in time. What would have happened if Jeri had died on, say, cut 200? It seems unlikely that Jeri would survive a thousand (due to a combination of shock and blood loss). That would leave Wendy with an instruction that's logically impossible to complete: not enough cuts have been made, but Jeri is already dead. Now, earlier in the show, we see people freak out when they can't follow Kilgrave's instructions, but always because they've been physically restrained in some way (read: we saw Hope struggling when Jessica used force to remove her from the bed where Kilgrave had ordered her to stay in. Likewise, there's Jessica having to tie Kilgrave's father's hands behind his back to keep him from carrying out the "cut his heart out" command). So what about when someone hits a logical impasse?
  • Most likely Wendy would have continued cutting the corpse of Jeri until she hit 1000, was physically unable to continue or the twelve hour or so time limit ran out. We never see any example of one of Kilgrave's victims hurting themselves because they are unable to complete their goal, only hurting themselves and others in blind pursuit of whatever goal they have. Kilgrave's father and Trish with put a bullet in your head are prime examples of Kilgrave gave specific instructions but what he meant was kill yourself. And he should probably say that instead of being specific when he cares, but neither of them tried to run into traffic or bang their heads against the wall once their primary instruction became difficult or impossible.
  • Actually, we see Kilgrave's father return to being fairly rational once he's rendered physically incapable of following his son's instructions of cutting his own heart out, so maybe something similar would happen in such a case with Wendy (and in fact she was rendered incapable of completing the instructions when Pam killed her).
  • Makes sense. Kilgrave's father had his hands tied behind his back which made it impossible for him to cut his own heart out. In Hope's case, it was the instructions given to her and the fact that she had no restraints around her arms or her legs that made her struggle when Jessica removed her from the bed. Although arguably, if Hope's hands were restrained when she was reunited with her parents, you could say that she would, until the Kilgraving wore off, be incapable of shooting them by not being able to grab the gun to do so (unless she'd just use an alternate weapon like a knife).
  • Well, again, Kilgrave didn't specifically say "Kill Jeri with one thousand cuts." His actual phrasing was more like "You wanted death by a thousand cuts? Do it." So it was very open to Wendy's interpretation, which probably means she'd keep cutting Jeri until she hit 1,000.

The police station standoff

• When Kilgrave takes over the 15th Precinct, he explicitly states when having that one cop delete the security footage that he can't erase memories. Understandable. Now, before he leaves, he tells everyone to decide that the whole incident was a hilarious joke and let Jessica go on her own recognizance. But as was noted on Fridge Horror, the cops who were there are probably going to find themselves in a bit of a pickle when they realize that the 'joke' that sent their precinct into a laugh riot involved all of them pointing guns at themselves or each other. Rationally, upon realizing what they were up to, wouldn't at least a couple of the officers in there (maybe not many, just one or two; I exclude Clemons here since he's taken to the hermetically sealed room where Kilgrave is kept later in time) be led to believe Jessica's story that mind-controllers like Kilgrave exist?
  • Maybe but a lot of the story hinges on people not being ready to believe. Jessica specifically stated when dealing with Spheeris, that it's easy to believe someone is crazy than that she can lift a car and lets be clear. Just with what is clearly common knowledge we've got that incredible green guy, that blonde dude with the magic hammer, and probably Cap, who can lift cars. There are no known psychics that the public at large should be aware of.
  • Maybe the cops do realize that Kilgrave is real but have to concoct some cover-up story because they'll look weak by admitting to being victims of him?
  • The exchange when Jessica seeks out Clemons after getting Kilgrave to the hermetically sealed room explains it all:
  Oscar Clemons: I don't like what I see when you're around.
  Jessica Jones: Oh, you mean that room full of cops that put their own Glocks to their heads?
  Oscar Clemons: I don't know what that was about.
  Jessica Jones: I do, and I know the man responsible.
  Oscar Clemons: You know Lieutenant Evans, huh? They say he orchestrated that whole prank. Quite a character, Evans.
  Jessica Jones: Was it a prank when I twisted that chair in half? Or dumped a human head on your desk?
  Oscar Clemons: Evans may have bad taste, but we all decided to look the other way. It's better for everybody.
  Jessica Jones: You can't ignore what you saw.
  Oscar Clemons: [exasperated] What I saw at that station was a group of brave cops who could all be kicked off the force as suicide risks if any of this should get out.
  • ...meaning, the cops did remember everything that happened. Kilgrave even said, "I can't erase memories, but I can erase security footage." Once the laugh riot died, they immediately sobered up and the officers realized that since the security footage of Kilgrave had been erased, they'd have to provide some explanation, and realized "A British man in his early 40s with dark hair walked into the precinct and made us all point our guns at each other or our own heads" isn't going to fly, especially when the video footage that could back them up has been erased. So they decided amongst themselves "If anyone asks, Evans pulled a hilarious prank," and moved on. The trauma of being under Kilgrave's control probably didn't last long, as Brett seems to be back to business as usual when we see him again in season 2 of Daredevil.
• Maybe a better question would be, what if an innocent non-Kilgraved cop (besides Clemons) happened to wander into that area after Kilgrave had made them all pull out their guns?

Supermax plan

• All right, maybe I can chalk up Jessica's thinking to 'she's trying to deal with Kilgrave, the man who sexually abused her against her will, so she probably won't be able to think straight,' but Jessica comes up with an idea in episode 7 that she thinks will protect the people close to her while luring Kilgrave in from the cold: get herself imprisoned in a supermax facility. OK, why would this ever work? Like, the logistics alone are a nightmare, as she quickly discovers. You'd have to do something like set off bombs at the Olympics or try to blow up a passenger plane just to even go there. Now, of course, you have to be tried and convicted as such—it's not like they'll just fly you out to the most expensive incarceration unit in the country instead of sending you to Riker's for the night until your arraignment. You don't get to pick and choose the prison to which you're committed. Basically, as Jessica quickly learns, you can't just dump Reuben's head on Detective Oscar Clemmons' desk and call it a day.
  But, admittedly, here's what also baffles me: Why on earth would Jessica getting herself thrown in jail stop Kilgrave from targeting Jessica's friends and acquaintances? Once he figures out what's up, wouldn't he be more likely to go after them, just to spite her? And wouldn't she be less able to protect them than ever? All her friends try to talk her out of it on the grounds that she's punishing herself for crimes she didn't truly commit. No one thought to point out that Kilgrave would have more incentive to target Jessica by proxy if she got herself locked up?
  • It was never supposed to make sense as a plan. In fact, it was supposed to be a truly horrible plan that would only make sense out of desperation. However, you can't take her justifications at face value either. Whatever she said her reasons were (and probably believed them), the real reason was suicide. Not literal, physical suicide, but a symbolic one, ending her life but not her physical existence. It's the ultimate in self-destructive behavior short of actual suicide.
  • Seconded but we don't know if Kilgrave would have attacked her by proxy rather than breaking her out. With his power set breaking someone out of a prison guarded by people with a vested interest in not acknowledging he exists would be comically easy. It's clear in a couple of places that for whatever reason Kilgrave genuinely likes Jessica and most likely wouldn't have done but so much to her loved ones. It's worth noting it's not clear if he knew much about Trish's relationship with Jessica when he sent Simpson to kill her, and then when he tried to kill her during his escape he was pissed. Kilgrave has clearly shown that he can be incredibly petulant.
  • Jessica's plan was horrible, and called out as such by everyone but her. It's beyond desperation: she's completely sick and tired of dealing with Kilgrave and his bullshit, she just wants out, but she can't just abandon everyone else to deal with him alone. So she comes up with a plan that, to her, sounds like taking responsibility for Kilgrave and stopping others from getting hurt, but really is just a complicated way of saying "Screw This, I'm Outta Here."
  • OP here: It sounds like Jessica started enacting this botched plan once Kilgrave had Ruben slit his throat in Jessica's apartment. I know this is hypothetical, but wouldn't the more common sense thing be, upon finding Ruben's body, to call the cops, and then call Hogarth^note Hogarth being called, you know, in case the police think Jessica's up to something, what since Ruben's death would be the third death in about a month in that building that was tied to Jessica, given the death of Hope's parents in the elevator, then go from there? I mean, I'd think that would get Jessica to the police station for the standoff with Kilgrave and not much else would need to be changed.
  • It's unreasonable to expect someone in her situation to act reasonably. Given all her history with him, the trauma and abuse, the ongoing threat he poses, the shock of finding the dead body of someone she knew in her bed like that, and whatever else I'm forgetting, the psychological strain she was under is unfathomable. Even trained soldiers can break under pressure and act completely counter to common sense when the stress becomes too much, and she's not a trained soldier. Just a normal person who has been through some severe trauma and is barely holding on by a thread that, at that moment, was fraying.
  • Jessica's not smart. I'm not saying that as an insult, I'm saying that as a fact. In a world with a lot of superheroes, not all of the people magically imbued with powers are smartasses. Look at Matt, look at Danny, look at Luke. Even they all make decisions that make you go, "Um, there's a better way to resolve that."

Supermax, pt. II

• Related to the above question: I know we the audience have the benefit of hindsight and thus it's with hindsight that we know Jessica's Supermax plan wasn't really thought through and she was metaphorically suicidal.....but, I wonder, what would have been a more rational plan (as in, if Jessica had stopped to think it through)? I know it's a broad question and everyone has their own idea, but still....
  • Logically? Kill herself. That, or "Fuck Hope, put a bullet in this dick's head."
  • The logical plan upon finding Ruben's body is that she should have called the police and let them handle it.

So does Luke Cage...

• ....have to cut his hair and fingernails? What does he use? Does it hurt if he gets a lash in his eye?
  • The easiest answer is that hair and fingernails are both dead technically speaking and whatever his specific superpower is it only effects his living tissue. Or alternatively and somewhat implied it's his skin that's super tough. Basically your better off trying to beat him with blunt force trauma that bruises his insides than you are trying to shoot or stab him.
  • The issue is answered in Luke Cage (2016). When he's in the motel room with Reva immediately after Rackham's death and his breakout, Luke is shown shaving with a regular razor. It would appear his ability only affects his living tissues, and hair is dead past the folicle and fingernails dead past the quick.
  • Luke's skin cells have an exceptionally high bond and yield strength. His skin is similarly flexible to anyone else's but once it is stretched, it doesn't tear. You can pinch him and his skin will move. When he and Jessica joke about not getting any ideas about biting, it is because biting that part is still going to elastically deform just like for anyone else, and you don't need to have even micro-tears for that to be a very painful experience. When you punch him, his skin still moves and its modulus of elasticity increases until yielding. But his skin doesn't yield.

What if Cage needs Surgery?

• Maybe this was explained somewhere, but what will the doctors have to do if Luke has to have surgery?
  • Call a proctologist.
  • It's implied he's just SOL if he needs to have surgery. In Marvel proper he's incredibly tough but call Wolverine.
  • Pretty much...that, or...experiment.
  • Luke Cage (2016) reveals that cutting him open requires boiling him in acid. He can be susceptible to internal bleeding issues, since we see him spitting out blood in his second season after his first fight with Bushmaster, and the whole issue with the Judas bullets.

Police station standoff, part II

• How did Kilgrave know that Jessica was at the 15th precinct at that specific time so that he could show up, command the officers to point guns at themselves/each other, then hide behind a desk and reveal himself when Jessica left the interrogation room?
  • He knew she likes that precinct. Either he had someone monitoring her for a tipoff...or knew she was going there SOMETIME soon...and spent an hour waiting under a desk.

REDS make you forget to breathe?

• Okay we're told that while it amps you up to superhuman, presumably Steve Rogers-levels of strength that taken alone the Red Pill has a major drawback. You forget to breathe. Why is this even an issue? Breathing is an automatic aspect of the human body, just like our hearts beat automatically. But we are capable of manually breathing. So while the red pill would prevent you from going to sleep, losing consciousness or anything else that would rob you of the ability to manually breathe in the short term that's really more annoying than fatal.
  • "Forget to breathe" is likely more a turn of phrase. What the pill more likely does is focus so much of the body's effort on conscious physical activity (like punching) that autonomic activity (like breathing) is sacrificed. A person with no tolerance, like Trish, went to the bad side effect a lot faster. The Blue/White pill (forget which one is the "bring down") normalizes the body's autonomic systems, allowing you to breathe normally again. You don't "forget to breathe," but your body just stops doing it because it's being forced to maximize effort in other areas.

Luke's "invulnerability" and Jessica's lack of it

• Luke should be much more tough than he actually is, and Jessica should be, too. Both are shown breaking very hard material, such as steel and marble, with nothing more than their bare hands, and they don't suffer injuries from doing so. That would require them to have extra-tough bones and muscles, which in turn should prevent Jessica from getting hurt so easily and Luke from having his life threatened by blunt trauma.
  • They have different kinds of invulnerability. Luke is actually unbreakable but it's his skin. Blunt force trauma is actually perfect for him especially against his brain where his invulnerability is of minimal use. NFL players don't get fractured skulls, they get concussions. Same thing effectively is true here. Jessica on the other hand is super strong and has some of the Required Secondary Super Powers. She likely does have extra tough muscles and bones but far from actually unbreakable.
  • Plus, Jessica doesn't "break steel and concrete," in the sense of punching brick walls and steel doors hard enough to tear through them. That would likely break every bone in her hand (and arm, etc.) even if it was successful. She grabs, say, a steel padlock and rips it off, which involved different kinds of forces and stresses on the body that wouldn't result in her hurting herself (much.) When she, for instance, smashes Trish's sink, she doesn't punch clean through it, rather hits it and it breaks, likely on a fault in the material itself that couldn't stand up the stress she's just put on it.
  • Also, watch closely in the flashback where Kilgrave gets his flash drive back. Jessica visibly bloodies her hands smashing through the concrete it's buried under.

Kilgrave and deaf people...

• So, we know that for Kilgrave to be able to control a victim, it's necessary that the victim be able to hear him (or at least see him moving his lips), and acknowledge that he is speaking to them. So how does this work on deaf people? Put it another way: could he command someone through the use of hand signals or even sign language?
  • Considering Kilgrave's powers are pheromone-based and not auditory-based, as long as the deaf person understands what he's saying, then yes. Kilgrave should be able to command them through the use of hand signals or even sign language.
  • Alternately? Depending on if headphones work WHILE looking directly at him? Possibly NOT.

