Series / Jessica Jones

Jessica Jones is a 2015 Netflix original series based on the Marvel comic book Alias and developed by Melissa Rosenberg. It is the second entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's The Defenders mini-franchise, after Daredevil. The first season was released in its entirety on November 20th 2015.

The story revolves around Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), a former superhero who turned to Private Detective work after a traumatic incident ended her crime-fighting career.

The show stars Krysten Ritter, Mike Colter as Luke Cage, Rachael Taylor as Patricia "Trish" Walker, Eka Darville as Malcolm Ducasse, Carrie-Anne Moss as Jeri Hogarth, Erin Moriarty as Hope, and David Tennant as Kilgrave, otherwise known as the Purple Man. Rosario Dawson also appears as Claire Temple.

As of January 2016, Jessica Jones has officially been renewed for a second season, with its air date to be determined.

Also has a free Jessica Jones prequel comic by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos (who created the character), which serves as Jessica's first canonical appearance within the MCU.

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Jessica Jones contains examples of:

• Abuse Mistake: Ever since Kilgrave's first domination of Jessica, Trish was undergoing intensive Krav Maga self-defense training to make sure she could protect herself. This came with a significant number of extremity bruises and bloody noses, and when Jessica saw the marks she feared that her mother had come back into her life.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Trish's mother was emotionally and physically abusive until Jessica stepped in. The abuse is referred to pretty often and later clarified in 'AKA I've Got the Blues'.
  • Subverted with Kilgrave. He claims he was cruelly experimented upon by his parents as a child, who used him as a test subject for their scientific projects that traumatized him and created the warped worldview he has today. Until it is revealed that Kilgrave's stories about his youth were deliberately slanted and modified to suit his purposes, and the experiments he showed to Jessica were actually his parents trying to cure the degenerative disease that was killing him as a child.
• Achilles' Heel: Jessica and Luke have the same one: while most of their bodies are much stronger and more durable than the human norm, this doesn't seem to extend to their brains and they are relatively vulnerable to head trauma.
• Adaptational Heroism: Believe it or not, Kilgrave. In the comics, he's so corrupted by his power that he doesn't even bother to justify what he does, and simply makes people kill themselves and their families for the hell of it. In this series, Kilgrave tends to use his power when it suits him and come up with excuse after excuse for why he's not evil. He also really hates his powers being called rape, or being called a murderer.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • Krysten Ritter and Rachael Taylor keep their natural hair color, which means Jessica's hair is pitch-black while Trish has blonde hair. In the comics, Jessica is a brunette while Hellcat is a redhead. Trish's Patsy persona was a redhead in her youth, but it was not her natural color.
  • David Tennant does not have the purple skin and hair that gave Kilgrave's comic book counterpart the name 'the Purple Man', but the purple theme was kept through his purple clothing and accessories. Many shots in the series have lighting that casts his skin in a purple tint. In the Season one finale, Kilgrave's face is streaked with glowing purple when injected with the serum to increase his powers. Later in the episode, the streaks show up again upon giving a command to a large group of people. Finally, when he is being choked by Jessica, his face turns temporarily purple as he is deprived of air.
• Adaptation Name Change
  • Though not obvious at first, there is Jessica herself. In the comics, Jessica's birth name is Jessica Campbell and she is later adopted by the Jones family after her accident. In the show her last name has always been Jones, which was not changed by her adoption.
  • Patsy Walker is renamed "Trish Walker," with 'Patsy' being an Affectionate Nickname her fans use because of role she had early in her career. In both instances her full first name is still 'Patricia'.
  • Minor example, but it seems the spelling of Purple Man's last name has changed from "Killgrave" to "Kilgrave." Towards the end of the season, it is revealed that Kilgrave's real name is Kevin Thompson, with Kilgrave itself an assumed alias, something that is made fun of several times.
  • Frank Simpson is renamed Will Simpson, likely to avoid confusion with Frank Castle, who is prominently featured in Season 2 of Daredevil. This also served The Reveal that Will is Nuke from the comics, fooling even die hard fans into not realizing who it was.
  • Jeryn Hogarth goes by the nickname Jeri.
• Adaptational Sexuality: Along with Gender Flip. Jeryn Hogarth is a straight male in the original comics. In the show, Jeri Hogarth is a lesbian woman.
• Adapted Out:
  • Carol Danvers has her role as Jessica's best friend taken by Trish Walker, a character which had no involvement with Jessica Jones in the comic. Carol Danvers' character is slated to appear in the upcoming Captain Marvel movie.
  • Jean Grey does not appear in the series, as the rights to the X-Men are tangled with Fox. In the comic, she had a brief but crucial appearance in being able to help Jones to resist Kilgrave's power.
  • Jessica's high-school crush on Peter Parker has been cut out due to Jessica being in her mid-thirties in this series, while Peter is still be in high school at the time of his debut in Captain America: Civil War. More to the point, Spider-Man wasn't part of the MCU when the show was first written, as the deal between Sony and Marvel wouldn't happen until later.
  • Scott Lang appeared in the comic as Jessica's other major love interest and Luke's rival for her affections. Like Carol, he is completely omitted here, appearing in the Ant-Man film.
  • There are no appearances from S.H.I.E.L.D. or Clay Quartermain.
  • In the comic, Kilgrave's control over Jessica was finally broken when she attacked Scarlet Witch, which led to a Curb-Stomp Battle with the Avengers where she was severely injured by Iron Man and The Vision. In the show, it was the mental trauma caused by murdering Reva Connors that broke his control over her.
• A Date with Rosie Palms: An aggressive flirter trying to hit on Trish at a bar says that her TV show taught him to "box the bald-headed bishop".
• Age Lift: In the comics, Jessica was in high school with Peter Parker. Here, she's a 34 year old, while Marvel's stated Peter will still be in high school in the MCU.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: When Jessica tells Kilgrave she found him by "following the trail of misery", he remarks that he thinks that it would make a good band name.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Though it sticks in her craw to have to do it, Trish publicly apologizes to Kilgrave on her radio show after she realizes that she cannot effectively defend herself if Kilgrave decides to kill her. Jessica encourages her to comply, as she also cannot protect Trish forever.
• The Alcoholic: Jessica drinks a lot to cope with her Dark and Troubled Past.
• All for Nothing: The main hook of the plot is proving Kilgrave's powers exist so that Hope can go free, which forces Jessica and her allies to put themselves and others in dangerous or fatal situations so that they can get Kilgrave to either confess or demonstrate his abilities. Despite all their best efforts, Kilgrave is able to squirm out of every trap they set, the few reputable witnesses to his abilities die, and Hope ends up killing herself, demanding that Jessica focus on killing Kilgrave.
• Alliterative Family: Jessica's twin neighbors, Robyn and Ruben.
• All Part of the Show:
  • When Luke Cage and Jessica are trying to track down Kilgrave by looking for news reports regarding his powers, Luke explains the lack of any coverage by relating an anecdote from shortly after his escape from Seagate: When he was experimenting to see how much he could lift by picking things up in an abandoned junkyard, he was discovered and seen. Instead of realizing that he had Super Strength, the people who discovered him instead asked him where the wires were for the trick he was pulling off.
  • After the above, Jessica began searching for Kilgrave by looking for news reports on unusual events that people would have tried to explain in other ways. She quickly finds an article regarding an unannounced improv event that had happened at a club the night before, which was Kilgrave using his powers misunderstood as some sort of performance piece.
• Amoral Attorney: Jeri Horgarth, to a certain extent.
• Anachronic Order: In regards to the movies, while the show was released after Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man, the events of the show occur in early 2015, placing it before the events of both movies.
• And I Must Scream:
  • Becoming a victim of Kilgrave. You want to do what he wants you to do, whether or not it's what you want to do. When his victims talk about their ordeal afterwards, many mention how they were hating inside their minds all the while.
  • The ambulance driver who picked up Kilgrave was forced to give him both of his kidneys, and as a result suffered a severe stroke that gave him extensive brain damage. When Jessica finds him, he is stuck in a wheelchair and being cared for by his somewhat creepy mother. He manages to get enough control over himself to ask Jessica to end his misery.
• And Starring: With Carrie-Anne Moss and David Tennant.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Discussed. Multiple characters point out that after an alien invasion, someone with mind control powers should not be too hard to believe in theory. The real challenge is actually proving that such a non-tangible power exists and was present in any one specific circumstance, as otherwise any criminal could claim that Kilgrave made them do everything.
• Arc Words
  • "Start at the beginning."
  • "Smile."
• Artistic License – Biology: At one point, Kilgrave's powers are explained as him emitting a virus to which Jessica is immune. Nothing that relies on either diffusion or cell division/reproduction to spread through the body could affect someone as quickly as Kilgrave's mind control affects its victims, nor could its effects be timed to the second to see when his powers would stop affecting people. Towards the end of the series, his powers are upgraded so that his voice can command through electronic broadcasts like television and telephones, with no address of how a virus can travel such distances and through walls so quickly.
  • Presumably the virus only has to infect a few key brain cells and have some sort of resonance with his voice, so it really just can be breathed in. Also, Comic Book Rules. When his powers got upgraded, presumably the virus spread and lasted longer in a person, and/or his powers gained a more mental aspect to them, possibly not even requiring the virus anymore. He DID get the upgrade from his fetus, after all.
