Think you’re prepared to binge this fearless tale of fractured hearts and minds? Here’s our Jessica Jones review — and the Do’s and Don’t’s of Marvel’s latest masterpiece.
“I’m not going to break,” Jessica Jones assures a lover in the opening hour of her titular Netflix series. And it’s true, of course; gifted with superhuman strength, Jessica is very hard to hurt.
Related: Here’s what we learned from Jessica Jones episode 1 at NYCC
At least on the outside. Her mind — a place viewers of Jessica Jones will get to know very well — is an unparalleled wasteland of trauma, thanks to the manipulations of the mind-controlling Kilgrave.
That combination of invulnerability and wreckage is the perfect cocktail for the new series from Netflix and Marvel. Jessica Jones is deeply interested in strength, its limits and definitions — and the show is even more concerned with just how terrifyingly breakable people are.
In Jessica Jones, minds are fragile and bodies are rebellious. Cities crumble around their citizens, while relationships bend and shatter, leaving deadly fragments behind. Set against a New York winter, it’s a story that revels in its own bleak coldness, but also one that delights in bursts of intense warmth and true brightness.
…and just enough hope to make you really, really worried.
Do’s and Don’t’s of watching ‘Jessica Jones’
Do: Keep ‘Daredevil’ in mind
As the second of Marvel’s collaborations with Netflix, Jessica Jones calls up an inevitable comparison to the acclaimed Daredevil. Luckily, the new heroine of Hell’s Kitchen stands up beautifully.
Jessica Jones is the jitterbug to Daredevil‘s waltz, the alleyway to Daredevil‘s avenue. Jessica’s story is less gory than Matt Murdock’s, and yet it is more visceral; both series aim for the heart, but Daredevil works from the head down. Jessica Jones claws its way up from your guts.
While fans expecting immediate crossovers might be disappointed, there are plenty of familiar points between the two series. Jessica and Matt’s stories unfold with similar thematic weight (think young women in need of lawyers, for a start) and local haunts like Metro General Hospital become welcome stomping grounds.
As to whether any familiar faces turn up, well, fans will just have to wait and see.
Don’t: Mess with Jessica
But it’s hard to think about Daredevil for very long once you settle in with Jessica Jones.
The pantheon of live-action female heroes is slowly (slowly) filling, but Jessica might just take up a row all by herself. As portrayed by the exceptional Krysten Ritter, she is both bitter and funny, at once cynical, selfish, and irrationally kind.
Stalking New York City with chapped lips, red eyes, and a raging case of alcoholism, Ritter looks like a good gust of wind could send her flying. But tiny frame be damned — her Jones is so determined that she’d dare the wind to try, and then call it a foul name as it retreated.
And equal, if not more care is paid to Jessica’s damaged mind. The scars she bears are still bleeding when we meet her, a fact she herself comes realize in abrupt moments of intense terror.
Jessica’s trauma is as palpable as her strength, and watching her reconcile those tremendous forces is one of the series’ most intense and surprising rewards.
Do: Be prepared to fall in love
So yes, there’s lots of doom and gloom and psychological wounding in Jessica Jones. But for every appalling horror, there is a clever and appealing character to add light and depth to the story’s inherent darkness.
There’s Mike Colter’s debut as Luke Cage, the intense, charming, and subtle object of Jessica’s affections. Luke makes the perfect counterpoint to Jessica’s snarky energy, and fans will be eager to see him strike out on his own in the upcoming Luke Cage series.
There’s Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor), Jessica’s unwavering ally in all things, who clings to her own dreams of heroism. There’s Jeri Hogarth (a magnetic Carrie-Anne Moss), the lawyer with the razor-edged smile whose waters run dangerously deep.
And there is Eka Darville as Malcolm, in what may be the breakout performance of Jessica Jones. Initially a sweet source of humor, Jessica’s addicted neighbor proves to be a tragically moving figure. Malcolm reflects the ironic tragedies of New York City — and proves to have a much deeper connection to the dark heart of Jessica Jones than anyone could have predicted.
Don’t: Open the door
Speaking of dark hearts…
Jessica Jones would not be what it is without its viscerally terrifying villain. Like Daredevil‘s Wilson Fisk, David Tennant’s Kilgrave is so overwhelmingly, possessively powerful that he almost feels like a force of nature.
But where Fisk was an unfeeling tide of change sweeping through Hell’s Kitchen, Kilgrave is an elemental spirit — with bad intentions.
He is pure, heady malevolence, cutting a blade-like figure through Manhattan. Tennant’s scythe-like grin is both invitation and warning; he may be the scariest thing Marvel has ever attempted to portray.
The Reaper is coming, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Because Jessica Jones doesn’t waste time in animating one of its most terrifying precepts. With Kilgrave’s manipulative power, every one of the eight million people in New York City become proxies to his will. Kilgrave can literally be anyone, anywhere, at any time.
No one is safe. No one can be trusted. Kilgrave has already broken the world; the question of Jessica Jones is whether Jessica and all she cares about will be shattered with it.
Jessica Jones will be available for streaming on Netflix at 12:01 a.m. on Nov. 20.