...and blind people

• Off the same token, would blind people be as susceptible to Kilgrave's control or not? I mean, if Kilgrave walked up to Matt Murdock or another blind joe on the street and commanded him to do something, would there be certain commands the blind person technically might not be capable of doing? Part of me thinks that Kilgrave could command a blind person to do something, but they'd not be overly useful as agents (though the disabled persons equality groups might disagree) .
  • Kilgrave's powers are a bit random as discussed above. Certainly you can logic your way around his power to some extent such as Trish's "The bullet is in your head" scenario. But Kilgrave also never directly tells Simpson to commit suicide. He tells him he can leave, Simpson goes for the door and Kilgrave directs him to the patio. Nothing about jump to your doom was even strongly implied yet he had to be physically prevented. Which means that people do in effect give Kilgrave a certain measure of his power simply by their thought process. In the case of Matt Murdock if he was a poor target for Kilgrave it wouldn't be because he's blind. He might joke when you tell him to watch so and so but he knows you mean observe them. However being a lawyer with sufficient command of the English language might force Kilgrave to need to craft his commands even more specifically than usual. As for generic blind people it really depends on what Kilgrave wants at that specific moment. Sure they might be suboptimal spies, but as Wilson Fisk demonstrated in Daredevil season 1, they can suicide bomb just as well as anyone else.
  • In the comics Matt has always had a certain amount of immunity to Kilgrave’s powers. The actual mechanics of his mind control vary, but there’s implied to be a visual component. Matt is still influenced by Kilgrave’s commands, but his blindness, paired with his steel will, usually allow him to resist. In the MCU, the parameters of Kilgrave’s powers have been solidified and there’s clearly no visual component, so Matt would be in trouble. He still has intense willpower in this universe (that’s a key component of his character in all universes, and a logical byproduct of his powers/training), but it probably wouldn't be enough to save him. We don’t know enough to determine if he would be any more susceptible than people without hypersenses (volume doesn’t seem to impact the strength of Kilgrave's mind control), but Matt would be able to hear Kilgrave from a greater distance, which could be a weakness. If Matt is wearing his own shoes, for instance, he’s going to know what color they are. But if Kilgrave were to ask Matt the color of something random, that didn’t belong to him, he would be in trouble. Heck, he doesn’t know how to deal with it when normal people hit him with that question. If there were other people around, Matt might force them to give him the answer. And if there weren’t, he might start by doing what he almost does in that first excerpt above, and tell Kilgrave he’s blind. After that, the freaking out might start. Either way, it would be a bad situation.

Why doesn't Kilgrave ask?

• At one point, I think Kilgrave gripes that he can't ever have a "real" relationship because he doesn't know if the other person really wants it [a relationship, that is] or he's manipulating her with his powers. Why doesn't just asking her "do you want to do [x]" ever cross his mind? His Blue-and-Orange Morality?
  • He was just fishing for sympathy.
  • And how would I know you're telling me the truth, or just what you think I want to hear? I mean really, I've told you to do all these things, and you've never complained once? Now you're all angry with me because you didn't want to do any of it in the first place? Then why did you do it? Do you even know what you want, because I certainly don't.
  • I think you hit the nail on the head with Blue-and-Orange Morality. Him not understanding the basics of consent makes a lot of sense given how he's lived his whole life with people literally not being able to tell him no. The fact that he seems to think that excuses him when he clearly knows manipulating people is considered wrong and that he is capable of very exact wording to make something not a command also shows there's an element of fishing for sympathy though too.
  • Another possible reason is that seeing as how he's an evil piece of shit (and deep down he must KNOW he is), he realizes he probably won't like the answer.
  • When he discussed with Luke about the death of his wife, he asked in exasperation if he was supposed to let her live so that she could frame him. Luke, who was completely under his influence, told him "yes". And when his father told him that the serum had chances of either making him more powerful or killing him, he asked what did he prefer. He said that he would have preferred it to kill him. So no, when he makes a question, people is not forced to reply what he would like to hear. They are forced to reply the truth, no matter what.
  • Considering he genuinely believed that his favorite restaurant that he took Jessica too was Jessica's favorite restaurant, he probably doesn't fully understand that other people even have their own desires, at least when he's around.
    • Kilgrave is really narcissistic. Maybe not literally Narcissistic Personality Disorder specifically, but at the very least close enough. Narcissists legitimately struggle to understand other people's points of view, and often express disappointment or anger at people not indulging them (and often specifically deride any such behaviour as either stupid, or dishonest, or done just to spite them, specifically). To a narcissist, people not liking them or people disagreeing with them is genuinely difficult to understand, it's not just an act. Even therapy of narcissism hits the roadblock of the narcissist strongly believing they don't need therapy because they're fine. Great, even. It's everyone else that's prone to acting weird and childish and irrational. Now take a narcissist that can force people to play into their delusions, and you pretty much get Kilgrave.
  • Kilgrave is able to tell people to want to help him, to enjoy serving him, to believe he's their friend. If he comes to your door and says, "You'd like to invite me in," then you really do want to invite him in. If he tells a woman, "You love it when I do that, don't you?" then she really does love that thing, even if she hates the overall situation. So Kilgrave could easily ask if someone wants to do something, and be told that they do, because he's made them want to do it. How he phrases his commands, and then later phrases his questions, might very well leave him confused about what people actually want and don't want. An order to like him and want to make him happy, for example, would be self-protecting, among other things.

That serum would be a lot more powerful with Jessica's DNA

• Kilgrave tries to use various chemicals and whatnot to strengthen his powers in hopes of getting Jessica under control. But the Fridge page noted the reasons Jessica became immune to orders from him. Which makes me wonder, would the serum have worked more effectively if Albert had access to a blood sample or even a basic DNA sample from Jessica?

Video could have done a lot of good

• I've been wondering, Jessica's trying to prove that Kilgrave's powers are real, and this is for exonerating Hope. I know it sounds crazy, but logically wouldn't it be a lot easier to discreetly film Kilgrave giving commands to someone out in public? (I know there are some problems with this avenue, but I believe video does go a lot further than eyewitness testimony....)
  • The hard thing about his powers is they aren't visual. In the sense that Kilgrave giving an order and that order being followed (even if it involves self-harm or other violent acts) can easily be dismissed as Kilgrave being naturally charismatic, with the other person still having free will, or staged for sake of Hope's trial. The only way for Jessica to prove Kilgrave's powers exist would be to figure out how they work, and come up with a laboratory test that could be independently verified that proves it.

Is Kilgrave actually a victim of his own power?

• Kilgrave is obviously a raging sociopath, and David Tennant has said in interviews that Kilgrave has Blue-and-Orange Morality, but could he possibly have turned out any other way than he did? Consider that his parents, the people who are supposed to teach him about real life and set boundaries for him, weren't able to do it because of his mind-rape stuff. Instead they bow to his every childish demand. So Kilgrave grew up with no idea what it is to be challenged or be wrong. The ultimate definition of a spoiled brat.
  • I think this is one of the reasons why Jessica holds off on killing Kilgrave as long as she does. She sees his basic 'humanity' and has enough common decency (as well as horrific memories of what he made her do to other people and how that felt) to try to find a nonlethal solution to dealing with him, only deciding to kill him once Hope commits suicide. I don't think they would have cast David Tennant in the role if they didn't want the audience to empathize with him on some level.
  • I don't think Kilgrave is a victim of his own power, I do think he is a result of human nature. Kilgrave suffered horribly as a child when his parents attempted to save his life. His pain to him excused his actions to his parents. One does not need to be taught empathy, empathy is a normal human emotion. But Kilgrave's powers may have blinded him to any other persons' feelings but his own (I mean, we're talking about a kid who basically could order his parents to harm themselves when he had a tantrum). If Kilgrave chose perhaps he could have learned it, but after getting his abilities, decided that only his pain mattered. I also doubt that Jessica saw Kilgrave's 'Humanity' - that is why she tried to find a non lethal solution. Months of time under his control - not to mention him using her to kill Reva and do other nasty things shows off how "humane" he really is. The only reason she tried a non-lethal approach was because keeping Kilgrave alive was necessary to exonerate Hope. The moment Hope took herself out of the equation Jessica snapped Kilgrave neck for being the entitled sociopath he was. As for the casting of Tennant, that may be because he plays creepy guys well (think Barty Crouch Jr. turned up to eleven), and Kilgrave is the best kind of creep: Human, blaming society and other people for his choices. Blaming his victims for his actions, down playing their pain he causes but magnifying any slights done to him. All too human and all the more terrifying for it.

A couple random Kilgrave power questions

Two incidents with Kilgrave's power that I'm trying to process the logic of:

• Kilgrave told Hope to shoot her parents if she ever saw them again. Given that his powers wear off after about half a day, when would he have issued this command? Was he just telling it to her every time he had to leave her alone? I don't remember the timeline of the first episode exactly, but it seems like there was a lot of time between Kilgrave leaving her and her killing her parents.
  • We don't know where Kilgrave was when Jessica found Hope. In fact, for all it's worth, he may have already given this command to Hope merely minutes before Jessica showed up, then he hid himself.
  • No one, not even Kilgrave himself, really knows how his powers work. He may have a stronger control over some people than others. So when it comes to people like Hope, his powers take longer to wear off than it would be someone like Simpson.
  • I'm fairly sure it was stated that Hope had been laying there for about five, five-and-a-half hours when Jessica found her. Jessica, once she'd restrained Hope, immediately took her home, and told Hope's parents to meet them there. I imagine that by the time Hope got into that elevator, it had been a maximum of 7 hours since she'd last been commanded by Kilgrave. Plenty of time left on the clock. Obviously he can't have known that Jessica would find Hope in time, but he's smart enough to have planned things well enough that things would have turned out the same no matter when Jessica found her. Maybe he was only planning to leave her for six hours, to ensure that whenever Jess found her, there would still be several hours left in which Hope could carry out her orders?
• Kilgrave walks into the family's apartment. He issues the son to go in the closet and turns to the daughter and says "you too." She says she has to go to the bathroom, and Kilgrave tells her to go in the closet. Shouldn't "you too" already be sufficient? It isn't like having to go to the bathroom has stopped someone from obeying a Kilgrave command before.
  • The girl was listening to music on her headset when Kilgrave came in. Kilgrave's control over you only works if you 100% acknowledge that he's addressing you. In this case, the girl did not immediately 100% register that Kilgrave was speaking to her.
  • The girl was, indeed, wearing headphones and listening to music, and Kilgrave actually has to raise his voice and repeat himself to get her to listen. Foreshadowing that his powers are mostly based on issuing vocal commands, and if you can't hear him speak you're (reasonably) safe.
  • As stated above she didn't hear him. However, the bar sequence with Hope, the hostages and Kilgrave's father reveals that his power (generally) only works if he's talking to you specifically, and you yourself are able to register that. In the bar, he shouts an order to 'step forward' and while Hope may have specifically been told offscreen not to obey that command prior, his father certainly wasn't, and yet he doesn't step forward. Why? Because everybody understood the scenario and knew that Kilgrave was specifically telling the hostages standing on the counter to step forward.

Kilgrave doesn't know about his loopholes?

• In the "I once told a man to go screw himself. Can you imagine?" scene, Kilgrave openly admits that because he can't turn his power off, he always has to be careful about what he says. Given the 30 some years he's had his abilities, I would think even he'd realize at some point (like Jessica did when she broke his control over Simpson) that someone could easily use loopholes to get out of his commands.
  • He probably knows that and is appropriately careful when he really really wants someone to do something. In other instances (the "bullet in your head" scene, for example), he doesn't need them to actually succeed, just for the command to cause enough chaos for him to escape.

Does the public believe that Kilgrave's powers were real?

• During Mariah Dillard's rally at Harlem's Paradise in Luke Cage (2016), she explicitly mentions Kilgrave's death. I guess she brings up Kilgrave's death specifically to prove a point about gifted individuals (given the rally is about bringing down Luke Cage in light of Diamondback's frame-up), but from the way she phrases the dialogue, does the public believe that Kilgrave and his mind powers were real or not?
  • Probably depends on the individual. But the point is less about Kilgrave supposedly mind-controlling Jessica into killing him, and more that this superpowered freak of a woman murdered some dude and claimed he was another super-powered freak. What's to stop her from claiming someone else is superpowered and offing them in the same way? What if she comes after you, or your children? Mariah's grabbing all the examples she can think of to whip the audience up into fear over super-powered people, so she can push the NYPD into buying Diamondback's Judas rounds. The legal system accepts, on some level, that this one person had this one ability in this one instance, but whether or not that would be citable precedent for future cases is something we'll probably have to wait and see. As for the general public, well, ten different people will give you ten different answers.
  • Despite the hoards of people claiming they were also mind-controlled, it's still really hard to prove. Especially when the proposed 'mind-controller' is also dead. Mariah and most of the public still probably don't believe that story and to help her case, Mariah is suggesting that it's all very possible that Jessica made it up and just wanted an excuse to kill Kilgrave. There's not much proof either way but bringing up this possibility at this moment in time helps her statement that these super powered people can't be fully trusted and essentially can do whatever they want.
    • And it's easy to believe someone has super strength or laser beams that shoot out of their nips because you can see the damage. Someone being "mind controlled" could just be some group of people in cahoots with each other trying to exploit the recent emergence of super people. Same reason only a small group of people (Foggy, Karen, Claire, Elektra, Stick, Father Lantom) know that the Devil of Hell's Kitchen is blind.

Hope's suicide

• I've always wondered what the main motive for Hope's suicide. Was it primarily to motivate Jessica to kill Kilgrave once and for all, or was it more so that she could die on her own terms rather than be commanded by Kilgrave to end her life in a particularly gruesome way?
  • Possibly both.

"Who the hell are you?"

• We know from Luke Cage (2016) that Luke's real name is Carl Lucas, and the only evidence that Misty Knight can find of a "Luke Cage" in any database is his driver's license picture. Which begs the question: why did he answer 'Luke Cage' when he accosted Kilgrave instead of 'Carl Lucas'?
  • That depends of his commitment to the new name. As George Costanza famously said, "It's not a lie if you believe it." If Luke has fully embraced it, if he has got to the point of thinking about himself as Luke Cage, then his answer to this question would have been completely honest.
  • In his own show, Luke says "Carl Lucas died at Seagate." As far as Luke is concerned, he died at Seagate and was reborn as Luke Cage.

Reva's death

• Watching the flashback to Reva's death, I keep wondering what sort of injuries she sustained in the impact. Was her chest caved in (like the cop and councilman Damon Boone when Diamondback killed them with his power glove) or was it something less severe?
  • Probably exactly like that. Jessica's knuckles are bloody afterwards (and it's unlikely that that's her own), and Reva's total non-reaction to being hit gives the impression she was dead before she even hit the ground. Gruesome, to be sure, but when an ordinary human gets punched in the chest full-force by someone with super strength, the results are predictable.
    • The blood on Jessica's knuckles appeared to actually be from digging up the flashdrive.

Believing Kilgrave

• So Kilgrave tells Jessica that his parents experimented on him, showing the video footage as proof. Then she meets the parents who actually give her the reason behind those experiments. Jessica immediately says that Kilgrave lied. Uh, what? He was a kid, from what we knew, the parents never told him he had a disease in the first place nor that they were trying to cure it. And even if they did, the experiments were as painful as they seemed, and though he clearly believes it to be the case, Kilgrave didn't say per se that his parents did it to him because they hated him. What Kilgrave said and showed was true, it just had a reason he didn't know.
  • I thought that the 'lies' Jessica was referring to were those about his parents abandoning and neglecting him. He failed to mention that they were help captive by him for years, forced to obey the demands of an unstable child, such as burning their face with an iron because he ordered it in a tantrum. Omitting that part of the story, and telling only the experimentation part, doesn't give people all the information with which to judge the situation.