• Artistic License – Geography:
  • In one scene, Jessica very briefly follows Wendy from the Tompkins Square Park area to a subway entrance near 34th Street - Herald Square, which is 25-30 blocks away in real life. They end up on the subway platform for Lower East Side - Second Avenue on the IND Sixth Avenue Line, which is a few miles downtown on the Lower East Side.
  • There is no intersection of a Birch Street and a Higgins Drive anywhere in the New York City area. Jessica's childhood house is actually located in the Queens neighborhood of Douglaston at 15 Prospect Avenue.
• Ascended Extra: Kilgrave, in the adaptation from comic to show. While he had a huge role in Jessica's back-story in Alias, he was in prison for most of the comic series and his character and connection with Jessica weren't examined until the last seven issues. Here he overshadows the whole first season.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Jessica and Luke in episode 6 during a fight.
• Big Bad: Kilgrave is the source of all the first season's conflict in addition to Jessica's personal nemesis. Defeating him drives the plot forward.
• Bittersweet Ending: The first season's plot is based around Jessica's repeated attempts to prove Kilgrave can control people, thus proving Hope innocent of killing her parents - and as more of his victims come forward, it becomes more apparent than ever that he can't be allowed to go free. Kilgrave squirms out of every attempt to expose his powers, and Hope kills herself during a stand-off to force Jessica to focus on just killing him. However, Kilgrave's final rampage demonstrates his powers to the authorities, permitting his other victims to rebuild their lives - including exonerating Jessica for his death. Also, Jessica now has a 100% Adoration Rating and jobs/help requests flood her voice mail, with Malcolm staying on to help her.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • Jessica drinks Wild Fowl brand whiskey, based on the real-life Wild Turkey brand (incidentally, Wild Turkey also exists in this universe, as at least one ad for it appears in the background of a shot in season 2 of Daredevil).
  • At a few points, Jessica drinks Winston Canadian Whisky, based on the real-life Windsor brand and a pre-existing brand in the Marvel comics universe◊.
• Bookends: The first and last scenes with Malcolm in Jessica's office has him in her kitchen. The first time he's a junkie and doesn't know any better, the second time he's taken it upon himself to help her with her business.
• Bridal Carry: The best and most hilarious example: Jessica carries Luke this way. They're a couple after all, and she is super strong.
• Broken Bird:
  • What Kilgrave did to Jessica (mentally and physically raping her and forcing her to kill Luke's wife) severely damaged her on a psychological level, and dampened her ability to use her powers, or at least her will to use them for anything other than small stuff.
  • Hope had been a star athlete and respected student living her dream of going to college in New York, but became psychologically broken and withdrawn and ultimately killed herself after Kilgrave controlled her, including using her as a sex slave, and forced her to kill her parents.
• Bullying a Dragon: Trish uses her show to insult Kilgrave, banking on the fact that it will draw him out. Turns out he's listening in, and promptly calls the station to complain (and points out just how stupid she is to antagonize someone like him). The next day, he sends Simpson to her door.
  • Jessica is hired by a woman who thinks her husband is cheating on her. Turns out she and her husband concocted a plan to lure Jessica to a predetermined location to try and kill her, because the woman blames super-people like Jessica for her mother dying during "The Incident." Jessica shows them clearly just how stupid a plan this was.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Jessica manages to subdue and capture Kilgrave three times over the course of the season. Each time she gets questioned over Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?
• Celeb Crush:
  • When reminiscing with Simpson about her history during her 'Patsy' era, Trish mentions several instances where fans demonstrated their affection in extreme ways, including one sending her a homemade creation that she can only describe as a 'voodoo doll'. Though she seems to recognize now how they were creepy and excessive, she mentions them without any bitterness or haunting, instead appreciating the intent.
  • In the near-past of the show covered in flashback, Trish and Jessica are approached at a bar by a man trying to hit on Trish. When he recognizes her he talks about how her TV show helped him to "box the bald-headed bishop". Jessica forces him to apologize to Trish for the way he spoke to her.
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • Grey's Anatomy exists as a TV series in the Jessica Jones universe, as Jessica's reference to Seattle Grace Hospital is recognized as coming from television. Rachael Taylor, who plays Trish Walker, played the minor character of Dr. Lucy Fields in a couple of 2011 episodes. Additionally, Eldon Henson, who plays Foggy Nelson in Daredevil, guest-starred in a 2009 episode of that show.
  • The Star Wars franchise exists since Jessica calls Kilgrave "Obi-Wan Kenobi" after he goes "We can go about our business, move along" to two cops. David Tennant, who plays Kilgrave, had a guest role in the fifth season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, specifically as Professor Huyang.
• Chekhov's Gun: When Hope aborts Kilgrave's baby, Hogarth makes arrangements for the remains to be researched. Hogarth later reveals the existence of the fetus to Kilgrave, who recovers it and uses it to advance his own powers.
• Child by Rape: Hope became pregnant by Kilgrave, who raped her while using his power. She attempts to force a miscarriage by having an inmate beat her up, and when that fails she has Jessica and Hogarth bring her abortion drugs. Hogarth takes the remains, hoping to replicate Kilgrave's power.
• City of Weirdos: Many of the secondary characters in Jessica's neighborhood are shown to be far more quirky than the ones in Daredevil}. Besides Jessica herself, her fellow neighbors include Malcolm, a social worker forced by Kilgrave into becoming a junkie, and Robyn and Ruben, a pair of seemingly incestuous twins.
• Coconut Superpowers: Jessica's jumping. A whoosh, a cutaway shot, and she's off! Dean Cain would be proud! Bear in mind this version of Jessica cannot fly, only jump long distances.
• Color Motifs: Kilgrave loves purple, and the appearance of purple almost always indicates his arrival or the presence of one of his agents. Whenever Jessica has a flashback to her time under Kilgrave's control her memories tend to be tinted purple, and it is a good indication whether someone's dealing with trauma from an encounter with him, as Hope's prison attack makes clear.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames:
  • The Purple Man is known only as "Kilgrave," which is a variation of his last name in the comics (his name is usually Zebediah Killgrave). Interestingly enough, "Kilgrave" is itself a codename, and his real name is Kevin Thompson. Here characters lampshade how on the nose "kill grave" is as a name.
  • Jessica's codename "Jewel" is mentioned once, when Trish suggests using it as a superheroine name. Jessica dismisses it out of hand and says it sounds like the name of a stripper. And a very slutty stripper, to boot.
  • Luke is never called "Power Man," though he has not used that name in the comics in years anyway, just going by Luke Cage. And then it's revealed in his own show that even "Luke Cage" is an alias as he's Carl Lucas, an escaped fugitive from Georgia.
  • The Avengers are referenced multiple times, but never by name. The Incredible Hulk is usually called "the big green guy," while Jessica calls Captain America "the flag-waver."
  • Will Simpson is never referred to as "Nuke", which helped conceal who the character was until the reveal.
• Compelling Voice: Once you've been exposed to Kilgrave and he tells you to do something, you will do it whether you want to or not; from allowing him into your home to hanging yourself...or worse. Towards the end of the series, he becomes powerful enough to overcome his previous inability to manipulate folks through electronics.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In one shot from the trailer, the Avengers Tower can be seen in the distance. However, the MetLife Building--which really stands at that location--is still shown multiple times throughout the first season.
  • People with superpowers are referred to as "Gifted," a term Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. coined.
    • Because Fox owns the rights to the X-Men, including the term "mutant" as it applies to the MCU.
  • Like in Daredevil, the events of The Avengers are still called "The Incident".
  • Audrey Eastman is a fashion designer who hates superheroes, saying their actions during "The Incident" caused her mother's death..
  • Jessica and Luke both mention "the big green guy" as the superhero they identify the most with, given their own abilities.
  • There's growing public dissatisfaction with the Avengers and heroes in general, sentiment that was first shown brewing in Ant-Man and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. after the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Interestingly, the show takes place in early 2015, before the events of those movies and S.H.I.E.L..D. Season 3.
  • In the season finale, Claire Temple shows up and mentions that she got evicted from her apartment because she kept using it as a makeshift emergency room for Matt Murdock's injuries.
  • A kid dressed as Captain America runs through a park.
  • A clipping from a New York Bulletin cover page about the Union Allied Scandal is seen in the precinct. Ben Urich from Daredevil wrote this article.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • Kilgrave picks Simpson randomly to send after Trish, and Simpson just happens to be a part of a Psycho Serum experiment, and his former organization may have been responsible for Jessica's superpowers.
  • The hospital Jessica takes Luke Cage to after shooting him in the head just happens to be the one Claire Temple works at, and it just happens to be in her ward on her shift. Lucky, lucky.
• Cradle of Loneliness:
  • When Ruben first goes missing, Robyn finds one of his shoes in Jessica's apartment and hugs it to her chest while she cries.
  • After Robyn learns that Ruben is dead, she received in the mail an iPad charger that he had ordered on-line and cradles it.
  • Jessica does an embrace with a comatose Luke to comfort herself before getting ready to confront Kilgrave.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Like Daredevil, the show has darker content than the network shows like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter as well as the movies. Jessica Jones is an alcoholic and Luke Cage is an escaped convict.
  • Kilgrave rapes Jessica in the series whereas in the source material, this is not so. Not that what he did do in the comic wasn't monstrous either.
• Deadly Euphemism: Kilgrave's exact words regarding Reva were "take care of her", which he uses to dodge any responsibility for her death. He directly tells Jessica that it was her own decision, not his, since she interpreted those words as "Kill her". Everybody else, Jessica included, points out that even an idiot could tell that he meant "Kill her", and this word-shuffling does not alleviate any responsibility.
