JESSICA JONES Season 2 Themes, Relationships, and Villains Discussed by Melissa Rosenberg
Jessica Jones is probably one of the darkest properties that Marvel has brought to life. The main reason for that was David Tennant’s Kilgrave, who was one hell of a disturbing villain. I’m really looking forward to seeing what Marvel has planned for Season 2, which will be set after the events of The Defenders. During an interview with EW, executive producer Melissa Rosenberg talked about Jessica Jones and how she is helping with the character in The Defenders, which is currently in development.
“My colleagues Marco Ramirez and Doug Petrie, who are doing Defenders, they’ve shared material. We’ve sat down for many conversations about what are they doing, what’s happening with Jessica? They want my input, they want all the different showrunners’ input on the characters that they’re most familiar with. Marvel was very smart in hiring those guys, because they’re really collaborative. They enjoy collaboration, which is not always the case, and they listen, and we listen to them. We’re really trying to find a way to respond to the things that they want to do, and them to respond to the things we want to do. So far so good. It’s working out. If they weren’t who they were as people, it could be very problematic. But they’re the absolutely right people to do this.”
We don’t really know what season two will entail, but Rosenberg talks about some of the themes, relationships, and characters that they are looking to explore further, mostly with Jessica and Trish.
“I’m interested in continuing to explore the relationship between Trish and Jessica. That is the core relationship in the piece. It is about female friendship, it is about how friends evolve — they’re sisters, really — and it’s about how they evolve and ping off each other. I’m interested in relationships, whether they be romantic, or family, or friends, or professional — that’s what’s interesting to me, is Jessica in relationship to people.”
When asked about the how there are fans who would like to see a romantic side of the relationship between Trish and Jessica evolve, she says:
“There are. A lot of people saw that in their relationship. Honestly, I love that people are seeing that. I’m fine with that. It’s not what interests me about their relationship. To me, it’s about their history, and their trust and connection.”
She goes on to talk about how their relationship has changed in the wake of the events they went through together in the first season:
“They started off estranged in season 1, and then came together in the most profound way, where Jessica was willing to sacrifice herself for Trish. And Trish was becoming an equal partner in this relationship. There’s always this element between them of Trish has everything — beauty, grace, success and she’s educated — she has everything you could possibly want, except powers. Jessica has the powers. She’s very comfortable with those powers. One of the places that we’re never going is her going, ‘Oh, I don’t want to have powers anymore.’ That’s Bewitched and I’m never going there. That’s our character. It’s an interesting dichotomy of them figuring out there’s an envy involved, there’s support, there’s compassion, there’s frustration. For Trish, it’s, ‘What I could do if I had your powers.’ I don’t think Jess feels that as much. Jess doesn’t care about money or fame or any of that; she would never want any of it. But I think she would love to have the normalcy of her life in some way. Actually, what she envies most of Trish is her heart, I think, because Trish is such a giving, loving person, and is really about helping other people. Jessica just can’t quite get there. I think if she envies anything in Trish, it would be her generosity.”
It’s good to know that these two characters are going to be explored more in the upcoming season. The question is, who is the villain that they will be fighting against? Turns out there is going to be more than one villain for Jones to take on, and Rosenberg admits that they can’t beat Kilgrave.
“Or antagonists, plural. No one is ever going to beat David Tennant as Kilgrave, so you don’t do that. The biggest mistake would be to try to repeat that. You just go, “OK, we’re not doing that, so we have this open to us.”
She obviously wouldn’t reveal who these villains would be, but I can’t wait to find out. In the meantime, what villains would you like to see Jessica Jones take on?