Jessica, Luke, and Reva

• I may have just missed it, but what was Jessica's original reason for following and taking pictures of Luke at the beginning of Jessica Jones? She said that Gina's husband had hired her to investigate his wife, but that turned out to be a lie. At first, it seemed that maybe she was checking in on Luke after killing Reva, but she seems genuinely surprised to discover Reva's picture in Luke's bathroom. Also, given Luke's status as a fugitive, were he and Reva even legally/publicly married?
  • I think the main reason Jessica follows Luke around is because she's looking out for him out of a sense of guilt. However, we later learn that Luke was trying to track down the bus driver who he believed was responsible for Reva's death for driving the bus while intoxicated. So it's possible that Jessica's keeping an eye on Luke because she's expecting repercussions from the events of Reva's death and she's waiting to step in if she needs to do something like stop him from committing murder. It's also possible she's waiting to see if this comes back to haunt her in some way as well. Her reaction to seeing the picture of Reva seems to be more of shock and being reminded of what she's done rather than surprise.
  • As for whether Luke and Reva were married, the newspaper clippings and hospital records reported Reva's name as "Reva Connors". But that could go either way, because there are a lot of women who don't take on their spouse's surname when they marry.

Tracking down Antoine

• Why does Luke need to hire Jessica to track down Antoine? In his own show, he's perfectly capable of tracking down people all by himself, since when tasked by Pop with finding Chico, he does it in "under four hours, for free".
  • Luke is perfectly capable of finding people on his own. The only reason he seeks out Jessica is because he wants to get coffee with her again and this was a good excuse to see her.
  • Characterization Marches On. Jessica Jones was written well before Luke Cage came out (the first season of Luke Cage began filming in September 2015, a little over two months before Jessica Jones season 1 was released). It's been confirmed in interviews that there were some talks in the writers' room on how to structure Luke's storyline in Jessica Jones, and what he could do/could not do since they knew he was already getting his own show at that point. Ultimately they had not decided on what his characterization would be for his own show. And that's the cause of some of the inconsistencies between Luke in Jessica Jones and Luke in Luke Cage. The Luke of Jessica Jones is a jaded, broken, noir-ish guy who would rather polish a bar or pick up a broad than punish a bad guy, and spends every waking hour trying hard to suppress his memories of Reva, for whom the equally damaged Jessica provides a lifeline and an answer, and also very prone to swearing. The Luke of Luke Cage is an upbeat, friendly force for good hiding out in Pop's barbershop, helping his community, looking after troubled youths in Harlem, quick with a joke and a smile and always ready to kick a little ass if it means cleaning up the mean streets, and more importantly, has strong respect for Pop's Swear Jar. Probably the one thing that does seem to have been consistent in the shift is that Luke appears to still be a womanizer during his early months at Harlem's Paradise, although it's more likely that Misty Knight was Luke's first one-night stand since he parted ways with Jessica, since Luke was working as a dishwasher by night and only interacted with Misty because he got short-pressed due to Dante calling out sick for the junkyard robbery.

Jeri, get a prenup

• It seems odd that Jeri, being a lawyer and all, didn't think to sign a prenuptial agreement of some kind with Wendy. The divorce could've been a lot less messy.
  • Her infidelity may have invalidated the prenup.
  • Wendy mentioned that they got married before Jeri was done with law school. Jeri also reveals in season 2 that she came from poverty, so she didn't have any money at the time. Combination of marrying for love while you're young & foolish, as well as not having any money & not thinking forward far enough to imagine yourself having money, would explain it.

What if they told Robyn about Ruben's death earlier?

• I can't help but think about how many problems later on would have been avoided if Jessica and Malcolm had informed Robyn of Ruben's death right away. Like, Albert getting recaptured and Hope committing suicide would never have happened. I can see why they wanted to hide it from her, but at the same time, this is her brother we’re talking about, she deserved to know that he had died earlier than she did.
  • Not telling Robyn about her brother's death earlier reflects a recurring trend throughout the show: Jessica aggressively pushes people away and/or insists on doing everything on her own terms. This is very visible in all of Jessica's bickering with Simpson over how to capture Kilgrave^note with Jessica wanting him taken alive and Simpson wanting him killed, and Jessica also refusing to let Simpson have one of his guys be the driver (which would have likely prevented Kilgrave's escape due to Trish not being incapacitated). It's also visible in Jessica's one-sided calling in favors with Jeri Hogarth^note Jessica asks Hogarth for more and more legal favors during her hunt for Kilgrave, while Hogarth asks Jessica for assistance in her own acrimonious divorce. Over time, Jessica devotes less and less time and effort Hogarth's divorce while still asking for more favors, until Hogarth eventually points out that Jessica is delivering nothing on her end and in fact might be making things worse for her. Further, Jessica flat out manipulates Hogarth in ways that threaten her reputation and physical well-being. This all comes back to bite Jessica in the ass where Jeri betrays her and tries to get Kilgrave's help instead. And even in the support group, as Jessica doesn't even try connecting with or sympathizing with fellow victims of Kilgrave in spite of Jeri saying that it would be good for Jessica to process her trauma. So of course, this happens with Robyn and Ruben: Jessica and Malcolm withhold the truth from her, and it comes back to bite them in the ass hard as Robyn has to learn about her brother's death in the worst way possible, by overhearing Malcolm casually tell the other members of the support group about it. Robyn's actions demonstrate that that "aggressively push people away" thing can only go so far. It's a bit simplistic to say that if only Robyn had known earlier, none of the other stuff would have happened, but Jessica bears some responsibility for not considering that the people around her are just that: people, with needs and desires that sometimes are just as important as her own. Instead, she uses them as tools. Which is a great way of symbolizing the cycle of abuse in general, as was also shown with Simpson.
  • They did not tell Robyn what had happened because she would react... exactly the way she did. She is a Knight Templar Big Sister taken up to eleven. Robyn was already treating Jessica as a child molester simply because Ruben prepared banana bread for her (no matter that she closed the door on his face). Do you think she would be reasonable when they explain things to her? That she would understand that the killer is that Kilgrave man who can control minds, and that Jessica is trying to stop him, even kill him? Probably not. She would put all the blame on Jessica, reasoning that Kilgrave would have never known who Ruben was at all if not for her. Yes, she deserves to know...but after Kilgrave has been dealt with. That's a full time job, and she can't be dealing with a nutcase in addition to that.

Trish vs. Simpson round 1

• How did Trish fall for Simpson's lie to get her to open the door? He was being pretty obvious.
  • Despite knowing Jessica's story, Trish has never actually seen someone under Kilgrave's influence. She was potentially expecting Simpson to be an impostor, not a full-fledged cop under a compulsion to kill her. That's why she asked him to show his ID to placate her, yet was still wary enough to have a baton at the ready. She was also clearly concerned that his reason for being at her door (the fan she'd attacked pressing charges) was real, and being sued for assault would not be good PR for Trish Talk. In addition, her Krav Maga training probably made her confident that she could defend herself, had Simpson not turned out to be legit. And despite Simpson being a former Special Forces soldier (who probably knew some Krav Maga or similar) with superior strength and reach, she put up a fairly decent defense. Had her assailant been a random cop, she'd probably have subdued him.

Was Jessica's quest pointless?

• Jessica spends almost the whole series trying to prove that Kilgrave exists and can force people to do stuff, in order to prove that Hope did not kill her parents by free will. Shouldn't Hogarth tell her that it would be pointless? Proving that is one thing, and we have seen how incredibly difficult it is. But then, there's a second step: Jessica would need to prove that Hope did this under Kilgrave's orders, and how would she do that?
  • Hogarth kinda did tell Jessica that trying to prove Kilgrave's ability was pointless when she informed Jessica about the DA offering Hope a plea deal.
  • Not true. In a criminal trial, all they have to do is establish reasonable doubt. Once they prove that Kilgrave exists and that he does have these powers, all they have to do is prove that she spent time with Kilgrave. Once they do that, all the evidence works in Hope's favor. Before she seemed like a disturbed young woman who went a bit wild in the Big City and apparently killed her own parents when they tried to drag her back home. Now, all of a sudden she's a straight-A student who suddenly began acting completely out of her normal character and doing things she would never have done before the instant she crossed paths with a man named Kilgrave, who has just been shown to have actual legit mind-control powers. That is MORE than enough for reasonable doubt.
    • But anyone could use that as a defense, though. Like, some guy decides to shoot up a movie theatre with automatic weapons, and when he's caught, just says, "Kilgrave made me do it."
    • But then he'd have to provide proof that he had no history of anger issues or violence, and that he'd spent time with Kilgrave before the shooting, and then have someone explain why Kilgrave would want him to shoot up a movie theater, which is what they were doing for Hope.

Jessica Killing Herself?

• Although granted it's only Hope who brings it up, Jessica does agree, and so do many people online, so I'll ask: How is Jessica killing herself a solution to Kilgrave? Sure, he'll stop going after her loved ones and might be a little less violent from day to day, but he also might walk down the street shouting "Kill Yourself" in a fit of rage, and then he's just going to go find someone else's life to ruin. Jessica's no superhero, but I doubt she'd be able to die with countless more women's sanities on her conscience.

Why wasn't Nelson & Murdock defending Hope?

• I get the out-of-universe reasons why it didn't happen (forced character separation), but is there an in-universe reason why Nelson & Murdock didn't jump to defend Hope Shlottman? I mean, Clemons works at the same precinct as Brett. And Brett would consider Hope's case to be one of the "interesting" ones, given it's pretty much the same bind that Karen was put into when Fisk had her framed for murder (female suspect, found at the scene, with the murder weapon and no defensive wounds).
  • "Hey, Matt? This one looks right up our ally...female, found with the murder weapon, no defensive wounds...Reminds me of Karen." "She say why?" "...Says some guy named Kilgrave has superpowers and mind-controlled her to do it." "...Okay, I...have no idea how to handle that."
  • Something like this, maybe?
  • Even though Nelson & Murdock probably had a lot of public exposure from bringing down Wilson Fisk, Jessica doesn't know them, she knows Jeri. And Brett generally didn't reach out to Foggy, he just gave Foggy intel when he came asking for it. By the time Brett told Foggy about the case, Jeri would already be on the case, and with her reputation as one of the most high profile lawyers in the city, and without standing to replace her even if they wanted to, Matt and Foggy would probably not have much of a chance to replace Jeri. If Matt wanted information on the case, he probably asked Foggy to hit up Brett or Marci for information. Brett was one of the cops that Kilgrave controlled when he visited the precinct, and given how cops like Detective Costa remember what happened even more than a year later, one imagines that Brett must have mentioned Kilgrave's visit in conversation with Matt or Foggy after the fact. (In fact, this probably was the case, seeing as when Matt met Jessica in The Defenders, he said he'd looked into her experience with Kilgrave, and that research may have included a visit to Brett to get everything the NYPD had on the crimes connected to Kilgrave.)
  • You're ethically not allowed to solicit cases in person (obviously that would never stop Matt and Foggy if they had taken Hope's case, but Hogarth would absolutely try use influence with the Bar Association to pursue ethical violations against them). You're also not allowed to talk to represented parties of another lawyer without that lawyer being present in the room^note See Matt's visit to Fisk in prison in Daredevil season 2: Matt has to sign an NDA with Fisk's attorney before he's even allowed to see Fisk. On top of that, Matt and Foggy really only had one case under their belt (granted, the whole fracas with Fisk was way too high stakes for a new startup firm) while Hogarth is one of the top lawyers in New York City.

Trish and her mom

• One thing I’m a bit confused about regarding Trish: is Dorothy’s abuse (or, for that matter, her former drug addiction) public knowledge? Dorothy suggested they had a pretty public separation, and Trish said she didn’t want Dorothy getting her claws into other starlets, but it’s not really clear if the abuse came up as part of it. Because for one thing, she’s still working very specifically with children, and how sickening is that? Also, we know Simpson googled Trish and still made that charmed life comment, and it’s hard to imagine saying something that tone deaf if it was common knowledge how bad it was. And yet, it’s freaking Simpson, and he was consistently dismissive of her, so it’s not like it’s out of character. But on the other hand, I feel like knowing she had a background of abuse would be like catnip to his aggressive white knight instincts, so I don’t know?
  • Sadly, it's very common for a lot of celebrity child abuse to be forgotten or ignored by the public. There is a lot of "What are they complaining about?" mentality since the kids are famous and rich, and it's assumed that it can't be that bad. Especially for celebrity women, who are hounded by the tabloids who will make mountains out of molehills if it gets them clicks. So, Trish being abused by her mother and publicly acting out can easily be sold as "Look at what a trainwreck bitch this former child star has become!" Wouldn't be that different from Britney Spears' "meltdown" in 2007 where she was so publicly "crazy", when the reality is that she was trying to break out of control from her handlers and didn't even do anything more extreme than shaving her hair. Given that Trish did have a serious drug problem during her pop singer days, and which she relapsed into during season 2 when she got Simpson's inhaler, it wouldn't be hard at all for the public to view her as the villain of the relationship as the spoiled brat who got out of control.

What if Hope had lived?

• If Hope hadn't killed herself, or at the very least, she had been rushed to the hospital in time for the doctors to stop the bleeding, what would have happened to her?
  • Let's look at what she has: dead parents, little brother and an incredible trauma. She would probably go into a foster home, suffer from PTSD, and lead a pretty bleak life, one where she'd probably have to change her name because of all the publicity surrounding the case. In a comic world, this is a great base for a dark hero.

Season 2

Why hate Cheng?

• Pryce Cheng is regarded as an "asshole" by both Jessica and Malcolm. He came and offered her a job. Then she just gets a hateboner for him all of a sudden. Huh?
  • Jessica told Cheng to leave her alone and he went around and stole her client. Then he sent his own files to rub it in after Jessica tried to find dirt on him. Granted, Jessica has serious anger issues but that was still a dick move.
  • Jeri tried to get Pryce to buy Alias so that Jessica would be working indirectly for Jeri. Pryce very quickly deviated from the plan and became more of a pain in the ass to both of them than Jeri hoped. Jeri tried to ride that for a bit, and it got even worse.

Whizzer could've outrun that

• If Whizzer's speedster abilities are triggered by him being scared or in danger, shouldn't his reflexes have kicked into speeding away when the scaffolding began to fall?
  • His powers were being limited by the drugs he was taking. Additionally, the falling scaffolding took him by surprise as he was distracted by Jessica's pursuit.

No charges for Jessica?