• Dead Man Writing: Luke Cage's wife left him a message to dig up the foundation of a building in the event of her death. The building was the same location where she was killed, and she was directing him to the buried flash drive that contained information of the experiments on Kilgrave and other children, and possibly some of the experiments at Seagate.
• Deadpan Snarker: Jessica has turned this into an art form.
• Deal with the Devil: After Kilgrave has been captured, Hogarth makes a deal to release him if he will get Wendy to sign her divorce papers. As with most examples of the trope, she had no comprehension of how badly this would go for either her or her loved ones (assuming she actually HAD loved ones).
• Death by Adaptation: By the end of Season One, we have dead Oscar Clemons and Kilgrave, who are still kicking in the comics.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: When discussing their relationship, Wendy describes Jeri's treatment of her as countless slights and insults, metaphorically killing her by a thousand cuts. When leaving, Kilgrave orders Wendy to give Jeri a literal Death of a Thousand Cuts, and Wendy makes it as far as 30 before Pam bashes her head in protecting Jeri.
• Destructo-Nookie: Luke Cage and Jessica Jones break everything once they realize that the other has powers. It is actually a bit light the first time, but once they realize they have a partner who can handle them they cut loose to the point of the bed shattering under them.
• Determinator: Kilgrave’s father had both of his arms chopped off and was left to die. However he survived long enough to warn Jessica about his power upgrade.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Constantly, the story looks like everything is just about wrapped up, or a secondary character appears to have finished a full arc, only for Kilgrave to escape or for a character to get pulled back in and have more horrible things occur to them.
• Differently Powered Individual: There is not a single accepted term for people with superpowers, with several different euphemisms and implications in use as people talk about "they" and "them". The term with the most traction seems to be 'Gifted', which is used as a general stand-in after characters have already established just what it is they are talking about.
• Disposable Superhero Maker: We learn midway through the season that Kilgrave gained his powers when his parents were attempting to cure a deadly illness he had as a child, but they did not do it deliberately and do not know how they would duplicate it. When Hogarth attempts to reverse-engineer his powers from the fetus of his child with Hope, she is unable to duplicate the abilities.
• Disappeared Dad: Trish's abusive, controlling mother is talked of a lot, and makes an appearance later by flashbacks and in the present. Her dad is not mentioned or seen though.
• Divorce Assets Conflict: Jeri and Wendy's divorce is extremely bitter, with Wendy demanding 75% of Jeri's assets and blackmailing her into agreeing. Jeri in turn asks Jessica to dig up dirty information on Wendy to blackmail in return. Jessica, in a drunken depression, resorts to outright threats against Wendy, who ups her demand to 90% of Jeri's assets in response. Jeri ultimately tries to make a bargain with Kilgrave to force Wendy to agree to lesser terms, but he orders Wendy to kill Jeri, and Pam winds up killing Wendy in Jeri's defense.
• Divorce Is Temporary: As their bitter divorce drags on, Jeri begins to suspect that Wendy is deliberately spreading it out because she hopes that the process will drive a wedge between Jeri and Pam, and that Jeri will come back to her afterwards. Jeri quickly dismisses the idea once she realizes what Wendy is up to and they never reconcile.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • At one point, Jessica and Trish have a discussion about whether Kilgrave's powers might be turned to good purposes... which is semantically quite similar to how some abuse victims think they can "fix" their abuser.
  • Many of Kilgrave's behaviors seem to be an amalgamation of the behaviors of typical abusers, particularly his impulsiveness, his short temper and his total lack of understanding of consent or others' feelings.
  • The show treats Mind Rape exactly like physical rape, and explores the terrible consequences those targeted by such violence can suffer. Kilgrave regularly uses his powers to make others kill themselves or murder their friends, family, co-workers or even complete strangers in often graphic ways.
• Double Think: In addition to other allegories about rape and abuse, the series touches upon what it's like to be under Mind Manipulation. Kilgrave's power triggers in a victim by overriding all other priorities, needs and desires so that what he compels them to do something, they want to do it more than anything. However, there is always a part of them that also loathes and despises what they're doing while at the same time they're doing it. Many abuse and rape victims have similar thoughts. Part of the cycle of abuse is the victim questioning their own actions and one of the effects of rape are victims feeling they "wanted" or "deserved" it in some way.
• Ear Ache: At one point while Jessica is under Kilgrave's control, Kilgrave commands her to start cutting her ear off. He makes her stop before she can finish cutting it off, and she retains the scar from that wound.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • The show introduces Luke Cage into the MCU ahead of the debut of his solo series.
  • The season 1 finale introduces Manhattan district attorney Samantha Reyes, prior to her taking on a larger role in season 2 of Daredevil.
• Effortless Amazonian Lift: In the last episode, Jessica carries an unconscious Luke bridal style, revealing her Super Strength to Claire Temple.
• Evil Brit: David Tennant plays Kilgrave using the Estuary English accent he used as the Tenth Doctor.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Besides his constant mocking Jessica's attempts to help people, the most egregious example of this comes when Kilgrave and Jessica defuse a hostage situation. After making the man release his hostages, Kilgrave then starts to make the man blow his own head off with a shotgun. After Jessica talks him out of it, he later explains that he honestly thought it was the right thing to do. This leads to a conversation where Kilgrave admits he has no moral compass, and while he did enjoy being a hero, if he's going to keep doing it he'll need Jessica constantly by his side to guide his actions. This, more than anything else, seems to convince Jessica that Kilgrave is thoroughly beyond redemption. Of course, that may all have been Kilgrave still trying to manipulate Jessica into staying with him because he honestly believes they're in love.
• Exact Words:
  • Kilgrave orders Trish to put a bullet in her skull. Trish had previously emptied her revolver at Kilgrave, so she removes the spent shell casings from the cylinder and tries to push one of them into her temple with her bare hands to fulfill the command. Jessica manages to break her out of this by putting the bullet in Trish's mouth.
  • After he unintentionally tells his guard to say "Hello, Hank", Kilgrave told Jessica about one time he unthinkingly told a man to 'screw himself'. He does not give exact details on how the man interpreted his instructions, instead asking "can you imagine?"
  • Kilgrave tells Luke Cage to blow himself up, but does not actually say the word "kill," allowing Luke to survive because Kilgrave was not aware of his invulnerability. This was actually part of Kilgrave's plan, as Luke is under his control the entire time afterwards and he wanted Jessica to believe that he was unaware of Luke's survival.
• Face–Heel Turn: Will Simpson. After he is reintroduced to a Psycho Serum midway through the season he abandons any restraint or moderation, and even begins directly killing friends and allies.
• Fantastic Legal Weirdness: One of Jessica's major hurdles is that it's nigh-impossible to force a psychopath with a Compelling Voice to stand trial, especially when most people don't believe that Kilgrave's powers are real.
• Fantastic Noir: The feel of the show, mixing a Film Noir atmosphere with more overt superpowers than Daredevil.
• Fantastic Racism: In "AKA 99 Friends," a woman named Audrey Eastman hires Jessica to catch her cheating husband, only for this to turn out to be a ruse designed to kill Jessica. The woman reveals that she hates Gifted individuals (people with superpowers) because she lost her mother in the incident. She is not moved at all by Jessica's not being involved in that battle, saying she will inevitably kill innocent people one day and killing her now would stop it.
• Feminist Fantasy: An abuse/kidnapping/rape/stalking victim works to overcome her trauma and PTSD to fight back against her abuser/kidnapper/rapist/stalker, with the help of her (female) best friend, and her (female) lawyer ally. The former victim also has a bevy of superpowers and showcases the full range of her wit and perseverance. The other men in her life aren't all evil, and the one she cares about most is placed in a vulnerable spot where only she and another strong woman can save him. The show could be the poster child for a feminist fantasy.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: The idea of a man with mind-controlling powers or super strength is still hard for some people to believe. Trish discusses this with Hogarth on her radio program and makes a reference to aliens invading New York to show that it is not out of the realm of possibility. As it turns out, Hogarth firmly believed in Kilgrave's power, but did not want to make the argument herself on the air, so she goaded Trish into doing it for her.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The series delves into mistrust of superheroes by the general populace and the fallout of their super-activities, leading into the main plot of Captain America: Civil War.
  • When a paranoid Jessica follows her client for most of the day to make sure that she is not being mind controlled by Kilgrave, she discovers the woman's secret shooting range, with female mannequins being used as target dummies. She then notes that the client is out to kill someone. That someone is Jessica, as said client has a grudge against powered individuals because she lost her mother in the Incident
  • Early in the series, a man comments that he thinks "Kilgrave" is one of the most fake-sounding names he ever heard. We later find out that Kilgrave did make it up and his real name is Kevin Thompson. The comment also foreshadows how he has also been twisting his past and omitting details. Incidentally, although rare, "Kilgrave" is an actual surname.
  • Kilgrave takes over an apartment, and says "Children should be seen and not heard. Or better still, not seen and not heard. Get into that closet." The boy obeys without question, but the daughter who is wearing headphones during his initial order protests that she has to go to the bathroom rather than immediately obeying. Though she complies after Kilgrave repeats his order, her temporary resistance foreshadows Trish's use of noise-canceling headphones and loud blaring music to avoid Kilgrave's control.
