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Seven years after her show came to an end on Netflix, Jessica Jones is finally back in the MCU, returning in the latest episode of Daredevil: Born Again. And boy did she take her sweet time getting here. It’s a huge shame, then, that she’s been saddled with one of my least-favorite comic-book tropes.
I don’t even mind that it’s taken six episodes. It would have been easy to rush the return of everyone’s favourite PI, so it’s actually quite reassuring to see Jessica folded into Matt’s world again when the narrative actually called for it.
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Power down
“After Danielle, it drops out sometimes then comes back,” Jessica admits. “I don’t think there’s an owner manual for this shit.”
Daredevil moves on then, asking after Danielle, but we see what Jessica was talking about firsthand when she and Matt later team up in a fight.
Jessica kicks things off with a punch, knocking through a wall with her bare hands before throwing a giant crate at some hapless goons. So far, so good. Something shifts, though, when she goes to punch a guy and it ends up hurting her fist.
That simply should not be the case, not for Jessica Jones, who’s arguably the strongest street-level hero in the entire MCU.
So what gives? Sure, there isn’t “an owner manual for this shit,” as Jessica puts it, but unfortunately, there is precedence for this in superhero storytelling.
Probably every hero in Marvel’s long, illustrious history has dealt with performance issues when it comes to their powers at some point. But this issue disproportionately affects female superheroes in a rather dire way.
Look back at all of Marvel’s biggest, most popular female characters and a pattern quickly emerges. Most wind up being perceived as weaker than their male counterparts, only to power up beyond them before they’re suddenly cut back down to size again.
X-Men’s Phoenix, The Fantastic Four’s Invisible Woman and most famously of all, the Scarlet Witch, have all been depowered or even killed because they’re deemed too strong and threatening. Sometimes more than once for that matter, too.
It’s an exhausting trope that’s played out time and time again, implying that women and their vast power must be controlled. Failure to do so often leads to madness and even the end of the world if men like Cyclops and Reed Richards don’t step in to stop these “unstable” women first.
Punching up
Marvel isn’t the only one guilty of playing into this unfortunate sexist trope. It wasn’t so long ago that Netflix’s Umbrella Academy brought the Dark Horse comics to life in a similar vein, ending the first season with Vanya (Elliot Page) losing control and destroying the entire planet.
Such themes have been so prevalent for so long that comics writer Gail Simone coined the term “Women in Refrigerators” to describe this as far back as 1999.
Drawing inspiration from the particularly gruesome death of a woman in the Green Lantern comics, “Fridging” was used to describe the disproportionate harm female characters face in order to progress the story of their male counterparts. Often, this involves murder, sexual assault, or depowering these women in some fashion, treating them as objects to be abused rather than as people in their own right.
On the face of it, Jessica Jones could be considered a prime example of this in both her Netflix show and the comics it drew from. In fact, her entire motivation in season one was driven by The Purple Man, who enslaved Jessica using his mind control powers, thereby robbing her of any agency.
But in reality, Jessica’s struggles actually challenged the “fridging” trope, giving her the space needed to deal with the reality of what Kilgrave did to her and overcome this on her own terms. How often has a female character going through such a thing been put front and centre across three entire seasons? And crucially, Jessica is the one who learns to deal with her own trauma without help from any man.
Perhaps that’s why these sudden power glitches upon Jessica’s return are so frustrating. She was already depowered in a sense when she lost control of her body, but overcoming that was key to Jessica’s arc. Why put the only female Defender through such a thing when one of her male counterparts could have been chosen instead?
Jessica’s only been back in the MCU for a minute, and already, she’s been stripped of what makes her the strongest one working at this level.
In that aforementioned chat with Radio Times, executive producer Sana Amanat promised that they plan “to do some cool things” with Jessica Jones moving forward, including some “story-specific” exploration of what her abilities actually are. But with so much going on towards the end of season two, it looks like the payoff for this might not actually come until season three.
The problem is we’ve already waited long enough to see Jessica Jones back in action. Don’t make us wait longer again to see her kick ass with her usual confidence or I might have to take a swig from whatever Jessica’s drinking.
Daredevil: Born Again season 2 is streaming now on Disney Plus. For more, check out our Daredevil: Born Again season 2 review and never miss an episode with our Daredevil: Born Again season 2 release schedule.