• Can someone explain how Jessica would not be considered an accessory to murder of police officers (including Costa's partner), multiple murder conspiracies, aiding and abetting a murderer (her mother), and fleeing justice?
  • All the murders took place before Jessica joined her mother for that road trip. Up until Jessica attacks the cops in the diner she hadn't actually done anything to warrant charges (note that she was trying to talk her mother down from killing Sunday in the hospital and was just as horrified as Costa). After the diner this argument falls apart of course but the other charges (obstruction, aiding and abetting, assault) are handwaved by Costa letting Jessica go in response to her (apparent) take down of her mother.
  • By the time everything was done - which may have involved an off-screen hearing or the like - it's possible her actions are officially considered to be the result of her mother's coercion.
    • Which, in a very real way, it was. Alisa all but point-blank said "Jessica, you stay right by my side or more people will die." That's 100% coercion. It's no different from the ways Stick and Elektra used coercion to drag Matt into a war that really wasn't his to fight.

Jessica being a hypocrite.

• Jessica finds out that Malcolm is using a dating app to sleep around. She's disgusted by it and implies he's a sex addict. Some people find one night stands distasteful, sure, but Jessica has one night stands all the time. Earlier in the season, she had sex with a creep in a restroom stall. How is that any different?
  • That's definitely not a nice character trait, but psychological projection is really nothing new. It's exactly because she loathes herself for her casual sex life, she assumes it's the same with Malcolm and berates him. Because, you know, HE is an addict, but she has mental problems - totally different things, but HIS is definitely worse than hers...
  • At this time, Jessica was pissed at Malcolm and needed someone to use as an emotional punching bag. And Malcolm being a sex addict is an easy target. The first time that Jessica sees a strange woman in Malcolm's apartment, back in one of the early episodes of the season, her reply is "glass house here, throwing no stones," admitting that she, of all people, has no right to be judgemental about someone else's sex life. But after Malcolm (unwittingly) enables Trish's superpower addiction and (though no fault of his own) royally screws up Jessica's attempts to get things sorted between the legal system, her mother, herself, and Karl, Jessica is just looking to hurt Malcolm. And, being Jessica, she goes straight for a metaphorical Groin Attack.
  • Jessica has blind spots the size of the Sun when it comes to her "family", and that consists of her mom and Trish. Yes, it's weird for her to call out sex addiction, but Jessica kinda feels this need for there to be boogeymen, convenient people she can blame for everything that went wrong in a complex problem that was the result of a bunch of individuals' completely separate decisionmaking. Y'know, kinda like Kilgrave, who actually was that. Jessica also has a habit of concealing important information that others should know about because of her own crippling trust issues, and detrimental consequences are the result. It's the same in the Alias comics: the only bullshit Jessica can't see straight through is her own.

How famous is Trish?

• How could Trish, a former child star and then a pop star famous enough to be hounded by HORDES of paparazzi and recognized on the street daily who started doing a radio show, and went into conspiracy theories all of the sudden, have low ratings?
  • The popularity of celebrities often fade away. Especially if they are child stars.
  • C-list celebrities tend to get the worst of the paparazzi and obsessive fans. This is because despite their fame, they can't afford an entourage of agents and security to follow them around and act as human shields against that stuff. It's Patsy! apparently was a cultural phenomenon, but people wanting pictures with her, wanting to hear her sing, and wanting to hear scandalous stories about her sex life doesn't equate to people wanting to listen to her talk about conspiracies or social issues.
  • All correct about the way celebrities are hounded, but also Trish Talk didn't actually how low ratings. The conversation she had with Ian the station manager at the start of the season is about how her ratings were beginning to dip. She's gotten a huge ratings boost with her stories about Kilgrave and powers and conspiracies — especially with the personal angle that she was actually involved in this stuff — but now that it's a few months since Kilgrave and Midland Circle, that boost is dwindling away. She's back to the ratings she was at before with her standard lifestyle radio show. Certainly enough for Trish Talk to continue as it did before, but since Trish wants to be like Karen Page and be a serious journalist, she needs to get a ratings boost or be content with settling for flippant chit-chat.
    • In fact, Trish's situation is kinda like the situation Ben Urich was facing in Daredevil season 1, when Ellison was pressuring him into writing fluff pieces to boost ailing circulation numbers at the Bulletin. Admittedly, though, Ellison turned over a new leaf between Daredevil season 1 and season 2 so he could be more helpful to Karen's investigation of Frank, and that had to do with Ellison probably pressuring the owner of the Bulletin to let his reporters write the important stuff. Trish has the same issue with Ian; she answers directly to Ian, and he answers to the radio station's owners who tell him this information about the Trish Talk ratings, and tell him "Get the ratings up on Trish Talk or else."

There's a simpler solution, Jeri

• Isn't the Iron Fist capable of curing illnesses, if it can heal poisoning, knife wounds, and gunshot wounds? Seems like Jeri already knows someone who can cure people by just touching them, and that person is Danny. So why go to Inez and her sketchy boyfriend who were going to con her?
  • If Danny and Colleen had ever disclosed this to Jeri, then maybe she would've sought out Danny first. But Danny and Colleen didn't because they didn't see a reason why. After all, Jeri only really got involved when Danny needed legal help (when he needed someone to help him reclaim his money and his identity, and when he and Colleen were being framed by Harold).
  • Wounds and poisoning are all physical (or chemical) damage to the body caused from outside, but ALS is an inherent, most likely hereditary disease. The chi healing power only augments the self-healing powers of the body, like repairing damaged tissue or neutralizing a poison (maybe also fighting off viruses and infections, if possible - I think we didn't actually see if he can do that), but it cannot alter the body altogether like changing the dna. He could reduce the symptoms and restore damaged nerve cells, but he can't remove the cause (that means in a way, lifelong "medication", so pretty much the same what the standard therapy would be like). Jeri definitely longs for a "miracle cure" and because of that, she is an easy prey for a charlatan.
    • Stick mentioned in The Defenders that there lots of abilities the Iron Fist can do that Danny's chi hasn't tapped into onscreen. As much as quick, magical cures might seem cheap in stories dealing with illness (e.g. Foggy’s cancer diagnosis in Daredevil vol. 3, and the fact that Matt didn’t just drag him over to the Sanctum Santorum and have it Sorcerer Supreme-d out of him), it would make logical sense for Danny to cure her at some point. Jeri’s arc in Jessica Jones season 2 dug deeply into the horror of her diagnosis, and I don’t think her future story would be best served by following her continuing physical decline and torment. Having Danny cure her would be a great reason for him to use his healing ability again, because it’s very cool and he needs to use it more often; and it would be a massive bonding opportunity that would shift his and Jeri’s dynamic in new and improved ways. Besides, after Jeri’s awful experience with the fake healer, it would just… restore her faith in humanity.

Sterling and Jessica

• So did Sterling really mean those things he said to the gangsters in the alleyway about letting them use Jessica as muscle, or was he bluffing?
  • It's one of those things that's left up to the audience, but considering those guys were previously willing to shoot Sterling, it makes sense that he would say whatever they wanted to hear to get them to back off.
  • Well, thanks to Alisa we will never know, which I guess was the point.

Reconciliation?

• At the end of the season, Team Alias is fractured. Jessica obviously has a long way to go before she'll ever forgive Trish. What can happen to get Jessica, Malcolm and Trish in the same room talking to each other again?
  • With Malcolm, it's a simple matter of time and Jessica changing her ways. Jessica was taking her anger out on Malcolm and using things against him to make it seem as if it's his fault for what happened to Trish and for double crossing, despite the fact that he was being used and really thought he was helping. But she was using him too as her personal emotional punching bag, to not feel guilty. But over time, Malcolm got fed up and frustrated, because as he sees it, he had done a lot for Jessica after she saved his life in Season 1, and felt he owned her a life debt to help her so that they could do great things^note "Everything that I have done for you! Peeling your sorry ass off the floor every single morning, working late every single night just to keep this sinking ship afloat!" but all Jessica does is make him feel like shit in return, and when she's over it she'll use him again. That's not to say Jessica doesn't care about Malcolm, because she does care about him, she's just shitty at conveying that. So while Malcolm cares about Jessica as well and believes in her, he feels he is wasting his time and thinks she doesn't have the respect for him in the same way he had for her. As for reconciling, it'll most likely be that Malcolm will come to realize he misses working with Jessica and goes back to her.
    • It could even be something simple as telling Malcolm how his new boss shot her, as Malcolm would not be forgiving of Cheng for doing that. Of course, while that would be enough to make Malcolm leave Cheng, it would not be enough to make him come back to Jessica. Malcolm was constantly ignored again and again even though he was resourceful and proved his worth several times. That needs a proper apology, and even that might make Malcolm only a friend, not a colleague again. That will need a bigger event like a villain on the same threat level as Fisk.
    • Jessica Jones is not a show for simple reconciliation, or it would be boring. Jessica Jones is a damaged and complex woman, and yes she is deep down a better person than Cheng is, but she also treated Malcolm like a pushover and didn't value his worth, so it's going to take a hell of a lot more to convince Malcolm to come back working for Jessica, even if Cheng is a shady character (and also Hogarth too). First Jessica needs to earn Malcolm's trust back and treat him like a normal human being, not her slave which she kinda was doing in Season 2. Eventually Malcolm will come back working with Jessica, most likely in the next Defenders teamup or the back half of Season 3, but he needs to stay away from Jessica for a while so he can grow as a character and become more confident in his ability. And Jessica needs to re-evaluate her life and maybe try to live a more healthier and normal life without pushing people away. Much like Matt faced in Daredevil season 2, Jessica needed a wakeup lesson to realize that aggressively pushing people away is not the right thing to do.
  • As for Trish, well, that requires time and patience but eventually Jessica will forgive her or Trish will lose everything and come crawling on her knees begging for Jessica's forgiveness.
    • Jessica was quick to forgive Alisa for killing Sterling, so it's likely she will come around to forgiving Trish. It'll probably take a season to do it, though.
  • Or, alternatively, they don't reconcile at all? Not all broken friendships can or should be healed, not all endings should be undone and the Alias friendships, while endearing and comforting, were fundamentally unhealthy. Trish used Jessica to live the life she wanted vicariously and treated her with the impossible benchmark of perfection that she could never reach, till it turned to bitterness and hatred. Malcolm was using Jessica as a project to focus on till he built his life back up. And Jessica was holding on to these guys to avoid having to move on with her life and reach out to others. The ending ultimately shattered that and forced the characters to move on from each other. Malcolm's character arc is pretty much complete although he'll return, while Trish probably will end up having another mental breakdown after finding superpowers don't make her self esteem issues go away.
    • Matt, Karen and Foggy are reconciling in Daredevil season 3 and they were pretty much in the same situation as Jessica, Trish and Malcolm respectively at the end of their season 2, so reconciliation for the Alias team is inevitable. For Jessica and Malcolm, it's like Matt and Foggy: Malcolm will have a lot of issues with the morality of working with Jeri and Cheng, he'll start to help Jessica a little bit and realize how much he misses working with her (kinda like Foggy's outsourcing to Matt in The Defenders).
    • For Jessica and Trish, it's Matt and Foggy in a different way. Trish needs to be brought down a notch. Because even though she lost Jessica, she basically got her eternal high. She sought out powers like an addict looks for drugs. Now that she has them, she's going to feel unstoppable. Something will happen that makes Trish realize that she's the worst, that she's lost the good parts of her life and all she's left with is her psychotic mother. And then maybe Oscar will be able to convince Jessica that she needs her family and a reconciliation will happen. Jessica and Trish were so close that it's impossible to believe they’d become permanently estranged. As the flashbacks to Jessica's time with Stirling show, they had serious falling-outs before that they managed to work through.
    • Trish and Malcolm might hook up romantically again, but it must also be considered that their relationship was based on addictions and manipulation (and after the whole bit where Trish knocked Malcolm out, put him in the trunk of her car, and later threatened him at gunpoint). Best case scenario is that they will be forced into some type of addiction rehab center and eventually become friends again.
  • Malcolm’s relationships with both Trish and Jessica at this point are likely rebuildable, because those rifts weren’t as bad (…relatively speaking), and Malcolm is a pretty forgiving person. As for Jessica and Trish, they'll probably not even think about talking to each other until Jessica has fully mourned her mother’s death. On the one hand, Jessica understood at an intellectual level that Alisa's death was a possible outcome. But on the other hand, Jessica is also a long way from reaching that level of emotional distance, and Trish understands that. At the same time, Jessica spent over 17 years thinking her mother was dead, and as much as she and Alisa bonded over the course of the season, Alisa was still, much like Elektra was to Matt in The Defenders, only a ghost of the person Jessica remembered. That may help Jessica heal somewhat quickly, and once that happens, she may reach out to Trish, or more likely, be willing to allow Trish to reach out to her. Trish and Jessica have managed to reconcile from previous falling outs before, as the "Cray-Cray" flashbacks showed, and they are always going to need each other for emotional support, so this one won't be any different. But alas, since Jessica Jones is a superhero show, it'll probably take some kind of outside force to at least get Jessica, Trish and Malcolm back into the same room. And unlike Daredevil season 3, where Matt, Karen and Foggy are facing a similar challenge with Wilson Fisk being the reconciliatory threat, it's too early to begin speculating who the main villain of Jessica Jones season 3 could be.
    • Trish and Jessica's situation is the equivalent of what Matt and Foggy would have been to each other if Foggy had pulled out a gun and shot Elektra in The Defenders. Which he obviously didn’t.

Shane and Inez

• So if Shane was a fraud...what saved Inez from the shards of glass? Because we saw her get injured and they looked like they were pretty close to her spine.
  • IGH paid her hospital bills and got her the top treatment. Inez just played up that her injuries were life-threatening in the moment in order to create the fiction of Shane the healer.
  • Her attack seemed like something a young person could walk away from after some treatment.

Dale's death, self-defense or premeditated?