  • When Luke Cage and Jessica first discuss their powers, she asks him if he's bulletproof. Luke admits he doesn't know and that he'd rather not find out. At the end of the season, it turns out that Luke's skin is bulletproof....when it comes to regular bullets. However, like real bulletproof vests, that does nothing to prevent internal damage to bones and soft tissue due to the transfer of energy. And then Luke Cage reveals that his skin isn't as bulletproof as we'd thought: the Judas bullet can penetrate his skin.
  • When Jessica and Kilgrave see each other face-to-face after Kilgrave tries to make Simpson kill himself, rather than the smugness we've come to expect, Kilgrave instead has an Oh, Crap! stare right before he runs away. It turns out, Kilgrave knew Jessica was immune to his powers, and if she'd gotten her hands on him right then, he would have been doomed.
  • Luke says sharp teeth are his specialty when he and Jessica have to deal with some guard dogs, foreshadowing the appearance of Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes in Luke's own show.
  • After Malcolm expresses his experience to the rest of the Kilgrave survivors during one of their meetings in Episode 6, there is a very brief but focused shot of a female survivor who wasn't shown previously. A couple episodes later, she is revealed to be Kilgrave's mother.
  • When Kilgrave and Jessica meet at the precinct, he commands everyone to think that the entire event was a hilarious practical joke. Despite being included in the general command, Jessica does not burst into laughter when the rest of the police station does, the first hint that she is now immune to his control.
  • A short-term case: When Kilgrave increases his powers and tells Jessica to smile, she gives a full tooth-baring grin rather than the small one she's always given even under his control, showing that she's faking being affected by it — although this could also be interpreted as a result of Kilgrave's power's increase.
• Freudian Excuse: Deconstructed with both the protagonists and antagonists of the series. Kilgrave claims it was the mistreatment at the hands of his parents that turned him into the monster he is today, but it is later revealed they were actually trying to cure a disease he had, with him becoming a monster when he developed his powers. It was his parents who were tortured at his hands. Jessica and Trish were themselves mistreated as children, but both became decent and good people as adults regardless (granted, they didn't get Mind Control powers when they were in their formative years, and Power Corrupts, but still...) The series ultimately seems to speak that past horrors do not excuse or justify current horrors, and you need to take responsibility for your own actions.
• "Friends" Rent Control: It would be a bit of a stretch for Jessica Jones to afford an apartment in Manhattan on her income, since she seems to live almost paycheck to paycheck and quite a lot of her money goes to alcohol. However, it could be justified, as her apartment also doubles as her office, so that's one less place to have a name on a lease, thereby saving some money. It's also possible that she could even claim her apartment as a business related expense on her taxes. Not to mention, as in Daredevil, rent prices in some areas were dragged down by "The Incident". That said, Trish has a fairly nice apartment in Chelsea, but she also is the host of a very popular radio talk show and makes enough yearly income that she can afford to take out advertisements on buses and billboards, get personal fight training, and install a fortified security system. Given what we've seen about how popular It's Patsy! was, she's probably also still getting royalties and gratuities from that.
• Gender Flip: Jeryn Hogarth, a male lawyer for Danny Rand in the comics, becomes Jeri Hogarth, played by Carrie-Anne Moss.
• Getting High on Their Own Supply: Will Simpson gets hooked on some combat pills he is supplied and goes nuts (helped by him not taking the "cooldown" pills), subsequently causing his Face–Heel Turn.
• Gone Horribly Right: Trish mocks and belittles Kilgrave on her radio show in an attempt to get under his skin and draw him out. This succeeds, and leads to Kilgrave sending Will Simpson to kill her, which she barely survives.
• Gorn: The killing of Kilgrave's father. His limbs are hacked off with kitchen cutlery and then fed into a garbage disposal, leaving the (Still living—and thus still bleeding) mangled body on the floor. He only finally dies after Jessica finds him.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Averted. Hope refuses to give birth to Kilgrave's child by rape, and pays her cellmate to beat her up so she will miscarry. When that does not work, Jessica helps her procure abortion pills.
• Good Is Not Nice: Jessica personifies this trope.
• Hallway Fight: Jessica has a battle with a hospital filled with doctors and patients who are under Kilgrave's control. She tries to sneak down the hall to get out but she is soon spotted and forces her way through, getting a nasty cut with a scalpel for her troubles.
• Headbutting Heroes: As soon as they join forces to take down Kilgrave, Jessica and Simpson can't help arguing with and sniping at one another.
• Hollywood Law:
  • When collecting people who've been mind-controlled by Kilgrave in order to have them testify in Hope's trial:
    • They put them all together in a support group (thereby weakening all their stories because they've had time to be influenced by each other), rather than interview each person separately.
    • They don't think about subpoenaing the restaurant staff from the first few episodes. You know, the staff that have very little reason to lie and can positively say "that woman right there walked in with a man who made us do things we didn't want to do." Nope, just go out and get a bunch of random people who at best can only testify that someone exists who can force you to do stuff (no proof that Hope was under his influence) and are far less believable, because at this point they're all mentally unstable or have good reasons for wanting to excuse their actions by lying about someone else making them do it.
  • Their plan is to kidnap Kilgrave, hold him prisoner, torture him into confessing, and then use that as proof. The only time that's going to be admitted as evidence is when they all get charged with kidnapping and torture. It'll be great for a trial...Hogarth's, Trish's, and Jessica's trials. Kilgrave's? Not so much, as technically, they engaged in kidnapping and false imprisonment, so he'd be testifying against them as a witness. It's such a bad idea that Jeri tells them it would never work, and instead, they use their crime to draw a cop (Clemmons) to the scene and make him watch. This is also a bad idea.
  • Towards the end of the first season, Jeri Hogarth's secretary/mistress Pam kills Hogarth's wife Wendy to save Jeri, after Kilgrave commanded Wendy to kill her. Afterwards, Jeri attempts to serve as Pam's counsel during her questioning by the police; given her relationship to both people and also as another victim in the case, there's a conflict of interest present. Jeri may have just been doing "stand-in defense" for both herself 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 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.
• Hope Spot: Towards the end of the series it's learned that Kilgrave's powers are biochemical and it's possible to create a "vaccine" that blocks his powers. Kilgrave's own father synthesizes such a vaccine, and when put to the test, it works....for all of five seconds.
• Hotter and Sexier: This series has more sex scenes, and more explicit sex scenes, than other projects of the MCU and the original comic.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: When Jessica tracks down the ambulance driver that picked up Kilgrave after he was hit by the bus, he is paralyzed from a stroke after Kilgrave forced him to donate both kidneys in surgery and requires constant dialysis. He is cared for by his (somewhat creepy) mother and can only communicate through a note pad, and when Jessica tries to get information from him he writes out 'kill me'.
• I Choose to Stay: In the first episode, when she finds out that Kilgrave is back, Jessica plans to leave the city and head to Hong Kong. At the end of the episode, she realizes that she has to stay and stop him.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each episode is titled "AKA (Also Known As) [Phrase spoken in the episode ]". The series was originally going to be named AKA Jessica Jones, but it was shortened to the current title.
• I Have No Son: After Pam realizes that Jeri had planned to use Kilgrave to force Wendy to sign the divorce papers, she has her removed from her holding cell and informs the police that she has no idea who she is.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Happens between Jessica and Luke Cage, who has been brainwashed.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You: Kilgrave claims that he is legitimately in love with Jessica, and that he wants her to love him back without using his powers to force it. However, even without using his powers on her directly he still attempts to control her behavior through the manipulation of people and circumstances around her, and his false belief that she returns his affections is based on what she did when he was controlling her with his powers. Towards the end of the series, it is revealed that Kilgrave is not choosing to not use his powers on Jessica at all, but that she has instead become immune, and he spends several episodes trying to increase his powers so that he can control her directly again.
• The Immune: Kilgrave forcing Jessica to kill Luke's wife was so traumatic that it effectively made her immune to his power—she is the only one he can't control.
• In a Single Bound: Jessica can leap great distances via her Super Strength. People frequently ask her if she can fly, but she once explains that it's more like "controlled falling."
• Instant Sedation: Jessica injects Trish with Sufentanil to make Simpson believe he killed her.
• Jerkass: Everybody at some point during the series, with the possible exception of Trish Walker and Luke Cage are rude, abrasive, and treat others like dirt. Quite a few characters are estabished as permanent Jerkasses - Jeri Hogarth, her vitriolic ex, Jessica's upstairs neighbor Robyn, Will Simpson, Jessica's attention-whoring former neighbor and, of course, Jessica herself, though she probably has a better reason for her behavior than most.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Jeri Hogarth is introduced as Jessica's vitriolic sort-of friend and sometimes-employer with whom they each have a "I do not like you, but you get results" respect. As the series progresses, 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 blows up near the climax, where Jeri betrays Jessica and tries to get Kilgrave's help instead. Yes, Jeri is incredibly selfish and manipulative, but she is absolutely right that Jessica screwed her every step of the way.
  • Simpson is far too focused on taking Kilgrave down permanently to cooperate well with Jessica and in fact undergoes a Face–Heel Turn in order to achieve his goals, but he is ultimately proven right that killing Kilgrave was the only thing they could have done to put a stop to him permanently. Any other choice just resulted in more death and destruction.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Simpson repeatedly bumps heads with Jessica over the proper way to deal with Kilgrave, as he is more concerned with directly ending the threat by killing him than by getting him convicted of his crimes and exonerating Hope. After he is injured in one such attempt, he re-enlists in a Super Soldier program he had been in before and instantly switched from frustrated cooperation to being willing to kill his own allies and even fellow cops & soldiers in his single-minded obsession to kill Kilgrave.
