Month: March 2018

By Laura Prudom

This review contains spoilers for Marvel’s Jessica Jones Season 2, episode 6, titled “Facetime.” To see where we left off, check out our review of Season 2, episode 5 and follow along with our full season binge here.

And that’s why Netflix only sent the first five episodes of the season to press. Sneaky sneakersons.

Jessica’s mystery woman is actually her mom — a revelation that changes everything. It’ll be interesting to go back and rewatch the first five episodes at some point, knowing what we now know, to see how many subtle clues were hidden in plain sight. Obviously Jess’ mom wasn’t trying to get her arrested when she took down Pryce’s henchman — perhaps that berserker rage was just the equivalent of a mama bear going into protective overdrive when her cub’s space is threatened?

It sounds like Jessica’s brother might’ve also survived the accident, given that Inez tells Jeri about a boy who was also at IGH when she was working there, one with the ability to heal people. Sure, he could be another random bystander like poor Whizzer, but another branch on the family tree would be nice.

Jessica is a character who has always felt isolated by her powers and her history — a freak, a monster, an outsider — but all of a sudden, she has a chance to reclaim the family that she lost, and that’s a seismic shift. Of course, they’re basically strangers now, and no matter how much love or desperation for belonging exists under the surface, you can’t change the past. Jessica’s traumas, fears and insecurities won’t be magically erased by this new information — and even if her mom isn’t a villain, she clearly has some issues of her own to work through —  but you have to hope there might be the potential for at least some degree of healing.

As you might have figured out by now, Jessica is probably the least messed up person on this show, and she’s so concerned with her own monstrous tendencies, she’s been too blinkered to realize everyone falling apart around her.

Trish is definitely heading for a reckoning — her obsession with Simpson’s inahler has become a full-on addiction. She’s fidgety, volatile and has no compunction about lying to her friends for a fix, and now she’s taking advantage of Malcolm’s crush on her to distract her from her inner turmoil. Unfortunately, it seems like Jess will have a couple of other, more pressing issues on her plate to notice Trish spiraling any time soon, so it’ll probably be up to Malcolm to recognize the signs and do something about it.

Jeri, meanwhile, has another goal to focus on — finding the boy with the healing hands. It’ll be interesting to see if she brings this information to Jessica — more likely, their separate investigations will dovetail nicely as we get deeper into the season.

Two other notable aspects of this episode: While the series is obviously deviating from the comic books in terms of Jessica’s origin story, Dr. Karl Malus is the name of a Marvel comics villain — a mad scientist who was fascinated with superhumans, giving numerous people abilities thanks to his own illegal research. (He later became consumed by the Symbiote Carnage, but we’re guessing the show’s proooobably going to stay away from that story thread.)

And it’s probably no coincidence that when Jessica and Oscar made love in the forger’s spilled paint, the predominant color was purple, the signature tone associated with Kilgrave (although The Defenders also occasionally used it to represent Jessica’s color palette), with a splash of yellow, the color often associated with Luke Cage. And no wonder Jessica freaked out when she woke to find Oscar drawing her while she slept — the finished painting may have seemed romantic to anyone else, but for us, it held a distinctly Kilgrave vibe.