• So clearly Dale's death was not part of the original plan. And yeah, Jessica had broken into his place illegally. But would his death be considered self-defense, manslaughter, or murder under New York penal law?
  • More important is, who would believe her? There's no proof that she was attacked first, and she has quite a rap sheet of violent encounters. So it clearly looks like she broke in to the house of the guy who harassed her mother to kill him. And even if things could be cleared up in the end, it will definitely strengthen prejudices against "freaks" and Alisa is most likely the one who will suffer from it.
    • "Felony murder" is when someone dies during the commission of a felony. For self defense, the rule is a "person is privileged to use such force as reasonably appears necessary to defend him or herself against an apparent threat of unlawful and immediate violence from another." One could argue that Dale's attack on Jessica wasn't "unlawful," since she had broken into his house, but there is also the Rule of Retreat. Which is that even if someone else attacks you, as soon as they back away from their attack and attempt to retreat, you have to stop your attack or you are violating the Rule of Self Defense. Jessica was clearly trying to retreat, was not attacking him, and was in imminent danger.
  • Under New York law Jessica committed First Degree Murder by killing him while committing a felony; bare minimum, by breaking into his house with the intent of finding dirt on him to blackmail or discredit him, she was committing Third Degree Burglary which is a Class D Felony in New York. By harming him (even in self-defense) during the commission of said burglary, it would have automatically been upgraded to First Degree Burglary, a B Felony punishable by 1 to 25 years in prison. But by actually killing him during the commission of that crime would qualify it as First Degree Murder. The fact that he attacked her first would be considered legally irrelevant to the prosecution - she had invaded his home and he had the right to defend himself and his property, and the fact that he was a serial killer would be considered irrelevant and secondary to the fact that he was a corrections officer. The fact that he was abusing Jessica's mother could actually be used against her to prove motive of intent that she went there to kill him. A lawyer as good as Jeri might be able to get it plead down to manslaughter but there is no way Jessica would walk without serving time.
    • Considering the abundance of evidence that Dale was a serial killer, I highly doubt that Jessica would be tried for felony murder. It's not about whether or not she committed felony murder, it's about whether or not a jury would convict her. The law isn't black and white like that. And even though Jessica was a home intruder, she was defending herself against being attacked. She killed him in self-defense. (Ironically, while he was shouting "self-defense.") And consider the optics: Jessica is a private investigator and was in the home of an unknown serial killer. She discovered that he was a serial killer, then he attacked her and she killed him in self-defense. Just with that basic information, the press would have branded Jessica Jones as a hero, thrusting a spotlight on her she never wanted. And there'd be a big press frenzy if Jessica got arrested, one of "Why are you persecuting her for killing a known serial killer?"
    • Self-defense laws are usually in favor of the intruded-upon, but the judge, jury and prosecutors would need to review the case specifics to determine if the actions taken to defend one's home were fair and warranted, or excessive and unnecessary. But that would pertain to the hypothetical of "is Dale Holiday culpable for killing Jessica Jones in defense of his house (imperfect self defense)?" not "Jessica Jones culpable for killing Dale Holiday while illegally in his house (felony murder)?" The latter would likely be tried as such if it came to light, but given the lack of precedent in New York State when it comes to "I broke into a serial killer's house and accidentally killed him in excessive self-defense against his excessive self-defense", who knows how that'd have gone if it got taken to trial?
  • During the scene, Dale seems absolutely delighted to find Jessica invading his home. He comes off to some degree like one of those gun-toting whackjobs who buys a gun to defend their house with and then secretly hopes that somebody breaks in just so they have an excuse to legally shoot someone with it.
  • Jessica broke into Dale's house to try and find just any kind of criminal evidence to get him fired. She didn't break in there thinking or planning to kill the guy. And when she did kill him, it wasn't premeditated either. She just hit him with whatever she could to stop him from assaulting her. Literally had her eyes closed, grabbed a thing and smashed him over the head. She never planned to kill Dale, only planned to find evidence of his abuse that she could give to his bosses. She killed him by accident after he attacked her for breaking into his home. The action of having done it while in his residence illegally would be the argument that it’s murder. The actions we witnessed her commit as the audience were more akin to manslaughter. But as in any case, it would be on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Jessica was not justified in her actions.

"Jeryn Hogarth & Associates"

• Who are the "& Associates" in the name of Hogarth's new firm? Is that referring to Foggy and Marci, or is it referring to Cheng and Malcolm?
  • When Hogarth's on the phone with realtors at the end, she's heard saying at one point, "160 square feet is not a second year associate's office." That lines up with how long Foggy has been practicing law (about a little over a year as Nelson & Murdock, and then however much time he's been working for Hogarth). Though it could also be referring to Marci, and she's been practicing at HC&B just slightly longer than Foggy (having been signed on after Fisk was caught).

Incompetent cops

• Given the amount of blood spilled when the killer was murdering Nick in the back of his van, shouldn't it be trivially easy for Jessica to point the cops at any one of the hundreds of traffic cameras that would verify that she was nowhere near the crime scene at the time of the murder? Why do the cops overlook that there are two witnesses who can provide an alibi for Jessica's whereabouts?
  • Jessica is not popular among the NYPD, especially as a super powered person. Besides the whole Kilgrave ordeal, the NYPD also know that Jessica was involved in the events at Midland Circle which ended in Misty Knight being critically injured. Although it's not Jessica's fault that Misty lost her arm, you can imagine some in the NYPD not being happy that Luke, Jessica or Danny faced no criminal charges for what happened, and want someone to pay for Misty's injuries. The cops were letting their bias cloud their judgement.
  • This takes place right at the crime scene and the evidence is as follows: Nick, who works for a rival of Jessica's, was beaten to death by a superpowered woman right in front of Jessica's office. It would be rather neglectful of the NYPD to not consider Jessica a person of interest to be questioned. The examination of further evidence takes some time, but the cops do watch the camera footage and learn that it was not Jessica, so she's cleared.
  • A bigger question might be, wouldn't the cops at some point want to question Pryce Cheng to find out why Nick was at Jessica's place?
    • Nick was outside in a van. Cheng could have lied and claimed they were working on a case and just happened to be parked outside.
    • Yes, Nick was outside, but the police should consider it suspicious that Pryce Cheng's fixer was outside the residence of a rival of Cheng's, a rival who just happened to assault Cheng a few days prior. The police should be questioning Cheng on the grounds that maybe he sent Nick to steal files from Jessica as payback for her assaulting him.
    • Consider that Cheng is most likely the one who called the police in the first place. He's basically an earwitness. He may have even told the police that he sent Nick there to keep an eye on Jessica (to warn Cheng if she goes after him again) and deny that he ordered him to raid her place. The cops may have some questions about that later on, but anyways, Jessica doesn't disclose the breaking and entering, and the proof is gone because Alisa took it with her, so they really don't have anything to go on.

What if Nick had been caught?

• One has to wonder, what if Nick had gotten caught while he was searching Jessica's place and Malcolm confronted him?

Jeri's buyout offer

• So were Chao and Benowitz trying to force Jeri out over her ALS diagnosis, or were they using that as an excuse to fire her over the whole matter with Pam and Kilgrave?
  • It was a convenient excuse. Jeri has attracted an uncomfortable amount of attention toward the firm between Kilgrave, Pam’s lawsuit, defending Jessica, Hope, Danny, and Luke^note Well, Foggy defended Luke, but Jeri is Foggy's boss so it technically counts. These are murky situations that scare off clients, particular regarding powered people. But probably more important, Jeri is a very difficult and controlling person who grates on people, particularly people who are equally controlling. Chao and Benowitz clearly wanted to get rid of Jeri for a while out of hatred if nothing else, but she brought in two of the lawyers who exposed Wilson Fisk, and she brought in a lot of HC&B's high-billing clients.
  • Foggy called bullshit on the medical clause, because this is no different from if, hypothetically, Matt were being discriminated on account of his blindness (and Foggy's probably very well versed in disability law as a result of being with Matt for so long). In New York State, it's illegal to fire someone because of disability or predisposing genetic characteristics.
    • Hogarth wasn't an employee of the firm. She was a partner, an owner. The medical clause was in the partnership contract between them, which would be governed by contract and partnership law. Besides, they're a law firm. If there's anybody who can draft an ironclad agreement like that, it's them.
  • One does wonder, why use Jeri's new illness? Why not fire her over all her other ethical breaches of law like every breach that happened during the Kilgrave saga?
  • The way the scene goes, says a bit more about Foggy than about Jeri. Foggy respects Jeri, but he does not get her. He makes the mistake of thinking she’s a little more like Matt, a little less like the sharks at Landman & Zack. He hears she’s having problems, immediately jumps in respectfully, but like a friend would, not realizing that Jeri prefers, no wait enjoys the more hierarchical structure there. There’s also implied to be some low-key friction, because before working at HC&B, Foggy was a name partner in a firm. Yes, Nelson & Murdock was small, but he was a name partner, he was effectively making all the operational decisions for large swathes of time while Matt was getting his ass handed to him by the ninja of the week. Now he’s an associate again, she wooed him in at the end of Daredevil season 2 with promises of a fast ascension, but he’s still chafing at the bit, compared to say, Marci, who seems more than willing to play the game and is implied to be riding Jeri's coattails to advance her career (something she later does with Foggy in encouraging him to run for District Attorney in Daredevil season 3).

Turk Barrett and his nice Porsche

• Considering the amount of misfortunes he suffered in all of his previous appearances, how does Turk afford to own a Porsche all of a sudden?
  • He’s a criminal. He probably stole it. Or borrowed it from a chop shop contact. Or he actually could have bought it since he does have the occasional successes both on-screen and off and may have saved up the money. Fisk and Wesley probably paid him a lot to betray the Russians, and he was also getting a lot of income when he was working with Diamondback.
  • Turk heavily implies the car is stolen, much like the gun he's selling to Jeri. He says, "If you can afford a Porsche, you can afford another Porsche," which is the kind of paper thin justification for doing so guilt free.

Jeri, he's just trying to help!

• Episode 3: What exactly did Foggy do to warrant Jeri going off on him like that when he offered to help her fight back against her partners?
  • Nothing except telling a dying control freak that she is powerless and needs help. Sorry, Foggy Bear, but this isn't Matt you're trying to reason with.
  • The purpose of the scene is to emphasize that Jeri, much like Jessica or even Matt, would rather sit in her trouble with her own stubbornness than accept or admit she needs help.
  • This sort of attitude could partially be a reason in Daredevil season 3 why Foggy chose to restart Nelson & Murdock once he and Matt decided to use Ray Nadeem as a witness against Fisk.

No mention of the events of The Defenders?

• It's like we just go straight from season 1 to season 2 and completely ignore The Defenders. Shouldn't Matt's "death" still be resonating on Jessica?
  • The Doylist explanation: The only ones who know that Matt is "dead" are Jessica, Luke, Danny, Karen, Foggy, Claire, and Colleen. Everyone else thinks he went missing, both Matt and Daredevil. Even with that said, the huge elephant in the room with all of Karen's scenes in The Punisher (2017) was that she was still dealing with her boyfriend's death, whether she said so out loud or not. That's why Karen was so adamant about not letting someone else she cared for like Frank get themselves killed over something like Matt did. With Jessica Jones season 2, Matt is ignored because even though Jessica bonded a little with him over the course of The Defenders, even using the tale of Matt's father to get Lexi Raymond to open up, she still has absolutely no desire to be a hero or anything other than what she has to be and is best at being: a skilled private investigator. She also willingly ignores everything that happened in The Defenders because she was so disenchanted with the whole matter of fighting ninjas in the first place; she really only tagged along with Matt, Luke and Danny so she could get answers for her investigation of John Raymond. The closest we get to an acknowledgement of Matt's "death" in Jessica Jones season 2 is during Jessica and Trish's pizza-and-a-movie dinner on the rooftop, when Jessica says to Trish that "heroes die", and it's a line that is heavily implied to be about Matt.
  • The Watsonian explanation: It's Jessica Jones, who wants to be nobody's friend. That ninja-fighting adventure is over, and if it's up to her, she will never see Matt, Luke or Danny again. She probably did not even ask them for their numbers (aside maybe from Luke's).

Luanne's death

• What was Luanne's "Inez, wait!" right before Alisa bolted awake and killed Luanne about? Wasit because Inez took the restraints off wrong or had Alisa not been properly sedated?
  • Alisa's meds were hidden in her sock. Luanne found them just as Inez was taking off her restraints and she knew Alisa was pretending to be unconscious.

Why not drop the act?

• So Alisa, impersonating Dr. Hansen, was expecting Trish to meet her at the bar to talk about IGH, and clearly didn't expect Jessica to show up instead. Since she knows this is Jessica, why keep up the act of pretending to be Dr. Hansen rather than just drop the truth on her?
  • Alisa didn't want to spill the beans. The only reason why she came clean is because Jessica found her home and was putting the pieces together already. It's pretty clear that the reason she wanted to speak to Trish was because she didn't want to deal with the possibility of hurting Jessica (look at her reaction when she almost hurts Jessica during the fight).

Police protocol with enhanced humans

• So Alisa is in a conventional prison and not the Raft. They acknowledge that she should be at the Raft so they clearly understand she's powered. So why does Dale's replacement think walking into a powered inmate's room when she's having a breakdown with no method of dealing with them is a good idea? Seriously, the guards already know that their tasers don't work on her but the guard still insists on walking in solo. And later, when Costa and Sunday try to recapture Alisa in Trish's hospital room, Sunday shoots her in the leg, but then slowly walks up to Alisa in an attempt to put on handcuffs they should know are absolutely useless, ultimately getting Sunday killed.
  • Pretty much nobody below the military or the Feds have any idea of how to effectively respond to powered people. The brass have not been able to formulate an organization-wide policy on how police officers are to approach, arrest, detain and hold super-powered individuals. Every time we see them try, they're either woefully ill-equipped (like the two cops in Luke Cage season 1 who tried to apprehend a delirious and wounded Luke), or are resorting to experimental military weaponry (like the Judas bullets) in order to try and kill them because they don't think anything else will work.
    The Raft was created as for the members of Team Captain America who were captured in the wake of Civil War, all of whom are either ex-Avengers, or Avenger-level threats. It was developed by or with the cooperation of agencies like the CIA and SHIELD, and probably with assistance from Tony Stark, all of whom have extensive experience dealing with superpowers. All this knowledge led to a Supermax prison, which holds all its inmates in isolation, underwater, in the middle of the ocean. It's the most extreme possible solution.
    Co-opting The Raft as the only destination for all powered prisoners shows that nobody has properly thought about how to manage them at all, so it's not hugely surprising that the prison holding Alisa appears to be completely winging it. They resort to torture and sedation and outright contraventions of her Constitutional rights to legal representation so that they can vaguely feel like they've got her under control. And the only real reason they do is because Alisa is being compliant. Once she hears of Karl's death, she stops playing nice and escapes easily.
    There's no middle ground between Guantanamo-on-Steroids and Play-Along Prisoner, most of the NYPD and the Department of Corrections seem to treat people with superpowers like excessively violent and strong regular humans because they have no stronger protocols in place.
  • There are several mentions of "new protocols" in place for Alisa's detention, likely outgrowths of the Sokovia Accords (though those are never named for some reason). So the prison does have protocols for dealing with super-powered people. . . they just suck and apparently have not been practically tested yet.
    • Or alternately, those protocols can't be implemented because they cost too much. We see this all the time with police departments when it's come to outfitting officers with body cameras in recent years: these enhanced protocols could be brought on board, if only the NYDOC / NYPD can find the money to not only purchase the equipment but also to pay for training officers to use it properly.

Prison lock-down protocols

• After Alisa breaks out of her cell, she is next seen coming out of a delivery truck that was carrying clothes. The implication seems to be that she escaped the prison by hiding in a laundry cart, which is cleaned by another service offsite. However, should there be lock-down procedures in a prison that would prevent anyone from leaving? It seems like bad security to let vehicles leave during a prisoner escape, without either confirming the prisoner is outside the prison's perimeter, or checking the truck to make sure nothing else is leaving that shouldn't.