• Just Train Wrong: In one episode, Jessica rides the subway from 42nd Street - Port Authority Bus Terminal to 50th Street, when she breaks the glass in the windows due to having a flashback about Kilgrave. The scene was actually filmed on a PATH train, as can be deduced from the design of the seats, which is distinctive compared to the MTA subway cars. Why they couldn't have filmed on an actual New York City Subway train is not clear, considering how other scenes like the scene where Jessica drops Wendy onto the tracks were shot in the NYCS without problem.
• Killing In Self Defense: When Jessica is being attacked by Luke Cage under Kilgrave's control, she does everything she can to get him to halt his attack, but he cannot overcome the control. When she finally has a shotgun pointed at his head, he tells her to "do what you have to do", and she shoots him in the head. She then brings him to a hospital for medical treatment, since though she was willing to kill him to save her own life, she did not want him to die if it could at all be prevented.
• Kryptonite Factor: Kilgrave's power — even at its greatest strength — requires that his victims be able to hear him and acknowledge that he's speaking to them. Noise-cancelling headphones blaring music, or a completely sealed off room, is enough to completely thwart his commands.
• Lady Macbeth: When Jeri and Wendy's divorce drags on and on with more punitive demands, Pam criticizes Jeri for letting Wendy beat her like this and tells her to win, explaining how she had fallen in love with her when she saw how ruthless and unstoppable she used to be in the courtroom. Pam is subsequently horrified when she learns that Jeri wanted to use Kilgrave's powers to force Wendy to sign the divorce papers, never imagining that her motivation would have lead Jeri to try something so unequivocally evil.
• Laser-Guided Karma: For both Jeri and Pam. Pam urges Jeri to be ruthless and finalize the divorce with Wendy so that they can be together. Jeri takes her at her word, and decides to work with Kilgrave to force Wendy to sign the divorce papers. Kilgrave, of course, takes pleasure in turning Wendy on Jeri. The end result: Wendy is dead, Pam is arrested for her murder, and she refuses to have anything more to do with Jeri, who is left injured and alone.
• Lipstick Lesbian: All three of the women involved in the Jeri/Pam/Wendy Love Triangle count, although Wendy is more subdued since her 'day job' is as a working charity doctor instead of a high-profile lawyer.
• Loan Shark: Luke Cage asks for Jessica's help in finding the brother of a friend, who had disappeared after borrowing money from a loan shark. In the course of their investigation they run into the shark himself, who agrees to hire Jessica himself instead of having a pointless fight with her and Luke Cage, which would not get him any closer to his money even if he won. When they find the missing man, the fight inevitably breaks out anyway.
• Loophole Abuse: It's possible to break Kilgrave's control over someone through loopholes in his command.
  • Sometimes, Kilgrave commands someone to do something, but doesn't go into more specifics on how it's to be done or what outcome needs to happen. Jessica is able to use this twice when Kilgrave sends Simpson after Trish.
    • First, Jessica uses a surgical sedative to temporarily knock Trish unconscious, then tells Simpson that he killed her. Simpson believes that his mission is complete and promptly leaves the scene, as Kilgrave simply told him "Kill Trish Walker," but never specified how she should be killed (shot/stabbed/beaten to death with a police baton, etc.)
    • When Simpson returns to Kilgrave, Kilgrave commands him to jump off the building, but does not specifically say to kill himself in doing so. Jessica knocks him out and carries him to the ground and lays him in a pile of garbage. When Simpson comes around, Jessica tells him he jumped and the garbage bags broke his fall. He accepts his commands as having been completed.
  • When Kilgrave gives a command with multiple possible interpretations, a person will generally attempt to carry out the most common interpretation of said phrase. When fleeing from the sin bin, Kilgrave orders Trish "put a bullet in your skull, Patsy!" Trish immediately acts on the common interpretation, which is "shoot yourself in the head", but is unable to do so as the revolver had already been emptied. Trish then picks up a spent shell casing (what most people think of when they think "bullet") and tries to physically push it through her skull. Jessica realizes that the command only means Trish needs to put a bullet in her head and never specifically said "shoot yourself". Thus, by putting the shell casing in Trish's mouth (which is in her head) for a couple seconds, Jessica is able to break Kilgrave's control over her.
• Love Triangle: At the start of the series, Jeri and Wendy are married, but Jeri is having an affair with Pam, her secretary. Wendy discovers the situation in the second episode and she and Jeri begin a very acrimonious divorce, with Jeri believing that Wendy is making it so difficult because she hopes that Jeri will come back to her if Jeri and Pam's relationship falls apart. By the end of the season, Wendy is dead at Pam's hands after Jeri attempts to use Kilgrave's power to force Wendy to sign their divorce papers. Kilgrave is so disgusted by Jeri that he orders Wendy to slowly kill her, and Pam then kills Wendy to defend her.
• Made a Slave: Kilgrave frequently controls the same people for long periods of time to cater or support him during his endeavors.
  • Jessica was Kilgrave's all-purpose slave while he had her under control, serving as his Sex Slave and slave henchwoman in addition to fulfilling his fantasy that they were in a romantic relationship.
  • On multiple occasions he is shown taking over an apartment and making the occupants cook and clean for him.
  • Kilgrave forced one man to be his chauffeur for more than a week.
  • He made one woman follow him around for long periods just because he liked the way she smiled.
  • When Kilgrave and Jessica speak later in the series she explicitly refers to these sorts of people as slaves (although, ironically, in that particular instance the two people under discussion - Hank and the bodyguards - were not, as Kilgrave had hired those two with actual money in order to defuse this specific accusation from Jessica). Double Subverted later on, though, when it turns out he did have them under his control; just not in the way Jessica expected. He uses his powers as the primary way of controlling them, and he pays them so they continue to work for him even when he isn't capable of using his commands.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Kilgrave always treats himself to the best clothing, the finest meals and the most attractive women that his powers can bring him. When he is taking the winnings of a poker game he even passes money to the dealer in order to play out the high-roller role he cast himself in.
• Meta Origin: In Episode 13, Trish says she may have found some evidence linking the Super Soldier project that Simpson took part in to the the car accident that gave Jessica her powers.
• Mexican Standoff: Kilgrave takes a police precinct hostage by commanding the cops to all point guns at each other or at their own heads.
• Mind Rape: This is basically Kilgrave's power, as he can mind-control and order people to do anything, up to killing themselves or other people. He used this power on Jessica in the past, which is why she retired from being a full-blown superhero. The series goes to great pains to liken it to physical rape, with all the horror that includes (he also uses it for physical rape).
• Missing Trailer Scene: Some of the teasers, a few of clearly comedic nature. "Good Morning" has Jessica not reacting well to an alarm, and "Nightcap" has her putting an appropriate soundtrack to take her last whiskey shot.
• Modesty Bedsheet: Used the second and third times Luke and Jessica have sex.
• Mooks: One unexpected development, a third of the way into the season: Kilgrave has henchmen. What's more, where such henchmen come from and where that trail leads becomes a recurring plot point.
• Morality Pet: Discussed. Kilgrave tries to make Jessica this after they resolve a hostage situation. While his powers were solely responsible for saving the hostages, it was Jessica's idea to go in the first place, and it was she who stopped him from making the hostage-taker kill himself. She even goes to Trish to ask if she should become this trope. Jessica, however, is naturally reluctant to form a superhero team with her rapist.
• Mugged for Disguise:
  • Kilgrave forced one guy to fork over his suit. What would normally be just a petty crime ends up demonstrating how truly evil Kilgrave's actions are; even something as small as being forced to give away a jacket traumatizes the man because of the victimization and lack of control.
  • In the season 1 finale, Jessica mugs a hospital employee and takes his scrubs so she can escape a hospital where everyone has been brainwashed by Kilgrave into attacking her.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Jessica's superpowers let her throw people with one hand despite lacking mass. Doesn't work so well against Luke, who has both super-strength and mass.
• My Beloved Smother:
  • After being paralyzed by a stroke (as the result of losing his kidneys to Kilgrave), the ambulance driver is cared for by his strongly religious mother who fears anybody coming to take him away.
  • Despite being his twin sister, Robyn has shades of this towards Ruben, such as tying his shoes for him and preventing him from going places without her.
• My God, What Have I Done?: A recurring, almost constant theme with Kilgrave's victims:
  • Jessica killed Reva before the start of the series, which is the single most haunting event of her time under Kilgrave's control. Even though she knows that it was not her fault she is haunted by her actions.
  • One of the members of the Kilgrave support group was hijacked by Kilgrave to be his personal chauffeur for a week. His infant son had been in the back seat when Kilgrave got in the car, and was left by the side of the road when Kilgrave became annoyed by his crying. He speaks to the group about the horror he feels at the way he just drove off and left his son behind, and particularly about how at the time he liked doing it, even though he was simultaneously horrified.
  • A non-Kilgrave example comes out of the Jeri/Pam/Wendy Love Triangle. Pam had told Jeri to win her fight with Wendy, and Jeri tries to get Kilgrave to control Wendy to sign the divorce papers. Afterwards, when Pam was forced to kill Wendy to stop her from murdering Jeri under Kilgrave's control, she is horrified that Jeri had taken her motivation to win and decided to work with Kilgrave.
