Specially once you find out its a virus and that Jessica heals fast. Maybe her body just rejected the virus and it just took some time for that to happen.
She just hadn’t figured it out, but she should have known.
I see that others have corrected the point of confusion. My interest in rewatching the scene is that now that I know his powers didn’t work on her… and more importantly, now that I know that HE knew that … I might be able to spot some nuances in David Tennant’s performance, because Kilgrave’s thoughts should be :
“She’s going to beat me until I use my powers on her, but I can’t do that. Oh, shit.”
It also makes the episode where she lives with him a lot more interesting. We already saw him struggle to not command that guy to sell him his house. Really, he was practicing to not accidentally issue Jessica a command. As soon as he does that the jig is up.
See, I’ve thought about that, but I think he also legitimately wanted to avoid suspicious behavior that might draw Jessica and her friends’ attention to him. A suicide or homicide in Jessica’s old house would have had him on their radar tout suite. (Of course, as it happens, they tracked him down anyway…)
Yeah, my assumption was that he was trying to avoid leaving some kind of trail. Of course, he paid with an obscenely fat sack of cash he won putting the whammy on everybody in a high-stakes poker game. That would leave a trail. But the explanation that it was a test run of trying not to order people around possibly could fix that.
He had a contract for purchase drawn up for the house, so he’d explicitly made a paper trail.
The reason he’d avoided using his powers to get the house had to do with his obsession/fixation on making the “perfect life” with Jessica. He made a point to tell her that he didn’t use his powers to get the house.
Yes, be also saw during the transaction that he was having a really hard time not ordering the guy to sell the house. He had to be very careful with everything he said around Jessica. Even just saying “be quiet” would be enough to shatter the illusion.
FWIW, I share your concern regarding Marvel’s overall plan. There are about a dozen movies coming (Cap 3, Black Panther, Spider Man, Ant-Man 2, GotG 2, Avengers 3 parts 1 and 2, Dr. Strange, Captain Marvel, etc, etc). There are at least three more Netflix series on the way (Luke Cage, Iron Fist (maybe), The Punisher (maybe) and The Defenders) along with season 2 of Daredevil, another season of Agent Carter, more Agents of SHIELD, a possible AoS spinoff series, a possible Damage Control series… there may be others I’ve missed. But that to me spells oversaturation. Not all of these things can be hits and some of them are going to flop hard.
Jessica Jones however, is not one of them. JJ will rightfully be remembered as a high-water mark in the Marvel pantheon.
Erm, I don’t usually do this, but, +1.
Yeah, I hadn’t noticed that but it makes sense. My impression of why Jessica was immune was that his power worked in ways like a virus and prolonged exposure, combined with her powers allowed her to develop a tolerance and resistance towards it. It wasn’t just “OH MY GOD! I just killed this woman and that horrifies me so much I’ve broken the spell!”
I’m willing to believe it was a bit of both. If he had just done much earlier in their relationship she wouldn’t have broken the hold, but that the event WAS an impetus. Kind of like how some people show feats of strength or will in especially stressful situations.
Killing Reva(?) allowed her to break the hold, but only because of the tolerance she had developed over time, and given even more time it probably would have happened some time later or with a different impetus eventually.
E: And regardless of the in-universe explanation, which I don’t deem very significant, it works very well as a metaphor for ending abusive relationships. It reminds me a lot of the time that my (rather manipulative) ex threatened to commit suicide if I didn’t take her back to my apartment. It played out a hell of a lot like what happened with Kilgrave and Jessica, albeit with less murder and more crying and calling the police. It kind of felt like a fog had been lifted.
That’s not really a “comic book villain” move, that’s pretty standard behavior in abusive relationships. There are a a lot of women out there right now, who every night have to sit down at a dinner table and smile at a guy who regularly beats the shit out of her, because if she doesn’t, she knows he’s going to hurt her, or someone she cares about. Yeah, Kilgrave is a pathetic, petty little man. Most abusers are pathetic, petty little people. That doesn’t prevent them from doing enormous amounts of damage to people.
It may be in some sense unfair to invoke the comics, but I think it does add some insight into what the writers may have been thinking. In the comic, Jessica makes it explicit that she was technically free of Kilgrave’s control when she attacked the Scarlet Witch. This is always the problem with those not trapped in abusive relationships, that we cannot understand why people don’t assert their own agency when the opportunity arises. Even outside the actual super-power driven control, Jessica was trapped in psychological domination.
