Marvel Team-Up.
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.
I was a bit surprised at how subdued the penultimate Jessica Jones felt for a good portion of the running time, which is why the surprise of Luke being under Kilgrave’s thrall the whole time worked so well as an “Ah ha!” and freaky moment. It was good to establish early on that Jessica herself would worry about Luke having additional commands given to him by Kilgrave, as it both showed Jessica being smart and also managed to somewhat defuse the concern of that actually happening – after all, if Jessica brought it up as a possibility, it probably wasn’t the case, right?
The material before than was good, just not as energized as one might expect at this point, on the heels of everything else that had happened. Luke and Jessica had a great rooftop scene where they dealt with all of their issues and Luke telling her he forgave her for what happened to Reva and, “I’ll say it every day for as long as you need to hear it” was a genuinely sweet moment… which made Kilgrave boasting that he was the one who gave all those words to Luke all the more horrible. And once more showing just how pathetic Kilgrave is, as he insisted that it was he and Jessica who truly had sexual tension.
Luke vs. Jessica was thrilling and scary, as Kilgrave ordered him to attack and she had to del with fighting someone she cared for (who she knew wasn’t in control) and someone who simply had more super strength than she did. There were so many exciting moments to this fight I’ll forgive the one really predictable beat (When Luke smashed through the wall behind her, rather than coming through the door). I loved Jessica using the wall behind her to fling herself forward and toss Luke and her using the police car door as a shield as Luke attacked over and over was incredibly intense. Okay, yeah, in the grand scheme of things any attempt to make us worry that she killed Luke isn’t going to sell – not only is his skin impenetrable but Mike Colter has two more Marvel/Netflix series to star in as Luke Cage – but this entire scenario was a wrenching one.
I’ll try not to dwell too much on Robyn being annoying (though she at least had the line about no one liking her) and just say Malcolm had some nice moments here as he couldn’t deny his own nature and act like he didn’t care about others.
Kilgrave’s abilities continue to be terrifying. From making someone stand against a fence “forever” (or at least until his command wears off) to nearly making his father chop up his own hand in a blender to the full horror movie moment of that guy in the park killing himself using garden shears, this show is not holding back on just how scary a man like that being able to do the things he is would be. Given what we already have seen him do, the idea that he’s now upgrading his powers, using Albert, is terrifying.
Meanwhile, we got a big new piece of a larger conspiracy via the introduction of IGH, the name of the group that turned Simpson into a super soldier. [And yes, I’m amused that IGH not only is a very similar name to IGN but also is an “acronym for nothing,” just like our name.] The fact that IGH paid Jessica’s medical bills after the accident that gave her superpowers opens up this organization to being very big players in a variety of ways moving forward. In the comics, the truck that hit Jessica’s family was part of an unspecific military convey carrying strange materials (a purposeful nod to the “freak accident gives someone superpowers” origin stories of the 1960s), but here it seems we might get much more info on this subject.
The penultimate episode was all about mending fences and establishing trust between Jessica and Luke… only for it all to collapse at the end and be revealed as a lie crafted by Kilgrave. In so many ways, Kilgrave has proven to be both scary and repellent, and man do I hope to see him taken down in the finale. Good luck, Jessica…
