TV Review: Marvel's Jessica Jones

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Synopsis: When Jessica (Krysten Ritter) crosses paths with a highly intelligent psychopath, she and Trish (Rachael Taylor) must repair their fractured relationship and team up to take him down. But a devastating loss reveals their conflicting ideas of heroism, and sets them on a collision course that will forever change them both.

Review: The final chapter in Marvel and Netflix's street level superhero branch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe arrives in the form of the third season of Jessica Jones. Greenlit and filmed before the various comic book series began getting cancelled by the streaming service, this run of episodes does not feature any sort of closure to the narrative of the superpowered private investigator played to perfection by Krysten Ritter and instead continues as if there was always the potential for there to be a fourth season. Maybe if showrunner Melissa Rosenberg knew this was her last chance to tell a Jessica Jones story she may have approached this season differently because, as it is, it feels like more of the same as the last two seasons.

The first season of Jessica Jones was a story of female empowerment that featured one of her most recognizable villains, Killgrave (David Tennant). Telling a relevant story at the height of the MeToo movement, the first season solidified Krysten Ritter as a worthy Jessica. Season two tried a bit too hard to give Jessica's origin a boost by focusing on her similarly powered mother, played by the always excellent Janet McTeer. For season 3, the series pulls further away from a comics accurate story and digs deep for a villain who the majority of fans would not recognize without typing his name into Google. Still, the addition of Benjamin Walker, Jeremy Bobb, and Sarita Choudhury add some serious chops to the cast which makes it unfortunate how long it takes the story to kick into gear.

Of all the Marvel/Netflix seasons to date, this run is the most grounded in reality and puts Jessica face to face with a serial killer. The problem is that, despite a shocking cliffhanger to wrap the first episode, it takes another three episodes before the story really starts to get moving. Usually, Marvel/Netflix series start out quick and stall in the middle, but of the eight episodes made available for review, this season works in reverse order. You know that one standalone episode almost every Netflix series has before the final run of episodes? Well, Jessica Jones has that one as the second chapter of the season. That episode, helmed by Ritter, is a solid episode but one that stalls the narrative momentum from the get go. The show makes up for it by addressing the animosity between Trish and Jessica stemming from the death of Jessica's mother last season and handles their tenuous relationship very well.

The rest of the supporting cast are excellent, but they are also the biggest problem with this season. Eka Darville and Carrie-Ann Moss are both very good reprising their roles as Malcolm Ducasse and Jeri Hogarth, but their increased subplots take a large amount of screen time without feeling very relevant to the main narrative. As the season progresses, they do collide with the main story, but it still feels like filler within the confines of the show. I could easily have seen Jeri and Malcolm in a spin-off series focused on the legal and personal entanglements in their lives, but here it feels like it is padding a story that isn't quite deep enough to stand on it's own.

Despite that, the exact nature of whom Benjamin Walker and Jeremy Bobb are playing I will leave up to you to discover when you watch the show. Suffice it to say that they are interesting characters but lack the comic book legacy that Killgrave brought to the first season. Still, this is a very different type of enemy for Jessica and a much more gruesome foe than we have seen on any of these shows so far. Plus, that cliffhanger moment I mentioned from the first episode resonates through the rest of the season and puts some humanity back into Jessica Jones. The noirish narration and retro score still keep the same tone and feel as previous years while the grittier villain tries to take things in another direction.

Like the seasons that came before it, this run of Jessica Jones is good but nowhere near great. In fact, the first two seasons felt so much more in line with the comic book that this series feels less like a superhero show and more like any number of generic network crime series. Krysten Ritter and Rachael Taylor are solid in their performances but are not given strong enough material to elevate this to even being on par with what came before it. Pulling the story in too many directions ends up feeling like set up for a fourth season and beyond which feels anticlimactic knowing this is the last run for this character. While I have enjoyed my time with Jessica Jones, the distance between this world and the main MCU has never been more noticeable (not a single reference to INFINITY WAR or ENDGAME despite references to Captain America and others). I hope these characters return someday and maybe even played by the same actors, but for now this season ends up feeling as underwhelming a sendoff as you could imagine.

The final season of Jessica Jones premieres June 14th on Netflix.