  • A minor, non-Kilgrave-related one when Young Trish accidentally reveals, in the worst possible way, to Young Jessica that her entire family was killed in the car accident.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The first scene in the series mimics the first scene in the comic, with an angry client becoming unruly until Jessica tosses him through the window of her office door.
  • Trish's suggestion for a superhero identity for Jessica, which Jessica flatly rejects as absurd, is a reference to Jessica's time as Jewel in the comics, which would really clash with the show's tone. The prototype costume Trish presents to Jessica is the same one she wore as Jewel in the comics, while the mask is a blue version the one she wore as Knightress. It is also the same color as Trish's from the comics.
  • In Episode 4, when Audrey threatens Jessica at gunpoint, her response is taken straight from a scene in Alias. Only this time she is actually shot.
  Jessica: If you shoot me, I will pull the bullet out of my ruined jacket and shove it up your ass with my pinky finger. And who do you think that's going to hurt more?
  • At one point, Jessica recommends a fellow P.I. named Angela Del Toro.
  • Most people smoke after sex. Luke Cage?
    Luke Cage: Sweet Christmas.
  • One of Trish's fans says that he misses her red hair. In the comics, she is a natural redhead.
  • At one point Luke has to fight a pack of dogs on his own. When Jessica expresses concern, he assures her that "sharp teeth are his specialty" - a reference to his enemy Cottonmouth, who appears in Luke's own show, but not with the sharp filed teeth.
  • Trish admits that she wishes she could be a hero, as she wants a chance to save the world. In the comics, she's the costumed superhero Hellcat.
  • In the season finale, Kilgrave says that he wants to force Jessica to love him, and then reject her again and again until it completely destroys her sense of self worth. In the comics, that's what he did to torture her in the first place.
  • In the flashback which has Kilgrave meeting Jessica for the first time, he wants to know her superhero name instead of her real name. In the comics, he never wanted to know her superhero name.
  • In the final episode, Jessica drags an unconscious Luke Cage into the hospital only to find out he can't be helped because of his unbreakable skin. This resembles a scene from The Pulse after the two are injured in an explosion that destroys their apartment.
  • In the season finale, Kilgrave has upgraded his powers to the strength they are in the comics: even looking at him is dangerous. When he screams for everyone to stop what they were doing, his skin turns purple.
  • The final shot of the season has Malcolm pick up Jessica's phone to say, "Alias Investigations, how can we help?". In the comics, Malcolm's first few (unwelcome) attempts to help Jessica had him acting as her secretary.
  • One of the earlier hints at who Simpson is is how he refers to his war buddies as "my boys", which refers to "our boys" something of a trigger-phrase/MadnessMantra of his much crazier comics counterpart.
  • Dr. Kozlov shares the last name as Michael Kozlov from Strange Tales. Whether or not the doctor's first name is Michael as well remains to be seen.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Kilgrave's name is pronounced "Kill Grave".^note In the comics, it's even spelled "Killgrave", and it is his genuine birth name. Multiple people point out that it sounds like something a teenager would come up with to seem edgy and threatening. Jessica asks him whether "Murdercorpse" was already taken, and Claire wonders why he didn't name himself "Snuffcarcass." The juvenile nature of the name is a huge clue as to Kilgrave's true nature.
• Neck Lift: Jessica seems to be fond of these, as she does it to several people throughout the series, including Kilgrave right before she kills him with a Neck Snap.
• Never Be Hurt Again:
  • In a variation of the trope, Trish by proxy through Jessica. Though she was never personally controlled or harmed during Kilgrave's first control over Jessica, afterwards Trish resolves that she will not allow herself to be placed in any such position. She has her apartment converted into a secure area (including security door and panic room) and begins taking intensive Krav Maga self-defense training. Part of this is for Jessica's sake as well, since she tries to get Jessica to move in with her behind the security.
  • Played straight after Trish's first time being "Kilgraved". After being told to "put a bullet in [her] head", Trish understands how scary it feels to not be in control of your own actions, especially since at that moment all she wanted was to kill herself. She flat out said, she never, ever wants to feel like that again.
• Neverending Terror: This is Jessica's nightmare as she is stalked by Kilgrave. Not only is she herself always in danger because all it would take is one word from Kilgrave to enslave her again, but every single person in a city of 20 million people is a potential Manchurian Agent. One former victim of Kilgrave flat out tells her the only way out is to kill herself.
• Never Found the Body: Debated when Jessica first suspects that Kilgrave has returned. According to Trish, Jessica saw Kilgrave die one year prior to the start of the series, including a death certificate, but Jessica fears that with Kilgrave's powers it might not have been as it seemed. He was hit by the bus, and was extremely injured, but he managed to get himself medically treated and had the surgeon forge the death certificate.
• Never My Fault: Like many abusers, Kilgrave is very good at justifying his own actions to himself, always finding a reason that someone deserved the horrible fate he inflicted upon them.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • Jessica gives one to Kilgrave in the sin bin. It is so bad that even she cannot help but feel sorry for him afterwards.
  • Jessica receives a severe beating from Simpson while impaired by broken ribs.
• Not Me This Time: Jessica gets wary of any potential clients, unsure if any of them actually are seeking to hire her or have been sent by Kilgrave. So when Jessica is approached by a client for a normal, everyday case of following her cheating husband to get pictures for the divorce proceedings, Jessica spends the next day following the client instead, checking for when Kilgrave will meet up with her to give her new instructions for his plot against Jessica. It is not until the end of the episode that Jessica accepts that Kilgrave is not involved in this, as he is too smart to have gotten mixed up in this stupidity.
• Not So Similar: Simpson is visually very similar to Steve Rogers, to the point of having similar street clothes. Both have a background in the forces of order (Rogers in the military, Simpson in the police, and the military prior to that), and both are test subjects of a Supersoldier program. But, as things go on, Simpson's attitude proves to be completely different to that of Rogers.
• Not Wearing Tights: There are no costumes or tights of any sort in the series. However, this is justified since the three main superpowered characters featured in the show generally don't wear tights in the comics anymore either. When Trish tries to get Jessica to wear a costume during a Flashback, but Jessica just mocks how silly and impractical it is.
• Oh, Crap!: Talking to a man at a restaurant, Jessica hears him talking about the staff just gave a diner whatever he asked for (including tracking down the chef of the restaurant that used to be there for a specific recipe) and recognizes the description as Kilgrave.
• One-Hour Work Week: A variation. After the first episode Jessica only has one single client hire her for detective work, spending the entirety of her time on her quest for Kilgrave and other personal endeavors. However, the lack of pay that comes from having no clients is reflected by her being continuously broke, and she is paranoid about any potential clients that might come her way, wondering if they were sent by Kilgrave.
• One Steve Limit: Averted, with Clair the cellist and Claire Temple having the same first name.
• The One That Got Away: Jessica is the only person who managed to escape from Kilgrave's control... and he wants her back. Jessica is terrified at this prospect.
• Person as Verb: Being mind-controlled eventually becomes known as being "Kilgraved".
• Platonic Declaration of Love: Jessica uses this as a key word to prove she's not under mind control when speaking to her friend Trish as it's something she'd never normally say. Doesn't make it seem any less sincere or true.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Audrey Eastman decries the use of the term 'gifted' for people with powers. She likens it to the word 'special' for people with mental disabilities, instead claiming that they are just retarded. Jessica in turn wonders what either people with powers or the mentally disabled have ever done to her.
• Potty Failure: Kilgrave's control is so absolute that his victims can't even go to the bathroom and often have accidents on themselves.
  • In the first episode, Hope Schlottman was told to wait for Kilgrave and remained motionless in bed until Jessica discovered her. When discussing the instruction to wait for Kilgrave, Hope tearfully explains that she wet the bed since she was unable to get up and go to the bathroom.
  • When Kilgrave invites himself into a family's apartment, he tells the children to go into the closet to not be seen or heard. When the daughter protests that she has to go to the bathroom, Kilgrave says, "Go in the closet. It will be fine." After the children get into the closet, the camera tracks down to show urine leaking out beneath the door.
  • When Kilgrave is experimenting with greater range and duration for his powers, he practices by giving instructions to a large club at once. One of the patrons not affected by his powers mistakes it for some sort of staged comedy act, and when he tries to compliment Kilgrave afterwards, Kilgrave, fed up, tells him to stand in front of a chain link fence forever. When Jessica and Luke Cage show up at the club the next day to track down Kilgrave, the camera pans over to show that the man is still there, and has wet himself in the time he was standing there. And he can't call for help either, because right before that "stand there forever" command, Kilgrave also told him to stop talking.
  • When trying to find a way to increase his power, Kilgrave forces the researchers at a lab to work non-stop on a mechanism. Jessica tells Luke that she had to drag the lab assistant outside to talk to him because of the foul stench inside, not because he was unwilling to talk.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: The show takes considerable liberties with the original comic, namely:
  • Jessica's Flight powers are instead portrayed as enhanced jumping due to Netflix's budget restrictions.
  • Many of Jessica's friendships with other Marvel heroes (Miss Marvel, Captain America, etc.) are omitted due to the Darker and Edgier tone of the show, and because of changes already made to the larger MCU continuity.
  • Kilgrave does not have purple skin because it would look too ridiculous in real life. Instead, he wears purple clothing and some of his scenes have purple filters applied to them.
  • Kilgrave's powers are stated to work via a virus, not "pheromones", as the latter would sound ridiculous.