It’s just the way abusive relationships work, and lots of sympathetic people understand that. But I think I’d feel pretty bad about all the times I could have broken away but didn’t. And imagine realizing that you probably technically had your free will when you committed the murder that continues to haunt you. That’s something so difficult to handle that you might repress any acknowledgement that you had free will at the time. Until forced to confront it. You co-operated with your tormentor when you didn’t have to. And in doing so, killed someone.
Agreed. I think what made the characterization so great is that they managed to have Kilgrave have clear motivations without making him sympathetic.
And to address what you were talking about further. He was simply a superpowered version of a lot of abusers and controllers, both physical and emotional, and how they convince themselves their the good guys and their partners are the bad guys.
I liked it. I was a little slow getting into it, but by the third episode I was fairly well hooked. I binge-watched it over the last five days and finished the season tonight. David Tennant was great as Kilgrave, though I feel like a lot of his menace evaporated mid-season when they characterized him a bit more. Once they added a bit of tragic clown stuff to his character, he wasn’t quite as scary.
It’s funny, I had Simpson pegged as a discount Captain America even before he started popping those Flintstones Chewable Super Soldier Pills. He bears a passing resemblance to Chris Evans’ Cap. Didn’t quite turn out as well though.
I’m looking forward to the next season, and between this and Daredevil, I’m feeling pretty good about this Netflix/Marvel partnership. The Beats product placement is starting to get distracting, though.
I just finished watching the series and I loved it. Ritter and Tennant were both fantastic, as were a lot of the supporting characters. I loved the relationship between Jessica and Trish, and the other female relationships of different kinds.
I had watched all of Daredevil in a weekend, because while it is somewhat dark, it didn’t feel as dark to me, and had more comic book-y fights. I had planned on watching Jessica Jones fairly quickly too, but could only watch an episode or two at a time because it’s so dark. Kilgrave felt like a too realistic of a character for me to just watch for fun; his mind control powers are obviously not a real life thing, but his abuse and manipulation are very much like many real life men.
I loved that they didn’t spend a lot of time doing an origin story. You’re right that the ‘evil company toys with dangerous science accidentally creating superpowers’ story has been so many times before, I didn’t need to see an episode or two covering that. I also do love seeing someone with powers who is also somewhat of a normal person.
And I like how the TV shows do have smaller scale threats. I have seen all the Marvel movies and enjoy them, but it can get a bit repetitive with the big villains who want world domination, and the heroes who have to battle through explosions and stop them. Kilgrave could use his power to try to take over the world, I think it’s interesting that his ambitions are much more personal.
Yeah, the comparison between Kilgrave and Simpson is a good one. Both toxic relationships in different ways.
I don’t think the show “castrated” males, and Luke Cage is a great character. And the other male roles were also interesting and 3-dimensional. But I did love that they had the protagonist and sidekick go off and defeat the bad guy while the sexy love interest recovered back at home, just in this case it was a female protagonist and female sidekick, and a male sexy love interest.
Trish wearing the headphones worked at first, but then once she got into the pack of people trying to stop others from fighting, her headphones were knocked off pretty quickly, and Kilgrave took control. And even if you have headphones on and earplugs in and Kilgrave can’t control you, there are probably other people around who he can say “Hold them down and take their earplugs out”. A group of trained soldiers could coordinate something so they all have ear protection and can’t be taken down and they could figure out a way to capture or kill Kilgrave, but most of the people on Jessica Jones aren’t trained or able to coordinate something like that.
I agree with this. It was the combination of how long Kilgrave had been controlling her, and having to “get rid of” Reva. It seems that most other people aren’t under Kilgrave’s control for as long as Jessica was. It’s possible that for someone normal under his control for 2 years or something could eventually build up immunity and escape after being pushed too far, but he doesn’t usually keep people around for that long.
Good article by an abuse/stalking survivor on Cracked.com:
I really like this whole post, and definitely agree with it. However, I would also like to mention the CW show “The Originals”, specifically its first season, and how it intelligently handled mind control and its psychological after effects. Mind control was a power all throughout “The Vampire Diaries”, and in “The Originals” spin-off I felt they finally addressed some of the same sort of things in that that “Jessica Jones” does (not quite in the same way) with their character Cami. It’s worth watching, in my opinion.
I read a fan-theory article yesterday suggesting that mind control was a very plausible reason for why Jedi aren’t allowed to have relationships.