Spoiler alert: this blog contains minor details of episode one of Marvel’s Jessica Jones on Netflix
Have you met Miss Jones? Today, Netflix releases all 13 episodes of its second Marvel series, only seven months after the arrival of its first, Daredevil. Jessica Jones – named for a private detective with mysterious powers played by Breaking Bad’s Krysten Ritter – takes place in Hell’s Kitchen, the same grimy, rundown corner of the Marvel universe where vigilante lawyer Matt Murdock cracks criminal skulls.
There’s no need to have watched Daredevil, though: the hard-boiled, hard-hitting, hard-drinking Jessica Jones stands, pretty defiantly, on her own. (Netflix would probably prefer it if you did go back and watch all of Daredevil – these are just the opening salvos of an ongoing plan to launch standalone series for four street-level characters, before bringing them all together as the Defenders, like an urban pop-up version of the Avengers.)
So you can start watching Jessica Jones without worrying too much about how much she fits into Netflix’s gritty masterplan, or the wider, shinier Marvel screen universe. But here are some useful things to know about the show before diving in.
It’s even darker than Daredevil
When we first meet the benighted, errant Jones, she is working late, taking incriminating pictures of straying lovers. “A big part of the job is looking for the worst in people,” she explains, in the show’s appropriately noir voiceover.
It feels of a piece with the similarly nocturnal Daredevil: gloomy alleys, looming fire escapes and trash-choked gutters under sickly sodium lights. But Jessica Jones is emotionally dark, too – living in the shadow of a mysterious trauma that even her (unexplained) super strength apparently couldn’t protect her from.
There’s a noir tradition of the private eye getting physically worked over by thugs in the course of a case; despite her cynical exterior and Thermos flask filled with bourbon, it’s clear that Jessica Jones is beating herself up. She has isolated herself from friends and, in moments of stress, repeats a mantra of street names to re-centre herself. Even before we get a glimpse of David Tennant as the callous Kilgrave, there’s a tangible sense that something awful has happened.
It features capable women, on and off-screen
With her battered leather jacket and habitually unimpressed expression, Ritter conveys street-smarts and strength even before her powers are revealed. Her occasional boss, played by Carrie-Anne Moss, is an influential lawyer who understands the value of compartmentalisation. (She’s also a lesbian, with a loyal, long-term partner and a suspiciously attractive secretary.) Jones’s best friend Trish (Rachael Taylor) is a popular radio talkshow host who tackles hot-button social issues.
Even when they are in peril, the women of Jessica Jones are portrayed as resourceful, tenacious, multi-faceted characters. Showrunner Melissa Rosenberg was previously lead writer on Dexter, and also adapted all of the Twilight books for the big screen. She has also already demonstrated her own tenacity – Jessica Jones was originally in development at ABC before Netflix, and Rosenberg has been shepherding the project since 2010. The first two episodes are directed by SJ Clarkson, a Brit who cut her teeth on Doctors and EastEnders before working on Life on Mars, Heroes and Orange is the New Black (her next directing gig is on HBO’s Martin Scorsese/Mick Jagger-produced Vinyl).
It’s easily the sexiest Marvel has ever been
Tony Stark is supposed to be a womanising playboy, but despite all those rippling muscles and form-fitting costumes, the Marvel movies are strangely asexual. While there may have been a lot of grunting and heavy breathing in Daredevil, that was more to do with its down-and-dirty, visceral fight choreography.
Jessica Jones sets out a more adult stall from the outset by having its hero voyeuristically peeking in windows – but it also features Marvel’s first proper sex scene. While it would be reductive to say that the sexual content in Jessica Jones is its USP – the scenes are character-driven and, rather realistically, seem to be even more enjoyable for all parties the second time around – it does set up some unique storytelling possibilities, which certainly makes it stand out in what is becoming an increasingly crowded universe.
It’s also faithful to the source material: Alias, the comic series that introduced the character of Jessica Jones in 2001, was Marvel’s first R-rated title due to its sexual content and explicit language.
It’s the not-so-secret launchpad for Netflix’s next series
After surreptitiously snapping him through a bedroom window, Jessica properly meets Luke Cage – in the imposing physical form of The Good Wife’s Mike Colter – in his meticulously clean dive bar. “Lotta booze for a small woman,” he notes, as Jessica necks shot after shot of bourbon. “I don’t get asked on many second dates,” she replies.
The audience is invited to see Cage through Jessica’s eyes: enormous, and enormously attractive, sexually confident, funny and also fundamentally decent. It’s not a bad way to tee up Cage as credible leading man for his own Netflix series, due next year.
First episodes traditionally involve a lot of dramatic legwork, but Jessica Jones manages to set up its world economically, helped by Ritter’s sardonic voiceover. The pervasive atmosphere of emotional damage lurking barely below the surface is leavened by spiky dialogue and a surprising amount of humour – there’s just something inherently funny about someone acting out when they have superpowers, be it throwing a boot clean through the ceiling to quiet down annoying neighbours, or effortlessly throwing a belligerent client through a plate-glass door when they refuse to pay up.
What is also appealing about Jessica Jones is, unlike other comicbook heroes who have recently transferred to the small screen, such as The Flash or Supergirl, she has no pop culture baggage or backstory. No one really has any pre-existing ideas of what a Jessica Jones series should be, so it can be whatever it wants.
The first season of Daredevil was essentially the slow-motion origin story of how a physically gifted vigilante eventually evolved into a more traditional costumed hero. Jessica Jones looks like being almost the opposite: she refers obliquely to past attempts at being a hero, but seems to have settled into a grungier civilian groove.
As a private eye, it would have been easy to set up the show as a sexier Rockford Files, with a different case to solve in each episode. But Rosenberg seems to have a grander plan, a drawn-out, fraught confrontation with Tennant’s wispy, malevolent Kilgrave and his insidious mind-control powers. We first hear about Kilgrave’s cruelty secondhand – “He made me do things I didn’t want to do,” sobs Hope, his most recent victim – but we’re only just discovering the depths of his depravity.
Episode one’s bracing ending blows away the enjoyably disreputable fug of booze, sex and black humour, and might even have been a more effective cliffhanger if the next episode wasn’t just a click away.
All 13 episodes of Marvel’s Jessica Jones are available on Netflix now.
