I think that others have voiced more or less my feelings on the matter of a single morality over the entire MCU—that is, that it makes little sense to me—so I won't add further arguments on that matter here for now.
Two things that I would like to add:
(I don't want to get into a debate on the morality of such actions right now, however, so if we may I'd like to agree to disagree on this point)
That said...
It could be neat to see Matt and company at trial; if not trying to get Trish released, perhaps trying to keep her out of the Raft. And perhaps some larger foe could take a hand to call for the group to come together—someone trying to use Trish in some way, perhaps?
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jul 7th 2019 at 6:19:04 PM
My Games and Asset PacksAlas, I don't know my Marvel characters well enough to have specific suggestions of my own. :/ I'll leave any such to others for now!
My Games and Asset PacksWell, I loved the season, and I disagree that Trish came off as "crazy" or "irredeemable" by the end. We saw from her perspective for two full episodes, and I totally understood and empathized with where she was coming from the whole time. She definitely didn't come across as "irredeemable", just that the facts were that she did some extreme crimes and now she has to pay for them with prison time.
Also, I think asking for a scene where Trish is trying to convince Jessica that killing is right is misunderstanding the mental headspace Trish was in for much of the season. The whole point of her conversation with Malcolm was that she was still trying to figure out for herself if killing evil-doers is the right way or not, and her going to take out Salinger was a rash decision she made in response to hearing her co-worker talk about how Salinger won't get the death penalty.
By the time of her fight with Jess, she was still trying to justify her actions to herself, but by that point it was too late, she had still done those actions.
The writers really missed out on a great opportunity to talk about the morality of what constitutes a hero using Erik, given his ability to discuss objective morality. We could've used a little more exploration of that instead of the Hogarth arc. That's because I think we deserved to have some answers to questions like "How do Erik's powers work?" and "How are people judged by Erik to be evil, and how does the scale work?" Those questions are especially vital to Jessica's and Trish's character arcs, given Jessica's own morally dubious actions and Trish's aim of ridding the world of evil people, and the overarching question of what it means to be a hero that's present in Jessica's and Trish's arcs.
Meanwhile, Salinger's theme of "talented people being cheaters", if played up more, could've provided a nice counterpart to Dorothy Walker's philosophy of "not using your talents being the biggest crime".
These two themes could have been tied together overall, like "can someone have the talent to be a hero?" or "Can a hero be built from the ground up?" or "Is a hero someone who is objectively good?" or "Given Trish's addiction problems and character flaws, could she ever have been a hero or is someone who is objectively evil forever doomed to be that way?"
Given the noir-like style of narration, I believe the questions could have fit well with the overall tone of the show. The disappointment always hits hardest when long-running TV series fail to reach the depth they could have achieved, given all the time they have.
Of course, had the writers gone that route, they would've had to rewrite a significant amount of the season seeing as the way they wrote Erik's powers is nonsensical. His standards of "good" and "evil" aren't really well defined. They're clearly not based on how people see themselves, because Trish thought she was doing good for most of it. They also aren't based on Erik's opinion, because they're just as effective on people he doesn't know. I mean, we gotta ask ourselves, what are his power's political stances? Different people would have very different opinions on what should happen to Erik if he walked inside a Planned Parenthood clinic. (As an example, not a suggested topic for discussion.)
As written, I sorta get the feeling that the main reason for both Erik's existence in the show, and his ability, was as a poorly hidden plot device, meant to provide a lazy means of indicating Trish's moral descent to Jessica and the audience, rather than trusting both to figure it out themselves.
Edited by dmcreif on Jul 9th 2019 at 12:39:46 PM
Okey Dokey!Probably lack of empathy and desire to do/conscious knowledge of having done harm with malicious forethought and apathy to who it effects triggers Erik's powers. Trish talks a lot about her desire to do good but after her motive decay set in where her selfish desire to be special and her justification of her more extreme actions began to override her desire to do good and that's when she started triggering Erik's powers.
Edited by lycropath on Jul 9th 2019 at 7:32:12 AM
Yeah. I said this a few pages ago, but Hogarth is really slimier than Big Ben Donovan.
Though she was morally grey, for the most part, in season 1, she was mostly on the good side and we saw her with Pam, who she loved a lot. We have to remember she was the very first MCU LGBT character and is the most prominent out of those in their Netflix shows.
Which is why I do kinda give the writers the side-eye in season 2 where she fell into the trope of the predatory lesbian. In season 1, she was very in love with Pam who was likewise in love with her, but in season 2, we hear she is being accused by Pam of sexual harassment, which Jeri dismisses with a line of “what did she expect, wearing a skirt that short, she was asking for it.” So, we’re having the only major lesbian character use widely recognized rape culture phrases. And naturally, her storyline in season 2 became about her dying. As important as confronting one's mortality may be, is that really the only place a lesbian character like her could go?