  • Kilgrave's animosity with Daredevil is omitted to give more focus on Kilgrave's enmity with Jessica. As a result, Jessica's impetus for retiring from superheroics is revised.
• Precision F-Strike: Malcolm becomes the first person in the MCU to say the word "fuck."
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Jessica delivers one to Kilgrave just before snapping his neck.
  Jessica: Smile.
• Private Eye Monologue: Jessica gives a pretty classic example, which is mostly concentrated in the first few episodes, when she doesn't have much of anyone else to talk to. It's about her job and how it forces people to acknowledge the shitty truths in their lives, which they then blame her and try to avoid paying her, like the guy she threw through the window of her office front door.
• Protagonist Title:
  • Jessica Jones is about a character named Jessica Jones.
  • In-universe, we have It's Patsy, the show that Trish starred in as a child.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: This is Kilgrave's specialty. He has forced multiple people to kill themselves, and uses the threat of it to control people he cannot directly use his powers on.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Although he puts on an act of sophistication, Kilgrave has a hair-trigger temper and little self-control to speak of. He has a tendency to overreact to any slight or insult and resent not getting his way, which he views as his just due. Towards the end of the season it is revealed that he gained his powers when he was a child and never had to leave the juvenile fantasy world.
• Psycho Serum: The pills Simpson takes magnify his already-present belief in the need to kill Kilgrave into an all-consuming obsession that begins killing friends and allies.
• Race Lift: Malcolm is white in the comics, but black in the TV adaptation.
• Rape as Backstory: Since Mind Rape is equated with physical rape throughout the series, Jessica considers herself raped by Kilgrave, even before he forced her to have sex with him using his power. This same scenario ends up becoming Hope's story as well.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Kilgrave's abilities are repeatedly and directly compared to being rape as the strongest condemnation that can be made. They both revolve down to a loss of control, a complete lack of any kind of consent, and his victims point out that that is what makes it bad. Even the people who were not physically harmed or seriously inconvenienced, like the man who was only told to give Kilgrave his jacket, are traumatized that they were so totally reduced to irrelevancy. Not to mention the physical rapes he commits with his power (of Jessica and Hope, among who knows how many more).
• Real Men Wear Pink: Trish has a surprising number of male fans of her old tv show It's Patsy, considering it is implied to be a Hannah Montana-type sitcom. A uniformed cop on duty and an aggressive flirter in a bar both know the show well enough to sing the theme song.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: It's mentioned in the series that "Kilgrave" sounds like a silly fake name and in fact 'Kilgrave's' real name is Kevin Thompson, but, while not very prominent, "Kilgrave" is in fact a real surname.
• Reality Ensues:
  • Trish is introduced as having decided that she will not allow herself to be taken advantage of, including intensive Krav Maga training so that she can protect herself from a physical attacker. However, when Simpson is introduced to the series as a controlled cop sent by Kilgrave to kill her, he beats her nearly to death despite all her preparations. As technically skilled as she has become (and she does put up a respectable fight), his larger size, reach, strength and experience mean that she is unprepared to defeat him, and only manages to delay him until Jessica arrives to save her.
  • Simpson explains that Jessica's plan to dart-gun Kilgrave won't work because a sniper needs the target to be in a predetermined location, preferably away from any civilians. Trying to snipe Kilgrave while he's walking down a crowded Manhattan street isn't a viable option since one risks accidentally hitting an innocent bystander if the aim is even an inch off. The time they attempt to black bag Kilgrave, Simpson dart-guns Kilgrave by simply walking past while Jessica distracts him.
  • In a flashback, Trish gives Jessica a superhero costume, complete with a mask to hide her identity. Jessica quickly demonstrates how easily an enemy could blind her by tugging on the mask so that the eye holes no longer line up with Trish's eyes.
  • In Episode 6, Luke dissuades Jessica from starting a fight, because a public brawl in broad daylight will quickly draw police attention.
  • Despite having unbreakable skin, when Luke is shot in the head with a shotgun the fact that his skin is not broken does not protect him from the damage. There is massive internal injury, the same as there would have been if he had been a normal person wearing armor.
  • In a crossover with Daredevil, Claire Temple got kicked out of her first apartment after using it as Matt Murdock's hospital room on multiple occasions, and she refuses to bring Luke to her new place. The second season of Daredevil shows that Claire gets assigned to a graveyard shift at the hospital as a result of removing Luke from the hospital.
  • During her fight with Simpson, Trish takes some of Simpson's drugs in a moment of desperation, after he explicitly says that she does not have the tolerance or supplementary medication required to handle it. As a result, not only does she feel the affects more acutely than Simpson does, the side-effects are nearly lethal.
• Red Herring Shirt: Malcolm is introduced initially as Jessica's drug-addicted neighbor, with only isolated scenes used for comic relief and minor pathos. It is ultimately revealed that he is in fact a plant used by Kilgrave to monitor and observe Jessica.
• Related in the Adaptation: Jessica Jones and Patsy Walker have absolutely no connection whatsoever in the comics. In the show, they are adopted sisters.
• Repeat After Me: Kilgrave introduces his security detail to Jessica:
  Kilgrave: And that's Hank. Say hi, Hank.
  Hank: Hi, Hank.
  Kilgrave: Sorry, I slip sometimes.
• Reusable Lighter Toss: To get rid of evidence, Simpson starts a fire in Kilgrave's former cell so Jessica will be back to square one in convicting him.
• Ring Ring Crunch:
  • Showcased in a teaser with Jessica's alarm clock.
  • During the precinct standoff, Kilgrave has every cop pointing a gun at each other. Then a cell phone rings. Getting increasingly agitated, Kilgrave stalks around, trying to find the damn phone that someone is too distracted to answer, until he finds the source - Oscar Clemmons' phone. He then takes Clemmons' phone and hurls it at a wall, shattering it.
  Kilgrave: THE NEXT PERSON WHOSE PHONE RINGS HAS TO EAT IT!!!
• R-Rated Opening: The first scene of the entire series shows Jessica taking a photo of a married woman's sexual affair, which is shown in explicit detail.
• Running Gag:
  • Jessica and Claire both make fun of Kilgrave's name at different times by offering more ridiculous alternatives: Murdercorpse and Snuffcarcass.
  • People recognizing Trish from her show and singing some of the theme song.
  • Jessica's door window keeps getting broken, with several characters commenting on it after the fact.
  • Jessica's tendency to break the locks on doors with her bare hands, whether it's pulling off padlocks or crushing locks located in doorknobs, as she has to do when her door gets repaired and she's locked out by a pair of repairmen sent by Trish, until she pays them.
• Sanity Slippage: Both Will Simpson and Hope become steadily more unstable after suffering Kilgrave's influence, leading to a Face–Heel Turn in the former and Driven to Suicide to spur Jessica to kill him for the latter.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: When she realizes Kilgrave is back, Jessica immediately starts asking what friends she has for money to get out of town, openly admitting she "sure as hell" is running. Her first action is to buy a plane ticket to Hong Kong.
• Sequel Hook:
  • Trish is digging into IGH to find out who they are, and what connection they have to Jessica.
  • Thanks to her high profile defeat of Kilgrave, a bunch of citizens are now calling up Jessica to ask for her help.
• Sex Slave: Jessica and Hope were both used by Kilgrave as "playthings." He implies that there have been many more too. In keeping with his Never My Fault attitude, he refuses to consider either to be rape, apparently thinking having given them gifts makes it okay.
• Shaggy Dog Story: Jess' entire quest to capture Kilgrave alive. Despite frequently getting hit with Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?, Jessica is insistent on bring him in alive in order to prove Hope's innocence. In the end, Hope ends up taking her own life when Kilgrave forces Jess into a Sadistic Choice so that Jess would no longer have any reservations about bringing Kilgrave in alive.
• Ship Sinking: Played with. Luke Cage and Jessica Jones gets sunk... quite a few times. Starting from the second episode, then it's unsunk, then it's sunk AGAIN. By Luke Cage, he's moved on to Claire.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Jessica suffers from PTSD as a result of the horrific incident that ended her career, Kilgrave's mind control.
• Shout-Out:
  • At one point, Kilgrave tells a police officer "We can go about our business. Move along. Move along." Jessica promptly lampshades his Jedi Mind Trick by calling him "Obi-Wan Kenobi".
  • The first episode has Jessica threaten a scumbag with her "laser eyes". This is of course a reference to the original Flying Brick, Superman, whose earliest incarnation had identical powers to Jessica.
  • While sleuthing in a hospital, Jessica tells a nurse that she has just transferred from Seattle Grace Hospital, and now she is in the ER working for Dr. Carter. Interestingly, the doctor she is talking to asks "like on TV?" when Jessica mentions Seattle Grace.
  • Ruben says that "everyone's a little racist".
  • The dogs in "AKA You're a Winner" are named Meyers and Krueger.
  • At one point, Jessica tells Kilgrave, "You're not 10 anymore." David Tennant played the Tenth Doctor.
    • Subtly done again in a scene where Kilgrave has clearly (if off-screen) directed two of his slaves "Don't blink."
  • In episode 2, Jessica is being interviewed in the police station by Detective Clemons, played by Clarke Peters. Jessica says she's going to Pennsylvania because of the antiques, to which Clemons says he likes them, too. Clarke Peters played Lester Freamon in The Wire, who built dollhouse furniture while on the job.
