”This bitch is in control of you now…”
By Eric Goldman
Note: We’re writing up separate reviews for all 13 Jessica Jones episodes, though for the purposes of binging brevity, some may be notably shorter than our usual reviews. Click here to see all of our Jessica Jones episode reviews.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
Wow. What an episode!
Kilgrave was in the Hannibal Lecter “scary guy behind the glass” position through this hour, bringing more and more characters into his presence, and leading up to one hell of a tense final few minutes.
There was a point in the episode, where Kilgrave’s parents were explaining the medical ailment he suffered from and the experiments done to save him, that I began to worry thy were over explaining the show’s villain – giving us way more info than we needed. But once they got through that clunkiness, what happened next made it all work. After episode 8 kinda/sorta lessened Kilgrave’s villainous impact (or at least gave him a lot of tragic back-story explanation), learning that he was actually also a sadistic child was a relief of sorts – in the end, it seems like this whole family was pretty messed up, that’s for certain.
When Kilgrave’s parents went to talk to him, you knew something would go horribly wrong, but man was it effective waiting to see what. And I loved how the entire situation kept escalating, including Trish holding Clemons at gunpoint to make him see the whole thing and get the proof they needed. Sadly, Trish then screwed up as bad as she could shooting the glass (and nearly died in the process when Kilgrave ordered her to shoot herself), but if ever there was a panic situation, this was it.
Beyond that closing sequence, the other thing that I straight up geeked out on in this episode was… Nuke! Wil Traval had all but confirmed to me he was playing the MCU version of the psychotic super soldier, but we finally saw him really begin to transform into the character here, and I took the fan bait and cheered when he finally said, “Gimmie a red.”
Jeri’s divorce drama has been an odd part of Jessica Jones, simply because it’s one of the only personal stories we’re getting for the supporting cast that isn’t tied into Kilgrave. That being the case, seeing Jeri nearly take a deal with the devil here with Kilgrave to make the Wendy problem stop was a nice way to bring everything together in a bigger way.
Of course, Kilgrave escaping raises doubts about anything that was in motion. And it was hard not to feel filled with anxiety when Hope turned down the plea bargain because Jessica told her to, given what it could mean for her future.
But then there was that final scene, as Jessica began to make a realization… a realization about Kilgrave’s powers not quite working on her anymore that was really gratifying, given in that flashback to when she killed Luke’s wife, it was odd to see her flat out not doing what Kilgrave told her, based on what we know of his powers.
The most outright exciting episode of Jessica Jones so far, “AKA Sin Bin” filled in the blanks on Kilgrave’s origins and brought a bevy of characters together in his presence for a wonderfully orchestrated scene. And on top of that, we got a big stepping-stone to Nuke making his face-painted debut in the MCU.