In season 3, I began to enjoy her storyline again but she still remained an incredibly horrible person. She manipulated her ex-girlfriend Kith whom she hadn’t seen in 25 years and whom she had cheated on with Wendy, into breaking up with her husband Peter, and ultimately ruined her life. It was meant to be justified by the fact that Kith’s husband turned out to actually be bad, but Jeri didn’t know that in the first place. Kith deserved far better than Jeri. (Also, Jeri's actions there were indirectly a cause of Trish's downfall, seeing as Jeri's attempt to do damage control from the Peter Lyonne situation by taking Salinger on as a client meant that Jessica couldn't be discreet anymore; especially when Peter's suicide video included him mentioning that Jeri protected powered individuals like the ones Salinger "claimed" attacked him; this was a perfect storm that allowed Salinger to kill Trish's mother, indirectly started by Jeri.)
Okey Dokey!Honestly, I felt Hogarth was a irredeemable monster since season 1. The way she treats her romantic interests was appalling even then, down to getting her ex killed and trying to conduct experiments on a dead fetus, Jeri what the fuck.
Iron Fist was the only show she was marginally tolerable for me and that's because she barely shows up and has no incentive to be an asshole to Rand.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Yeah, it's always been interesting that outside of Jessica Jones Hogarth has been depicted as a relatively decent person, but in the show itself she's the scum of the Earth. Danny never sees the sides of Jeri that Jessica does, and if he did - knowing Danny's moralistic temperament - he probably would never have worked with her.
Given Danny's almost puppy-like understandings of right and wrong, if he knew what Jeri was like just in Season 1 of Jessica Jones, he'd drop-kick her out a window.
My various fanfics.Considering the shit Hogarth gets down to in later seasons...
...Danny would probably still be hated for it.
He's Danny though, so it's ok.
One Strip! One Strip!To the best of my reckoning the Iron Fist has only shown so far a capacity to heal wounds, not illnesses.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."There are a few other areas where I feel that the story could've been improved.
There are some areas within Trish's arc that could've allowed her descent to be more properly executed. One was that as written, Trish was pretty damn unsympathetic about Jessica's mom thing. That was just painful to watch...and then it seemed to get swept under the rug. I really wanted them to properly reconcile, but as written, it seemed more like they just gave up on arguing about it. Also, Trish's powers should have been better defined, or completely different from what we got. Just being able to see in the dark is barely a superpower (especially when most non-enhanced people can do the same thing with special goggles)note and it makes it embarrassing when she decides based on that, that she's able to become a vigilante. Being able to see in the dark seemed to be the only real "super" power Trish gained from Dr. Malus, everything else just looked like she's a well-trained and agile fighter. That's not a superpower. (There was also Trish being able to take a fall as well, but that wasn't well-defined either. It just seemed "whatever we need now" and "less than Jessica".) Hellcat had a bunch of other powers in the comics that could've been used, though whether the budget would've allowed for them is another question.note
While we're on that subject, maybe rewrite Trish's final fate if she still has to go Daenerys at the end. Find a way to make her more likeable so that we feel sorry for her when she goes to jail. Speaking of jail, I'd also just put her in a normal prison with Jessica visiting her on a twice-weekly basis. Because I don't think she's enough of a danger to society to deserve to go to the Raft. At the very least, I think she deserves a fair trial.note
I'd also play up the fact that Jessica was directly responsible for Dorothy's death as some kind of sick symmetry. And I'd have Trish actually be angry with Jessica after trying to reconcile, instead of them being buddy-buddy afterwards. Show the emotional impact of it more, instead of that shallow flashback/funeral episode. And during their team-up bits, give Jessica and Trish a bit more to do that's actual detective work other than just stakeouts and break-ins.
Speaking of Sallinger, they should've given some context as to how Jessica can be sidelined by a stab wound. Maybe make Sallinger's blade poisoned or something. (And maybe give us some actual onscreen moments of Sallinger slitting throats or showing him torture his victims to give it the season 1 feeling) Maybe have the attack make her lose a kidney and now she has no choice but to go through the consequences of alcoholism like a normal person. Which besides the irony of Jessica losing a kidney just like Kilgrave did, could make a situation where she has to go cold turkey and that would make Kilgrave somewhat come back in her head.
I would also probably clean up Malcolm's storyline a bit. It needed a little bit more straightforward character progression and resolution. They started from an interesting place—he's getting increasingly amoral working for Hogarth, he's struggling with keeping secrets from his girlfriend who has strong morals that oppose his own—but then it just kind of fizzled into him being an unemployed assistant again.