  • In the final episode, the yacht Kilgrave plans to escape on is named Goldfish. Showrunner Brian Michael Bendis worked on a crime series called Goldfish early in his career.
  • Kilgrave mentions as an example of unintended results from his commands the time he told a man to "go screw yourself". Jesse Custer did the exact same thing in Preacher, albeit with less polite wording.
  • An In-universe example in the finale. When "Jessica" is revealed to be Trish in disguise, Kilgrave annoyedly exclaims "Oh, for Heaven's sake, It's Patsy!" "It's Patsy" was the name of the Show Within a Show Trish was in as a young teenager.
• Shown Their Work:
  • Recalling and listing items, such as street names, is a real life grounding strategy taught to rape and sexual assault survivors.
  • A Cracked article from an abuse survivor detailed how realistically the show portrayed stalking and abusers.
• Show Within a Show: In her youth Trish starred in the TV show It's Patsy , which was a popular sitcom/teen-life series. Currently she hosts a radio talk-show Trish Talk, which she describes as a "lifestyle show".
• Spanner in the Works: In "AKA 1,000 Cuts", Jessica finally has Kilgrave tied up in her apartment, gagged so he cannot use his powers, after he has already used his powers to arrange for Hope to be freed from prison. With only the need to wait out the time until it all is done, Robyn leads a mob of former Kilgrave victims to attack Jessica because she blames Jessica for what Kilgrave has done. They knock Jessica out and release Kilgrave.
• Stalker with a Crush: Kilgrave has grown obsessed with Jessica ever since she escaped from him, and stalks her accordingly.
• Stuffed into the Fridge: As usual for Jessica Jones, the trope is gender-flipped when Kilgrave orders Ruben to kill himself in Jessica's bed.
• Suicide Attack: Kilgrave orders one woman to act as a suicide bomber, handing Will Simpson back a bomb he attempted to kill him with and then triggering it.
• Superman Stays out of Gotham:
  • When Claire Temple offers to reach out to a friend of hers and bring him in to fight Kilgrave, Jessica refuses the help, saying that she cannot risk anybody else falling under Kilgrave's control.
  • Kilgrave is exactly the sort of threat S.H.I.E.L.D. is supposed to contain, and he even manages to make the news a few times. But it's also a justified example: Kilgrave's existence doesn't even qualify as rumor until Hope kills her parents, and even then its clear that aside from Jessica and some of Kilgrave's other victims, 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.
• Super Soldier: The mysterious 'IGH' organization is running a super soldier program using medication to give soldiers advanced healing and physical abilities. Red pills bring on the advanced abilities, white pills allow the user to maintain them, and blue pills bring them down so their bodies do not succumb to over-exertion. There is also some currently unexplained connection between IGH and Jessica herself.
• Super Strength: Jessica's main superpower. Luke Cage also has superhuman strength, though who is stronger is never left conclusive.
• Super Weight: Most of the characters are on the low side.
  • Jessica herself is an Abnormal Weight. She has enhanced strength, faster healing (without an actual healing factor) and super-jumping abilities, but her durability is not much more than a tough human and she's as vulnerable to gunfire as a normal human. She's also as light as a slender woman, so she's easily tossed around.
  • Luke Cage is a Super Weight. In addition to his impervious skin, he has super strength greater than Jessica's.
  • Kilgrave is a Super Weight, and potentially slipping into Hyper Weight by the end of the series. While he's physically a normal human, his powers would enable him to be a full blown Person of Mass Destruction were he so inclined.
  • Will Simpson is an Iron Weight, being a former Special Ops soldier and trained police officer, slipping up to Abnormal Weight with the use of his performance enhancing drugs to put him on par with Jessica.
  • Trish Walker is a Muggle Weight in the process of working her way up to Iron Weight throughout the series.
• Terrible Interviewees Montage: Jessica sets up interviews for people who've been targets of mind control in order to find more of Kilgrave's victims. Unusually for a Terrible Interviewees Montage, a decent number of the interviewees are legit, but for the most part the montage consists of obvious bullshitters wasting Jessica's time.
• Thanatos Gambit: Kilgrave frequently sets up timed or responsive instructions in people around him to activate in the event that Jessica manages to harm or capture him. These are often particularly brutal or graphic, and include instructions to make sure she sees it.
  Jessica: I could kill you right here and now.
  Kilgrave: But you won't, because you don't know what'll happen when I die.
• Therapy Is for the Weak:
  • Jessica emphatically states that she neither needs nor wants therapy, instead relying on self-medication with alcohol and internal repression. The coping technique she uses during moments of stress is based on a real-life grounding technique taught to assault survivors, but she at one point angrily laments how little it actually does.
  • Several of the Kilgrave survivors who go to the discussion group become disillusioned as time goes on, and are easily stirred by Robyn to abandon their talking in favour of retribution. They point out that sharing their stories over and over again is not fixing anything.
• Title Drop: Each episode gets its name dropped at some point during the show.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Hogarth believes that she can make a bargain with Kilgrave to use his powers for her own ends. In painfully ironic fashion, she does not die because of her actions, the people around her die.
  • Simpson casually looks into a package brought to him by an old lady who says that it was sent by Kilgrave. Naturally, it's a bomb.
  • When Kilgrave is imprisoned in an airtight cell behind very thick glass, Simpson gives Trish his gun so she can shoot Kilgrave if she has to. Shooting him would require her to break the glass that's keeping his powers contained, so her next shot would have to come quickly and kill him instantly to stop him giving an order, and since there is no indication that she has any experience shooting people, it would be much more likely that she would just set him free while she's armed and in a perfect position to hurt herself and others.
  • The car accident that killed the Jones family was caused by Jessica's father turning around WHILE DRIVING to smack her for misbehaving.
• Trauma Conga Line: This is not the most chipper of series, as befitting a noir series. Relationships typically end with loss and trauma at best, characters die even when they're trying to do better, hope spots are everywhere and lives just keep getting worse the longer Kilgrave is active - which becomes a plot point. Jessica's trauma is the most obvious, but nearly every supporting character's life is a long line of terrible events.
• Trust Password: Near the end, Jessica and Trish decide on something to say so that Trish will know that Jessica still is not under Kilgrave's control. They realize that they cannot use something she would normally say because Kilgrave could get her to act like herself, so they decide on something she would normally never say: "I love you."
• The Unmasqued World: The series sees Jessica investigating superhuman threats, which as fans of the MCU know, have become increasingly common in-universe these past few years.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Several characters end up becoming this in Jessica's quest to capture Kilgrave.
  • Pam encourages Jeri to be ruthless in her divorce talks with Wendy. This leads to Wendy's death and Pam accused of her murder, after she hit her to stop Wendy from killing Jeri.
  • Robyn (not entirely guiltless, since she has just learned her brother is dead) thinks Jessica knows more than what she thinks, so she leads part of the support group for Kilgrave's victims to demand answers from her. Robyn proceeds to knock Jessica out and free Kilgrave, thinking he is a victim of Jessica's. This leads to Kilgrave taking his father away, Hope's suicide and Robyn's almost death.
• Vertigo Effect: Jessica's reaction after a Wham Line. "You heard that?" "I wrote it!"
• Villainous Crush: Kilgrave believes himself to be in love with Jessica, although it's very unlikely he's actually able to feel such an emotion at all. Obsessed is far more accurate.
• Villain Pedigree: Kilgrave gets an upgrade to this in a meta sense. In the comics, Purple Man is at best a third-stringer of a villain who never managed to escape his camp 60's origins. The much more realistic nature of the MCU, along with the Jessica Jones series itself turning him into a massive walking allegory for abusive relationships, transforms the MCU's Kilgrave into an absolute top-shelf villain who is really only held back by his obsession with Jessica — as time goes on, one gets the impression he could've been a threat to the Avengers, even.
• You Keep Using That Word: Jessica's upstairs neighbor Robyn keeps referring to her as a "cougar". That term is typically used to describe a sexually active woman over the age of 50, sometimes with the connotation that they specifically target younger men. Krysten Ritter was 33 years old when season 1 was filmed, so Jessica is too young to get that slang applied to her, even if she was actively pursuing Ruben.
• Wham Line:
  • For those familiar with the comics, "Give me a red." This line reveals that Will Simpson is the comic book supervillain 'Nuke'.
  • "Let go, Jessica!" Except this time, it doesn't work.
  • "You heard that?" "I wrote it!"
• Wham Shot: Late in the first episode, Hope has been reunited with her parents and they are getting into an elevator and ready to get the hell back to Omaha... and Hope pulls out a gun and stares Jessica down just as the doors close.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Simpson questions Jessica several times when they have the chance in relation to Kilgrave. The notional reason is that they need to get evidence to save Hope, and also that prison would be far worse than death for him. A LOT of people die because of this. Even Hope eventually calls bullshit on it, in a very extreme way.
• With a Foot on the Bus: In the very first episode, Jessica gets ready to depart to Hong Kong when she finds out that Killgrave is back in town. She has her luggage ready, an available taxi, and must decide: go to the airport and escape, or stay and fight back? Of course, she chose the later.
• Worf Had the Flu: Jessica is wounded rather severely towards the close of the series, including bruised and broken ribs which severely impair her movements and strength. When Simpson is beating her in a fight, he acknowledges that without that damage he would probably be losing.
• Would Hit a Girl: Kilgrave at least once claims that he does not hurt women. Throughout the season, he forces people to kill women, and forces women to kill themselves. Given his mentality, he might actually believe it.

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