The Inez and Shane con game

• So at what point did the con game on Jeri start? Was it once Inez was inside Jeri's place or was it later on?
  • Once Inez was stealing Jeri's jewelry and pills in preparation for leaving the apartment. She recognized that the pills were medication for ALS, and knew that she could use the promise of a miracle cure to get Jeri to spring Shane from prison.

Burning a piano and clothing unnoticed

• Shouldn't Alisa's bonfire in the afternoon to burn the remains of the piano have gotten the attention of at least some of the neighbors? I mean it was in her back yard...
  • Because she is burning her own property within her own property. ”Get off my Lawn” goes both ways, you know.
  • Fire pits in the back yard aren't that uncommon either.
  • That's the same question everyone asks whenever their neighbor is hauled off by the police because he killed dozens of people, made bombs at his home or shackled the entire family in the basement for years. Simple answer is: Most people don't care about other peoples' lives or don't want to cause trouble. And a nosy snitch neighbor is a terrible person.

Self-defense against Cheng

• Couldn't Jessica have made a case against Cheng and avoided anger management class? When she was at his office he was being a prick and then closed off her exit from his office. That could have been seen as threatening and she was "defending" herself, especially after he pulled a taser.
  • Problem with self defense is that it needs to be proportional to the threat and Jessica did escalate things beyond that point. She might have a case under the Fighting Words Doctrine as he was very intentionally baiting her, but I'm not sure what the specifics of that in New York state are. However, either scenario would involve actually going to court to prove the case, and if she lost she could face significant time behind bars. The anger management as part of a plea deal to make it go away would be the much better option and any lawyer would tell her to jump on that rather than go to court.
    • Jessica gave Cheng every chance to quit but he kept charging her after every time she knocked him on his ass, then she gets arrested despite self defense. As Jeri pointed out in episode 4, Cheng just had this rage about there being someone he couldn't bully.
    • Keep in mind that Jessica didn’t just beat Cheng up for no reason. She beat Cheng up when he kept threatening her and getting in her face at his office. Not to mention he himself resorts to extralegal means against Jessica, like sending his friend to steal stuff from her office and trying to kill her and her mom. Hell, not only does he only resort to breaking and entering after Jeri breaks attorney/client privilege by refusing to file his suit for personal reasons, by the time he tries to kill Jessica's mother it's stopped being about personal profit and has become about revenge for the death of his friend.
  • Also in court it would be again a case of her word against his, and who do you think the judge is going to believe? The slick businessman with a clean slate or those of an antisocial person with documented violent tendencies?
    • With the right lawyer and a properly constructed defense, Jessica probably could create compelling arguments that would get a judge to side with her in this case. She could also sue Cheng for monetary damages.
  • One of Jessica's defining traits, as pointed out by her mom later on, is her belief that everything is solely her fault and that she deserves to be punished for it. An argument can be made that on some level, the anger management was a little cathartic for Jessica, since it gave her a chance to yell at some people.
  • There's also that phrase of "proportionate response." Jessica Jones is a woman who can bend steel with her bare hands, there may be no such thing as "proportionate response" where she's involved against an unpowered human. With the specter of the Sokovia Accords looming, it's quite possible that Jessica simply can't claim self-defense against a normal person anymore, no matter the situation. And even if she can, the situation with Cheng is complicated enough that it would stand a very high chance of tanking at trial. Getting out with just court-mandated anger management is basically getting off scott-free in this case.
    • The Accords don't apply to the Netflix heroes. Regardless, while the court system would be one potential outcome of the situation, lawsuits aren’t generally Jessica’s way of handling things, and taking legal action against Cheng might not have even occurred to her. Though that doesn't explain why she doesn't threaten Cheng with legal action later when he retaliates for the assault incident by stealing her stuff.

Why does no one password-protect their devices?

• Malcolm was able to get into Jessica's new laptop (after hers was stolen) and find the passport photos with Karl Malus's location. Jessica is a private investigator, and after the incident with Cheng's fixer stealing her things, you'd think she'd password lock it in case Cheng sent another person to take her stuff.
  • You'd be amazed just how many people don't lock their devices these days. Though yeah, Jessica being Jessica, hopefully she does use Touch ID for her iPhone.

Is "Cray-Cray" child appropriate?

• Trish's intro in season 2 is her singing "It's Patsy" at a kid's birthday party. One of the dads, who's gay, asks her to sing "I Want Your Cray-Cray." Considering how terrible the song clearly is, why would he EVER want that song sung at a birthday party for a kid? Not only is it wildly inappropriate, there's really nothing about it that would work in a karaoke context. It's just the same line or two sung over and over again. It'd sound awful.
  • It was more for the adults than it was for the kids. There was a part in their discussion where he thanks Trish and says, "My daughter loves your show" and the camera cuts to the girl looking bored as shit and uninterested in Trish. The kids don't care about Patsy but the adults do. It's a stereotypical case of parents saying their kids like/want something when in reality it's just the parents who want it.

Kozlov's death went unreported?

• Jessica is taken off guard by the fact that Dr. Kozlov unexpectedly died. But considering the turnout at his wake and being a bigtime doctor who had military connections, wouldn't Kozlov's death have been reported on the news or in the newspapers?
  • Like Ellison said to Karen in Daredevil when she was looking into the deaths of Frank Castle's family, people die all the time but they don't all make the news. The police believe Dr. Kozlov died in a freak car accident, and there's not much that any of the newspapers could've spun to add a little zazz to their coverage. Kozlov likely got an obituary in the Bulletin, but that was it. And Jessica doesn't read the Bulletin, for the record. Though yeah, Kozlov's death must have been major news given the good doctor did have lots of friends and patients at his wake.

Trish's job prospects

• So what exactly are Trish's future job prospects post-season 2? She self-imploded her job at Trish Talk, unless the media spins it to make it seem like Trish was taking a break. She got her powers thanks to Dr. Malus's operation. But can she go back to being the host of Trish Talk or will she have to find another source of income?
  • Trish will get some kind of work. Celebrities always get some kind of roles even when washed up. She could restart Trish Talk, if there's another radio station that's willing to take the risk of hosting her. She could also take up acting roles or even singing again.

Extra-fast Trish

• How did Trish get to the amusement park so fast?
  • Trish knows the general idea of how to get there, since this is where she and Jessica had disposed of Simpson's body, and Jessica talked a bit about how Playland was a special place for her.

No remorse from Dr. Malus

• Dr. Malus feels remorse for what he did to Alisa. She feels guilty for killing Luanne and maiming Inez, but he takes responsibility. What does he do? He frames someone else for the murder –a mentally-challenged man. If Dr. Malus is actually the kind man that Alisa describes him to be, then why oh why did he let Kawecki get imprisoned while he lives in (a false) paradise with Alisa? How can he live with that?
  • Kawecki clearly agreed to take the fall for Luanne's death, given the way he clams up ("I don't want to talk about Dr. Karl anymore") under questioning from Jessica.

Why not explain what was going on?

• After Trish shot Alisa, why didn't Jessica bother to explain to Trish what was going on when she pulled the trigger? Trish 100% believes she did the right thing but...maybe she would feel a little bad if she knew that Alisa was turning herself in against Jessica's wishes to protect her daughter?
  • You're seriously asking why Jessica Jones failed to communicate effectively with another human being?
  • There have been a lot of times in these shows where characters have failed to discover key bits of information for emotional reasons or for the purpose of advancing the plot, and while logic gaps/forced writing can always be argued for other situations, this is not one of them. Jessica is horrified and devastated and furious. Her immediate response of attacking Trish suggests that she's not thinking clearly to have any kind of conversation in that moment. And afterward, Jessica was probably trying her hardest to repress all relevant memories. The last thing she would want to do at that point would be to discuss the details of what happened with Trish– or with anyone, really– because what difference would it make? Jessica confessing the truth to Trish to make Trish feel even worse than she already does wouldn’t change anything (and Trish already feels bad about it. On a practical level, she believes it was the right choice, but she’s also aware of how much it hurt Jessica). It wouldn’t fix their relationship, or undo what happened. It would just be a needless, painful revisiting of something Jessica would much rather forget.

Why go to work for Cheng?

• Why did Malcolm join forces with Cheng? Why would he do that, especially after saying he was going freelance?
  • It's implied that Malcolm's plan was that he would help Hogarth and then wind up being hired by her on retainer. Unfortunately, that got shot down with the whole fact that he's not licensed as a private investigator. He had no real means of going legit on his own. There's lots of legal hoops to jump through and the state of New York doesn't just hand out PI licenses like candy. Not to mention, back in episode 4, Cheng had previously offered Malcolm a job when he came by Jessica's apartment to case the place for Nick. So Malcolm had to change his plans, and most likely, what he's going to do is earn his stripes working under Cheng, and he'll break out on his own once he has the means and financial security to do so. Most of this will probably happen offscreen between seasons 2 and 3.
  • Many people don't like how Malcolm decided to go work with Cheng. What these people fail to realize is that this was Malcolm's only option if he was going to keep himself employed. Jeri said he was unlicensed to be working on his own, and Cheng already offered him a job, so it was the only professional option he really had. We saw a similar situation with Foggy in Daredevil season 2 when Nelson & Murdock broke up: Nelson & Murdock hadn't exactly been making enough money for Foggy to have a financial cushion to run his own firm without Matt. Furthermore, Marci had recommended him to Jeri, and Jeri coincidentally saw that "hiring one of the lawyers who defended Frank Castle" was a great way to bury some of the backlash of her own scandal with Kilgrave. Daredevil also implied a similar situation surrounded Marci getting hired there, and that Hogarth Chao & Benowitz were the only firm willing to overlook Marci's association with a law firm on Wilson Fisk's payroll. Regardless, Jessica and Malcolm will reconcile in Season 3. The bigger question is when. (Though one does imagine that Malcolm would not have gone to work for Cheng if Jessica had told him about how Cheng tried to kill her and her mom)

Give Malcolm a second chance

• Why didn't Jessica give Malcolm another chance? He owned up to his mistake by apologizing to Jessica at the hospital. Also, Jessica was being too hard on him pretty much all the time he was in her office working for her, and she pretty much cut him no slack. She kept saying that this job was the only thing he could do. She could have given him another shot.
  • Because she's Jessica Jones.
  • As season 2 ended, it’ll take something very drastic on the part of Cheng making a moral mistake that will drive Malcolm away rather than anything Jessica will do on her part to win him back. Most likely, Malcolm is going to take some time being his own man, and develop down a different road away from Jessica for a bit. Despite mentoring him, Jessica is very harsh, secretive, and not trusting of Malcolm. Until something changes (as in, Jessica gets a long-term break from any major traumatic experiences, and/or some other distractions and alternate sources of happiness), it’ll be tough for Malcolm to feel like she could see him as an equal.

"You can't drop the lawsuit against Jones without consulting the client, me"

• Is it ethically possible for Jeri to drop Cheng's little legal suit against Jessica because she believes it's meritless (because it's obvious Cheng is filing suit because his ego can't tolerate being beaten by a girl), without consulting Cheng on the matter?

Where did Malcolm get his camera?

• Where did Malcolm get the camera we see him use as part of his ploy to distract the paparazzi while Trish leaves her apartment?
  • It's Jessica's camera. Notice that Jessica didn't take her camera to the meeting with Alisa at the bar, and she had to quickly borrow a paparazzo's camera to get a picture of Alisa's getaway. There was some stuff that happened offscreen between Jessica leaving Trish's apartment and Malcolm showing up there: Jessica went back to her apartment, loaned Malcolm her camera, and gave him a "teaching moment" to advise him on how to get past the other paparazzos stationed outside Trish's place.

So who goes with Jeri to her new firm?

• So Jeri is heard on the phone saying "160 square feet is not a second year associate's office" when scouting out office spaces in her epilogue scene. But would Foggy and Marci go with Jeri to her new firm? Somehow I doubt Marci would want to continue working with Jeri if she found out at all about any of the things Jeri did during the sagas with Kilgrave and IGH, and Foggy seemed in The Defenders and his cameo in "Sole Survivor" to be missing the environment of Nelson & Murdock.
  • This is something that will be addressed in Daredevil season 3. It's somewhat implied that Foggy may find reason to reassess his career goals in light of Jeri getting the boot from her own firm. He’s probably not be anxious to go with her, but staying behind with Chao and Benowitz is out of the question; and he probably is convincing Marci to do the same. This may also be dependent on whether Jeri ends up being involved in legally raising Matt from the “dead”, given her prior experience doing the same with Danny.

Shane's murder

• All right, so Jeri got the gun from Turk and gave it to Inez before manipulating her into killing Shane. Two things: 1) how does Jeri know that Inez won't tell the police about who supplied her with the gun? 2) Jeri is Shane's attorney-of-record. Wouldn't the police find it suspicious that the 911 call for his shooting came from Jeri's smartphone?
  • For all we know, Turk may have also sold Jeri a burner phone.

Detective Sunday's death

• Is Trish responsible for Detective Sunday's death? I've seen some detractors of Trish's who think it's the case, but I honestly think the detective's death can't be faulted on Trish because Trish had no way of knowing what Alisa was capable of (not to mention Trish was unconscious when Sunday died), so only Alisa should be blamed for Sunday's death as the one who dragged her out a 15th floor window.
  • This is much like what is commonly seen in Daredevil season 1 and the people who hold Karen responsible for Ben Urich's death at the hands of Wilson Fisk. At the end of the day, whether Trish is responsible or not is all dependent on how you approach collateral damage. Trish’s choice to launch an investigation into IGH, and probe into Jessica’s past, is what prompted Alisa to go on the defensive, thus triggering Alisa’s killing spree, the police investigation, and eventually leading to Karl’s death, which led to Alisa's escape from jail, which led to the encounter between her and the detectives in Trish’s hospital room. So a small part of the blame for all of Alisa’s murders can be placed on Trish, but there's at least five processes you have to go through to pin blame on Trish. Actually holding Trish accountable for all of season 2's horrors, though, is a bit too far-fetched. Trish couldn’t have predicted Alisa’s violent reaction, or even her existence, when she started her investigation. Dr. Karl Malus’s suicide was not her fault. If she had been conscious in that hospital room when Alisa came by, she would have done as much as she ultimately did at the Ferris wheel in the next episode to keep Alisa from committing murder again. So, much like Trish's hospitalization, Detective Sunday's death is really the sum of multiple peoples' individual contributions, because if any one of them had acted differently, it might have been avoided: Trish (for poking the bear), Jessica (for enabling her mother), and Detectives Costa and Sunday themselves (for not being cautious enough in trying to apprehend Alisa, and choosing to rush into the hospital right away, instead of waiting for an ESU team with Judas bullets before attempting to approach Alisa). If there's any one person to blame for every one of Alisa's murders, it's Alisa herself for actually doing the deed, and Karl is technically an accomplice for inflicting this condition on her in the first place (plus covering up some of Alisa's crimes, such as getting Kawecki to take the fall for Luanne's death).