Lastly, and this is more show-wide, but who else here thinks there should have been better season to season continuation of stories and characters? As things go, each season is like its own microcosm, as they clean the slate and start fresh at the beginning every time. As a result, the worldbuilding around Jessica's life is somewhere between terrible to nonexistent, and so is the character development of everyone who's involved with her. The core supporting cast (Jessica, Trish, Malcolm and Jeri) all go through their personal arcs, learn nothing and fail to grow. And the side characters keep up and vanishing (Robyn, Oscar, Pryce Cheng, etc.)
Edited by dmcreif on Jul 13th 2019 at 10:09:02 AM
Okey Dokey!You know, I think I should've clarified more precisely what my problem with the resolution to Trish's arc. Namely, I feel like we’re missing a lot of important details. But from what we can tell, it looks bad, mostly because Trish get sent to the Raft rather than some other prison.
See, right off the bat, Costa says the people on the Raft “pulled jurisdiction.” How? No idea. That would be really nice to know, actually. I might be wrong, but I thought the Raft was created ad hoc for the Sokovia Accords. Which is weird because the Sokovia Accords are part of an international agreement and weren’t even ratified by the United States. So how does the Raft get jurisdiction over Trish Walker when all of Trish's crimes are state crimes?
So, I thought for a sec that maybe the Raft has been changed, and now it functions as, like, a super extreme state prison. That would be…workable, especially if it could also be used simply as a holding cell for dangerous individuals awaiting trial. But the implication is that Trish wouldn’t even get a trial. Which is TERRIBLE. Costa said that due process doesn’t apply to supers, which is a blatant violation of the fifth amendment, as well as the eighth amendment which holds that the punishment must be proportional to the crime. It’s a double whammy there: first, hard to imagine how an underwater prison is a proportional punishment even to Trish’s (numerous) crimes; second, it’s explicitly stated that she’s being treated differently because she’s enhanced. Courts call this a “status crime” (where you’re punished just for being who you are) which, surprise surprise, is unconstitutional.
Basically, I was on board with Trish being locked up until they said they were sending her to the Raft because, based on what we know from the Avengers, the Raft is so incredibly unconstitutional.
In fact, I feel like I just went on a rant about the Raft and how Marvel fumbled with the writing of it…
Edited by dmcreif on Jul 19th 2019 at 8:42:29 AM
Okey Dokey!One weird thing about Jessic Jones (with respect to the other Netflix shows) is that it seems to conflate "people with powers" with "superhero/supervillain": if you assume that the two sets are equal, it makes sense (even if it would require, from the pratical point of view, to change a lot of laws) to have a separate jurisdiction.
It's the same with Trish going vigilante: the trigger seems to be the fact that she acquires powers, even if they are pretty situational and not exactly suited to combat crime - indeed, what she does at first (stopping the rape, investigating the guy who stole the statue) could have been done by anyone with the same training. It kinda reminds me of the first issue of Rat Man:
My impression, both from this most recent season and from earlier, is that Trish always wanted to have power such as Jessica had, and wanted to be a hero. If so, then I might argue that gaining powers thus didn't prompt her to become a vigilante, but rather enabled her.
My Games and Asset PacksThe treatment of superpowered people with abuse and Fantastic Racism is pretty much the basis for the X-men.
So, yes, I see nothing surprising about this.
Trish will be put into a Hell Prison because she's superpowered.
Jessica Jones has also established multiple times that Fantastic Racism is a thing in her world and the government would destroy her if they could as would the regular people.
So, why is it surprising Trish would be sent to Prison Hell?
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 19th 2019 at 3:35:27 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.What's stranger about the Raft is that what does and doesn't qualify someone to go there is very unclear. Like, from a practical standpoint, I'd say Wilson Fisk should be put in the Raft. But according to the internal logic of the MCU, the Raft *technically* isn’t appropriate for Wilson Fisk, since the Raft is for enhanced individuals and there is no evidence that Fisk is enhanced. At the same time, Falcon got sent to the Raft and he’s not enhanced, so one could argue that there’s precedent set for keeping nonpowered individuals on the Raft as long as they meet some threshold threat level and other unknown criteria.
But the Raft's existence is disproportionate when it comes to handling enhanced individuals, and Trish's case is proof of this, because as it goes, all she can do is see in the dark, combined with quick reflexes. She deserves to face jail time for her actions, but sending her to the Raft is punishing her just for being who she is, which again, is unconstitutional. (I imagine, and I'm probably repeating myself, that if we had more seasons, there would have to be a subplot about the rights of superpowered people, and whether the legal system should treat them the same as everyone else or differently)
Okey Dokey!

No, this is just more of the same Trish-fan whining that's already taken up most Season 3 discussion. It's pretty sad as well, because anyone watching the shows should understand why Daredevil and Punisher wouldn't kill a man already going to prison for life, why Luke Cage would advise Jessica to send Trish to the Raft, etc. There's no double standard here, especially because these shows have different writers and themes, and can we kindly stop bringing up fans like they control anything about a show?