The first season of Jessica Jones was all about New York’s booziest superhero confronting the nightmares of her past in the form of the Purple Man. Although he’s gone by the time of season 2, he’s most definitely not forgotten – and the show will use his return to delve further into Jessica’s messed up past.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly as part of a new preview of the show’s return, star Krysten Ritter and showrunner Melissa Rosenberg discussed the return of David Tennant’s sinister villain Kilgrave in season 2. But as prominent as the villain’s return (presumably in Jessica’s head, rather than an actual, comic-book-appropriate return from the grave) seems to be in what we’ve seen of season 2 for now, the new episodes will be about a lot more than just Jessica still struggling to put Kilgrave behind her:
RITTER: I think Jessica is in a pretty dark headspace when we meet her at the top of season 2. The Defenders took place over the course of, like, a minute – well, it was a week long – so that was like a blip in time, and we didn’t focus too much on it.
ROSENBERG: In season 1, we focused on Jessica’s trauma, on Jessica facing her abuser, but in season 2, we wanted to go even deeper than that. As you’ve seen in season 1, she was somewhat of a mess even before Kilgrave came into her life, so it was really just about digging deeper into this chaos and peeling back those layers, just going to the core of her being. That was our objective.
As exciting as it is to know Tennant’s creepy villain is back for more this time round — and it makes sense, given the huge, horrible role Kilgrave played in her life, that Jessica doesn’t just immediately think she’s done internally dealing with Kilgrave after snapping his neck — hopefully it’s a return that facilitates more introspection and dives into Jessica’s character. If he’s the primary “threat” of the season again, just in a different form than the first, that might be a little too much.
The interview also briefly mentioned the connections, or lack thereof, to other MCU stories. Aside from Ritter adding that The Defenders wasn’t something that the second season will really focus “too much on,” Rosenberg had a pretty definitive answer on whether or not the upcoming team-up film, Avengers: Infinity War, would have anything to do with Netflix’s “street-level heroes.”
ROSENBERG: None whatsoever. Our partners are Marvel, and if we’re doing something that’s counter to [their continuity], they would pull us back or orient us on the right path, so clearly we’re [ok]. But we’re very much in our own world.