Jessica's traumas

• How much of Jessica Jones's attitude is the result of her past traumas (like Stirling's murder and Kilgrave), and how much of it is the side-effect from the procedures Dr. Malus performed on her?
  • It makes sense that Dr. Malus's procedure might have amped up Jessica's aggression to a certain degree, but she has also been given plenty of reasons to build emotional walls all on her own. In the grand scheme of things, most of Jessica’s attitude is probably a result of her life experiences. The biggest clue here is the flashbacks in both seasons. The Season 1 flashbacks show that prior to crossing paths with Kilgrave, Jessica seemed happy, cheerful, and willing to open up to people. The same is true of college-age Jessica in the Season 2 flashbacks. The story has presented Jessica as an inherently caring person who has had her spirit shredded by a succession of traumas that have turned her hard and bitter and angry. Kilgrave largely is to blame for this. The huge personality difference between "post-Kilgrave Jessica" and "pre-Kilgrave (but still post-accident) Jessica" suggests that Kilgrave had far more of an impact on her attitude than Dr. Malus's operations. Jessica's drinking is a little bit harder to parse, because she was clearly a heavy drinker even before Kilgrave. It’s very possible that this could correlate with anger/pain/depression stemming from Dr. Malus’s procedure. She certainly wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies at that point either, given a season 1 flashback where she's asking Trish on the phone, "Would you put day-drinking under 'experience' or 'special skills'?"

What if Trish had gone to the meeting instead of Jessica?

• So the reason why the fake Dr. Hansen requests to speak with Trish is because she's actually Jessica's mother. But one has to wonder, what if Trish had showed up instead? Would Jessica have still gone but waited in the wings in case things escalated? What would Alisa have told Trish?
  • Then Trish would have been killed. Remember Alisa was on a killing spree. Taking out anybody who could uncover Dr Malus's project. That was why she was surprised to see Jessica there. She was there to kill a loose end and ended up seeing her daughter instead of her intended target.
    • It's implied the reason Alisa wanted to see Trish and only Trish is because of her fear of talking to Jessica. Guilt over how she's had to let Jessica believe she was dead for 17 years, plus guilt over killing Stirling. Not to mention that Alisa must be very afraid of accidentally harming Jessica (look at her face after she throws Jessica). In addition, she tells Jessica that she isn't trying to kill Trish, but rather, had Trish come, "I was going to tell her the truth". She isn't lying when she says that, considering that she didn’t go after Trish once she killed Simpson. And Alisa knows that Trish is Jessica’s family (she had to go to Dorothy to track down Jessica), and killing her too after what happened with Stirling would devastate Jessica. The real question is, if Trish had shown up instead, would Alisa have told her the truth? Would she have told Trish her real identity? We may never know, because now that Jessica showed up, the whole situation is different.
    • Considering her nervous demeanour and her irate response to Jessica being there instead of Trish. Also considering that Alisa has been targeting and killing any threat to Dr Malus. Then what she said she was planning and what she actually intended to do becomes questionable. This is a woman who slaughtered people who she saw as a threat without pause or mercy. All to hide the truth not reveal it. Suddenly after multiple murders some of them done with brutal force. All to protect the man she loved she suddenly wants to reveal everything? Doubtful after the extreme lengths she had taken so far without regret or hesitation. Also, we know what she plans and what she plans to do changes on a turn on a dime. See the man she tore apart for trying to steal from her daughter. Not to mention her loss of control leading to smashing a piano in half in front of witnesses when frustrated. Trish, determined to uncover everything. Pushy with all her questions and not taking no for an answer. Alisa with her control issues, nervous and with her really short fuse. That meeting one way or another would have led to Trish death. Either pre-determined as has been her pattern till that moment, or on impulse.
    • You're wrong in saying that she was going to kill Trish. If she wanted Trish dead, she would have killed her right after she killed Simpson, rather than moon jump over her and escape. And again, she knows Trish is family and wouldn't want to cause Jessica even more heartbreak given what she already did to Stirling.
    • Seeing as Trish was with Jessica at the time then no Alisa could not kill Trish after killing Simpson. Considering she would not want to kill her near her daughter, Alisa organising a meeting with Trish away from her daughter to finish her off would be her only option. Which makes sense as she seems really flustered that her daughter shows up instead of Trish. Also it is consistent with what she had been doing for the last month. Killing anyone that could reveal the truth, and in doing so threating the man she loved. It is far more logical that Alisa who had killed people without pause to protect the secret would continue to do so. Then a sudden change of heart she claimed she had, especially when she said it to her daughter. A person she wants to connect to. Actions taken proves counter to actions promised.
    • Except, as Detective Costa pointed out later on, familial bonds often are stronger than romantic ones. Alisa's desire to not cause her daughter more pain would've won out over her trying to protect Karl, whether or not Trish had gone in Jessica's place. Furthermore, if she wanted Trish dead, would she have arranged to meet Trish in a public bar, with witnesses who could describe her to the police? No. If she did want Trish dead, she would have arranged for it to happen in private where there'd be no witnesses, like Trish's apartment.
    • Familial bonds between Alisa and Jessica, not Alisa and Trish. It is also possible Alisa set up the meeting to find out how much Trish knew before killing her. If she cornered Trish in her apartment, that would have run a risk of not getting honest answers from a panicked Trish. Her statement to Jessica about how she was going to reveal everything to Trish would hold more weight if not for two things. One, as stated before Dr Malus is the second most important man in her life and she would do anything to protect him and has. Trish, with all her digging is a direct threat to that. Alisa has shown no mercy towards anyone or hesitation when his welfare was involved. Two, she told Jessica she would never harm Trish. But this was only after her identity was revealed by Jessica going after her. It comes off more as she was attempting to placate her daughter than honesty on her part. Also remember the anger when Jessica showed up at the meeting she planned with Trish? That was the look of a person whose plan went FUBAR more than anything. Even evading Jessica she was brutal and efficient but there was a look of anger on her face. Which brings up another possibility. Even if she was being truthful, Alisa has a short fuse with bloody consequences. In a booth with Trish who keeps demanding more and more answers? As said before one way or another, planned or not Trish would have died.
    • Let's not forget that even if Trish had gone to the meeting, there's no way that Jessica wouldn't have shadowed her and would've still stepped in. Doesn't change the fact that you're wrong in saying Alisa would've killed Trish. She wouldn't because well, otherwise, there'd be no story.
    • The basis that Alisa would not have killed Trish is based on two faulty assumptions. One, that she was truthful about revealing everything. However if she wanted to reveal everything there would be no need to pretend to be someone else, just drop the files off that way no need to risk revealing herself. Also Alisa feared exposure and took actions regarding that. Brutal actions without hesitation. Why would she meet someone to suddenly change all that? Alisa is a person who does not react well when cornered as shown in the Aquarium when she flooded the place risking lives acting instinctively to escape. Actions that indicate that Alisha is not a person to put herself into a corner. Talking to Trish revealing everything not only exposes her but puts her in a corner as she would have to reveal who she is, something she did not want to do. Because that would reveal to her daughter that she was alive. Two, that she was being truthful to Jessica. However we have seen that she had no intent to meet her daughter at that point of time. Only when she was forced to speak to her daughter did she say something to placate her daughter regarding Trish. But the truth behind her words is doubtful because once again Alisa is speaking from a cornered place. The basis that Jessica would have shadowed Trish is based on multiple factors, Jessica finding out about the meeting. Jessica not being drunk and asleep at time. Jessica not being distracted at the time. It assumes she would be there to intervene as it assumes that a woman who callously committed multiple murders to protect one man and herself would not lie about adding another to protect the feelings of a daughter she was hiding from. Actions committed prior prove more to one’s intent that actions assumed.

Did it have to be Trish?

• Like Jessica said, it didn't have to be Trish who killed Alisa. Jessica knew her mother would eventually go down, even if she really didn't want it to happen.
  • Yes, it had to be Trish. There were only two people who knew where Jessica and her mother were going: Detective Costa and Trish. Costa didn't want to kill Jessica, but it's pretty obvious that he would have a hard time directing the other cops to exercise restraint, especially after Alisa killed Detective Sunday. Had Costa gotten there first, Jessica would have died with Alisa. So, it was up to the only other person who knew Jessica's location. Trish did a lot of messed up things this season, but killing Alisa wasn't one of them. It had to happen that way and contrary to what Jessica believes, it had to be Trish.
  • Jessica says "It didn't have to be you," not "It didn't have to happen". She seems to accept that her mother was most likely going to be killed, but just wishes it was the police who did it and not her adopted sister.

Jessica's inconsistent thinking

• Jessica is initially mad when she learns her mother was the one who killed Stirling, but forgives her for it rather quickly. At the end of the season, Trish shoots Alisa, and Jessica is absolutely unwilling to forgive her for it. Jessica barely has been back in touch with her mother and yet she is willing to forgive her so easily, but Trish, the “most important person in her life” and the “one person she ever loved,” is unable to be forgiven?
  • If the first season's theme was about consent and rape, then the second season's theme was mental health, from alcoholism (Jessica) and drug abuse (Trish), to having to face mortality (Jeri's arc), and Jessica's mom. The story was about dealing with mental health on a super hero level. What would you do if your mom had a mental health disorder? How can you judge someone who is slowly losing their mind? And now add superpowers to that mix.
  • Humans aren't robots that think completely logically. They have emotions that are very hard to control or even understand. Just look at all the things people do for family. Look at blood feuds, wars have been fought because one family's ancestor insulted the honor of another family's ancestor. Look at families with sociopathic members. Parents continue to support sociopathic children even when they know they're being manipulated. There are people willing to take the blame for crimes committed by family members. The bond of blood is very strong socially, psychologically, and emotionally, and stronger than that of adopted relatives. Despite the huge gap in time and all the bad things her mother did, Alisa was still the first person Jessica ever loved unconditionally as family. That transcends a lot of the other stuff. So while Jessica's attitude towards Trish was not rational, the reality is that Jessica had actually stopped being rational the moment she agreed to help her mother escape. She had kinda snapped from logic and was in the throes of the romantic idea that they could get away and make up for the lost time that she's been so hurting over and yearning for 17 years. That's a powerful blinder to rational decision-making. So in that moment, she wasn't thinking about Trish as her long-time adoptive sister, she was only seeing Trish as the person who tore the last of her family away from her after she had given into the Stockholm Syndrome of going along with Alisa's half-baked escape plan. Jessica is broken in that moment and not capable of being rational.
    • That should have little to do with it. There is no bond that is just inherently stronger than another. Jessica has spent the last 17 years with Trish. She doesn't know her mother at all, except for the fact that she’s a crazy, cold-blooded murderer. In fact, she acknowledges this and condemns her for it all the way until the last episode, when all of a sudden she backtracks on all the principles she’s believed in throughout the entirety of seasons 1 and 2.
  • One thing people seriously misunderstand is the complexity of Trish’s decision to kill Jessica’s mother. The show makes it clear that there was no other way for that story to end: Alisa Jones had to die. What makes it wrong is not necessarily the act itself, but the fact that it was Trish that pulled the trigger, as it’s a betrayal of the friendship and love that she shares with Jessica. That’s why when they reconcile in episode 5 of season 3, Trish says, “I wish I didn't kill your mom,” and Jessica responds with “I wish she wasnt a mass murderer.” Trish is acknowledging that she betrayed their relationship by killing Jessica’s mom, and Jessica is acknowledging that her mother was a danger to society and that she was living in a delusion by thinking they could ever have a happy life together. This is why they are able to move past this act; they both understand where the other was coming from. Trish is supposed to have killed Alisa for reasons that were both selfish and selfless at the same time. On the one hand, her actions were certainly driven by her incessant need to “do good” and “be a hero.” On the other hand, there was a scene where she was told by Detective Costa that if Jessica was with her mother and would not give her up, the police would shoot her on sight. Both reasons contributed to her decision, however the writers made it so that the selfish reasons are much more in your face than the selfless ones.

Super strength but still struggles with tape

• When Jessica's mom is helping Jessica clean her wound from getting shot by Cheng, Jessica has to put the duct tape to her leg to get some leverage to rip it. Is this the world's strongest tape or have I discovered her true weakness?
  • This is a sign of her strength, not her weakness. Consider that while Jessica is trying to exert the right amount of strength with one hand to rip the tape, she's also trying to limit the strength she's applying with the other hand so as not to accidentally crush the roll. If you've ever ripped a piece of tape off of a roll, while you might not notice it, you apply almost as much strength in holding the dispenser still as you do pulling the piece off; it's somewhat involuntary and unconscious thing which is why you don't notice it. Jessica has to override impulse to apply two different levels of force. All while she's in significant pain from her injuries and probably slightly intoxicated and/or hung over (as she seems to be 95% of the time).
  • When you think about it, a person with super strength would move completely differently in just about every situation. Everything they touch should look weightless. Jessica should be handling those bottles of whiskey like they were paper cups. With her strength-to-weight ratio, even moving her own body weight around should look different. She should move as if she's almost lighter than air, with balance, spring and explosiveness that would be the envy of every gymnast, ballerina and sprinter. Ultimately it's just not possible to portray all of that in live action.

What if Philip had lived, instead of Alisa?

• What would Jessica's reaction have been if the IGH killer hadn't been her mother, but rather, her brother Phillip?
  • Since Phillip was younger than Jessica, Jessica would've had a different dynamic with him compared to Alisa. Instead of the instinctual longing to be protected that is present with Alisa (and creates a contrast with her role as the superhero), she would have an instinct to protect him (which would fit with her role as the superhero but then be tested when he ends up being a violent killer). It would lessen the sense of betrayal for Jessica, as it would probably have been easier for her to justify her brother not coming to find her (instead, feeling some guilt of "I should have gone and found him and saved him", as illogical as that is) than it was for her to accept that her mother abandoned her. It would also bring a note of something like jealousy or fear or being replaced into the conflict with Trish, as it would be a similar role for Trish and Phillip. That would've affected the plot of season 3, since the connective thread of Trish killing Alisa and then losing her own mother to Sallinger would be lost.

Season 3

Why not become a cop?

