While big-screen superhero epics favor explosions and broad strokes over nuanced characters and psychologically rich drama, Marvel's Jessica Jones offered a surprising alternative when it premiered on Netflix last year.
While Krysten Ritter's hard-bitten, quietly wounded Jessica made the ongoing lack of female superheroes on the big screen all the more glaring, she also served as a reminder of what television can do that movies can't. Over the course of 13 episodes, Jessica grappled with the trauma of having been abducted, raped, and held hostage inside her own body—all things from which her own super-strength couldn't protect her.
Marvel Studios has touched on the subject of PTSD before in characters like Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) and Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan). But there's only so much trauma you can delve into between action set pieces on a 150-minute running time. Jessica Jones, on the other hand, has the narrative space to struggle, relapse, and regress into wholly realistic self-destructive patterns before finally finding the resolve to take action against her abuser, Kilgrave (David Tennant).
"She was kind of messed up even before Kilgrave came along," Rosenberg told Esquire, "and so in Season Two we can explore what's possible for her moving forward." And what's possible is not a miraculous recovery. Throughout Season One, Jessica's attempts to move on with her life were thwarted at every turn by a gleeful Kilgrave. But with him out of the picture, the cracks in her coping skills will become more apparent.
"I learned from working on Dexter that you can advance the character, but you never want to cure the character," Rosenberg said. "With Dexter, the moment he felt guilt or accepted that he was 'bad,' the show's over. He's no longer a sociopath. The equivalent for us would be if Jessica somehow recovered from the damage that had been done to her. People don't just heal, you don't go through that just to say, 'Oh, he got arrested, he's in jail, I'm OK now.'" Kilgrave's fate was a little more final than a jail sentence, but the same principle applies for Jessica. "That trauma is a huge part of who she is now."
With Kilgrave gone and Luke Cage busy with his own show, Season Two's supporting cast will look very different, and Jessica's relationship with adopted sister Trish (Rachael Taylor) will be even more firmly at the core. Theirs is a dynamic so charged with history and intimacy that some viewers–including Ritter herself at the audition stage–mistook them for ex-lovers before their backstory was revealed.
"People would love that," Rosenberg noted, not un-wearily. "I sometimes think there's sort of a prurient interest in that, like, can't women just be friends? I feel like for me that's what is unique about the relationship, that they are such intimate friends, and I think they don't have to become lovers—that being said, one never knows."
As of August, Rosenberg and her writers are midway through the writing process on Season Two and enjoying a much more relaxed schedule thanks to Luke Cage and The Defenders being shuffled ahead of them in Marvel's Netflix slate. "When I went to cable [on] having worked in network TV for many years, I realized I was doing the best work of my career," Rosenberg recalled, "because I had the time to do it. Half of writing is rewriting, and that's what you have the time for on a cable schedule. This is an even more generous schedule than that."
As for The Defenders, Rosenberg is "only as involved as they need me to be." Helmed by Daredevil producers Douglas Petrie and Marco Ramirez, The Defenders will premiere in between the first season of Luke Cage and the second season of Jessica Jones, and unites Luke and Jessica with Charlie Cox's Daredevil and Finn Jones's Iron Fist. "I need to know what they're doing in order to plan for Season Two of Jessica, and they need to know what we're planning on in turn. Marvel is very smart and they enjoy collaboration, so there's never one maniac trying to take ownership."
Season Two of Jessica Jones isn't likely to premiere until late 2017 at the earliest, but Marvel's Luke Cage–which follows Jessica's former love interest through his own dark journey in Harlem–should do more than tide you over. It hits Netflix on 30 September.