• Trish now has powers, low-grade ones that would make passing police physicals a breeze. She's still fairly young. Why not apply to a police academy? She would not have to try to beat cops to busts, she'd have a steady paycheck, she'd have waaaayyyy more benefit of the doubt afforded to her if perps were injured in the line of duty. Why is becoming a superhero the only option? Especially when her powers are so minor.
  • Trish wants to be special and different and recognised for it; she was always trying to push Jessica into heroism, much like how her mother vicariously lived through Trish by pushing her into fame - joining the police would mean she'd just like every other cop, she wouldn't be special or recognised for how unique and good she is, which is what she actually wants. Becoming a superhero for Trish means getting praise and adulation for 'doing the right thing', because Trish fails to realise that that's not what heroism is about - if she were genuine in her altruism, she probably would have tried to become a cop even without getting powers, but Trish is selfish and egotistical and hiding that behind a mask of altruism.
  • Also, from Trish's POV, how effective were the police against Kilgrave, Fisk, Diamondback, Mariah, the Hand, or just the general assholes Trish had been dealing with all her life? Like I would presume many people in a universe like this, she has little faith in the existing authorities, but a lot in superheroes, and she's eager to take the opportunity/excuse to go fight evil wholly on her own terms.

Erik's powers

• Erik can supposedly feel how good or bad a person is and even quantify their "evilness" by how much pain they cause him. He said that Malcolm was "maybe a 3" in a scale of 1 to 10. Enough to cause him a migraine but nothing terrible. He also said he wouldn't survive in jail because of all the evil people. But forget jail though, how does he even survive literally anywhere? Malcolm is not better or worse than most people. If even he can cause Erik pain, then he shouldn't be able to walk around town or sit in a bar. His head should explode from multiple people doing regular shitty things causing him multiple mini-migraines at once. And Trish appeared to hurt him as much as Sallinger, if not more, which is odd. Yes, she killed, but her reason was not bloodlust and she was not a psychopath, she genuinely had good intentions (but misguided) and she was in no way as bad as Sallinger was.
  • It's unclear exactly how his powers work, but the most applicable description would probably be that he reacts to deliberate acts of 'evil'. A case to consider: Trish does not trigger Erik until she deliberately beats Monteiro to death. Simply killing Nussbaumer wasn't enough, as it was accidental. Killing Jessica's mother could be argued as a righteous act as well, since Alisa was a mass murderer.
    Malcolm uncovering and releasing Peter Lyonne's embezzlement caused quite a bit of damage, and was being done for legally and morally questionable reasons. It was this that was giving Erik a headache, not Malcolm in general. But this was only 3/10. The average person in a bar is unlikely to have done something as bad as what Malcolm did (which was not considered especially terrible on Erik's scale), so the general public wouldn't really give him much trouble. Even a room full of low-grade shitty people would probably only give him a bit of a headache, which he'd dull with booze and pills. It's only the super nasty ones who cause him severe pain.

Why does Jessica never apologize to anyone? Or say thank you? Or even address or attempt to acknowledge her unkindness?

• Everyone she interacts with, like the doctor who saved her life by removing her spleen, the pretzel vendor, the guy that she grabbed and gave a napkin to give to Trish, Ruben, the son of Dr. Malus's backer in season 2 who she threatened to get info from his dad, Malcolm, her new assistant in season 3, Maury Tuttlebaum the mortician, every assistant Hogarth has ever had, Malcolm’s girlfriend, etc... Hell, why doesn't she ever tell Malcolm "sorry for the misunderstanding, I'm sorry I wrongly accused you of Trish’s experiment" and the subsequent falling out because of it? Hell, in this season, Jessica's assistant was threatening to pack her stuff and leave halfway through, and Jessica just says “this is a really bad time” instead of “Look, I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier. And thank you for being such a good assistant by making me take my pills and tolerating my shit.” Why avoid the issue?
  Basically any character who isn’t a potential hookup/love interest is disregarded and treated by Jessica with disdain. How hard is it to acknowledge bad behavior? I get that she’s uncomfortable with sincerity and vulnerability due to the PTSD. And the show's done a great job of showing her past experience with Stirling and Kilgrave and how she’s changed into this over the years. But she’s so casually disrespectful/abusive toward everyone she isn’t physically attracted to that it sometimes feels like the show telling us that past victims are exempt from treating people with decency, due to their trauma. And she’s clearly capable because when she sees a potential hookup/someone with something she wants (Luke, Oscar and Eric), she suddenly remembers concepts like respecting people’s personal space and dignity and right to not be physically intimidated. So how is it she remembers her manners with a potential hookup, yet isn’t even conscious enough of it to say “hey, sorry I snapped earlier” when she calms down after cussing out other people?
  • Because she's a grouchy, irascible misanthrope. The real question you want to ask is "Why does Jessica rarely face serious repercussions for the terrible way she treats the people around her?"
  • Rarely? Jessica has no friends and can't maintain a relationship precisely because of how she treats people.
    • She does, however, seem able to maintain a strong bond with Trish, a reasonable level of trust with Malcolm, and something resembling a working relationship with Jeri and Detective Costa. Considering how often her opening move is rude and aggressive, it's a wonder anyone gives her the time of day, never mind giving her any sort of benefit of the doubt when it comes to extremely high-profile cases in which she looks guilty as sin.
    • Her inability to maintain relationships has to do more with the fact that Jessica's character growth is pretty much reset every reason. She had no real character development from her debut appearance to her last appearance. Season 1 ended with it being hinted that Jessica would try helping people, and this is followed up on in The Defenders, which also hinted at the end that Jessica would get back with Luke. This is thrown away in Season 2 to have Jessica avoid helping people. Season 2 ended with it being hinted that Jessica would stop being so closed and start opening up to other people through Oscar and Vido. And this was thrown away in Season 3 in a throwaway scene in a Trish-focused flashback episode.

Salinger's plan

• So Jessica has a hard time proving that Salinger killed all those people. He’s super smart and never leaves any evidence. Every time he kills, he has it planned out and has a big set up for his photos. But what was his plan in the first episode of season 3? Whether he was going for Erik or Jessica it seems completely foolish to stab her as soon as she opens the door. He was unprepared and risking a lot in that moment. Maybe he was desperate to get to Erik because he had dirt on him, but for a character they make out to be super intelligent that was not very smart.

The gay kinky chef

• The one surviving victim of Salinger's was a chef who thought Gregory was into kink, so he went along with being knocked out and tied up because he thought it was all a sex act. Do the writers know anything about BDSM or the very real fetish of abduction roleplay? Plenty of people are into it, but the sane ones will have open communication about what to expect, and will establish a safeword that ends everything without question. We're supposed to think the chef was just into some kinky shit, but instead he came across as a complete idiot for not realizing his life was in danger until it was too late.
  • It is worth pointing out that people who are dumb or reckless do actually exist though, so it's not like the portrayal was unrealistic either. There are a lot of benefits to normalizing a wider variety of individuals and lifestyles in media but part of that is accepting that not every portrayal needs to be positive, people who cast their particular niche in a bad light are just as much a part of reality. It also works in context of the show, both by tying into the running theme of unhealthy relationships (in the reckless way they pursued the encounter and not from being into it in general, to be clear) and by providing a convenient way to have a potential victim get away without raising the question of why they didn't report the crazed serial killer that almost murdered them to the police.

Jeri's actions were all for nothing

• Everything Jeri did to try to win back her old flame only succeeded in making Kith want absolutely nothing to do with her. Considering Kith was in an open marriage and her husband had nothing but respect for Jeri, did it occur to Jeri that she could have done absolutely nothing and Kith would have been happy to be back in her life as a Friend with Benefits (or even a polyamorous relationship depending on how they define an open marriage), and been by her side in her final days? As despicable as Peter's embezzling scheme was, revealing it seemed to create way more problems than it solved.
  • Jeri seemed to want Kith for herself, rather than share Kith with Peter.

Trish's sentence

• Obviosuly, we'll never know with the cancellations, but what is the most likely way Trish will get out of prison? Jailbreak or through legal defense?
  • It's easy to imagine Jessica agonizing over what to do about Trish, considering breaking her out, deciding against it, drinking a bit… and then maybe Trish would get herself out. Or outside forces would intervene. Either way, the writers would likely never have Trish spend the entirety of a hypothetical Season 4 locked up.

Defending Trish

• What would be the most optimal defense strategy be for a lawyer handling Trish's case? Insanity plea? Bring up the background of Trish's victims? Something else?
  • One would be a plea of temporary insanity, combined with the argument that the procedure that gave her powers messed with her brain chemistry like it did with Alisa's giving her a diminished capacity to tell the difference between right and wrong. That by the time of her mother's murder, she had completely lost touch with reality. She snapped and brutally murdered the guy who literally had it coming to him. The other crimes could only be connected to her by a confession or by Jessica's testimony. Knowing Jessica, a good lawyer could get her testimony suppressed due to sloppy work with chain of custody or even discredited as manufactured since she's a PI who somewhat operates outside of the law. Further more, Trish could testify that she was set off because Jessica helped destroy evidence in the investigation that would have put Sallinger, away further giving credence to the idea that Jessica is an unreliable witness. If anything, Jessica might even lie and perjure herself to help Trish's defense.
  • She was abused as a child, relapsed into addiction, went through traumatic experiences being controlled by Kilgrave, the murder of her mother, probably suffered side effects from Malus's procedure, was encouraged by Erik, etc... On top of that, she's being sent to the grossly unconstitutional Raft, which would probably cause her even more damage (and it's not like her powers are that impressive). And, not to mention, she's spent most of her adulthood as an upstanding citizen, she genuinely recognizes her guilt and is remorseful, and has an upstanding sister who'd probably be willing to do anything to help her get rehabilitated. A decent lawyer would be able to put up a pretty solid case for Trish to get jury nullification.
  • A good lawyer would challenge the constitutionality of the Raft, while arguing on the admissibility of the evidence showing Trish Walker is the mysterious masked woman. The video tape shows Trish Walker committing an assault, but doesn't actually prove that every instance of a masked individual attacking someone is Trish Walker (since Daredevil also operates in New York and wears a getup similar to Trish's), and doesn't connect her with the bulk of her more serious crimes. A good lawyer would also play out and expose Trish's origin, and that from her research into IGH, it's possible that there are an army of people with those powers, and so sharing powers with the other masked woman still leaves reasonable doubt (borderline Chewbacca Defense). Trish's guilty plea to assault, plus her admission of remorse and celebrity history would probably land her a relatively short prison sentence, compared to the Raft.

Double standards

• The way this season has a bias against Trish is jarring compared to the shit Punisher does. I know context matters, but I feel as though it’s a tiny bit sexist how they portray Trish as some unstable manic woman hurting innocents (they’re not) when there’s another character in this universe stomping around and basically doing the same thing while also being tolerated for the most part. Tolerated = not hunted down by other heroes and locked away. But not Trish? Why? Because she's a woman?
  • I kind of took this season to be a deliberate counterpoint to and rebuttal of the Punisher. I imagine that if Jessica were to ever meet Frank she'd be every bit as opposed to his actions as she was to Trish's, and I imagine if the writers of this show had Erik in the same room as Frank he'd get just as much of a headache. And while I'm a huge fan of the Punisher, I did find it somewhat refreshing because the counterpoints to his methods in his own series are, perhaps by necessity, rather weak. So it's less, when Frank does it it's okay, when Trish does it, it's bad, and gender certainly has nothing to do with it. It's just Marvel presenting two view points on the issue of lethal vigilante justice in two different series using two different casts of characters to reach two different conclusions. Maybe, and this is pure speculation, but maybe the intention before the cancellations was a hypothetical Defenders season 2 to be about a confrontation between the main four & Frank and this was done to thematically tie into that.
    • There is also the fact that Frank never makes two ways about what he does: he knows that it's dirty, he knows that it's monstrous, that it makes him the bad guy. He accepts that it is: he doesn't seek adoration for what he does nor does he pretend that he is some grand savior. He's a killer, which is a fact he readily admits. Plus, Frank never goes after anyone he might suspect might be innocent. Trish, on the other hand, has no problem hurting innocent people if it suits her needs, wants to be adored for what she does, tries to justify it in a myriad of ways and does not in any way accept that she is in fact just a killer until it's all over and done with. It's not so much that what Frank does is right and what Trish does is wrong, like it is said - it's just that one admits it, and the other doesn't.
  • In the beginning of season two of Daredevil, Frank is targeting street-level organised criminals. Not great people, but not super evil. At this point, Frank Castle is an antagonist. Matt (and by extension, the show) vehemently oppose his ideology and methods, and while he's given the chance to outline and argue his case, the show still comes down on the side of "killing is no".
    Later in the season, and in the seasons of his own show, Frank is targeting people who have specifically wronged him, or who are trying to kill him, or who are perpetrators of massive and far-reaching conspiracies which affect the lives of innocent or unrelated people. Often his victims fall into all three categories. And in these episodes, Frank is the hero. An anti-hero, maybe, but we're supposed to root for him.
    When he's selecting targets based on his own criteria, and acting as judge, jury and executioner, he's the villain. But when he's defending himself and others, seeking revenge on specific people, or shutting down a shadowy CIA death squad, he's heroic. Trish slips into villainy when she starts picking random people that Erik names as bad to beat to death.
  • It might be extreme to call it a double standard. Or if so, then it’s a double standard that exists for the sake of the narrative. On a basic emotional level, yes, it's annoying that Trish was treated so harshly for doing the same thing Frank was. But there are a few key factors that seem to explain this difference.
    • To start, Frank’s pardon was not a legal and correct thing for him to be given, and it’s not depicted as such. It is blatantly shown to be an underhanded, not-entirely-moral decision that was made thanks to Madani’s needs and influence. It wasn’t standard procedure, and it happened because… well, it allowed the plot of The Punisher season 2 to happen. Because from a writing standpoint, having Frank pardoned rather than locked up in a high-security prison was necessary (or at least, much more convenient) for allowing his story to continue.
    • Perhaps a bigger factor in play: Trish has superpowers and Frank doesn't. We haven’t seen this as much in the MCU as we have in the comics, but in general, superpowered people are treated as much more threatening than non-powered people, even if their powers aren’t particularly potent or dangerous. Just look how mutants are treated in the comics. Frank certainly has killed way more people than Trish, but in the eyes of law enforcement, he's still just your standard serial killer. He’s human. He kills people in normal, human ways. But Trish has superpowers (relatively mundane superpowers, but still), and they don’t know what she’s capable of. This is why both she and Alisa are sent to the Raft, which was specifically designed to hold people with powers. In fact, if Hogarth wasn’t such a skilled lawyer, and/or if Kilgrave hadn’t also had superpowers, Jessica probably would have risked ending up in the Raft herself after the events of Season 1.
    • From a technical standpoint, that's something that the third season lacked—the shortage of discussions about the fact that Jessica also killed someone, and that on some level, Trish is emulating her. Digging into the difference between Jessica’s murder of Kilgrave and Trish’s use of lethal force against bad people (and there is a difference) seems like it should have been a central component of the storyline, but instead, that conversation never really happened. Jessica got a prolonged character arc in which to deal with her thoughts on having killed someone, while Trish was just locked away immediately. We can only assume those missing conversations would have happened in Season 4.

There is another masked vigilante in town, right?

• Trish starts running around fighting crime in a black mask. Why do the news all talk about her clearly being related to Jessica? Surely the first connection is to Daredevil? Since Trish's attire is so much like Matt's ninja outfit?

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