One of Marvel’s grandest traditions is the team-up. We all know the score, a couple of heroes find that their adventures overlap and after some disagreements, eventually unite to save the day and as the MCU expanded that cinematic arm, these team-ups soon became a major selling point – Hell, it’s practically the entire plot of The Avengers. However, trust Jessica Jones to take that format and twist it into something far more darker as all of its themes and threads come to a crescendo. Obviously, the team-up in question is the union between Jessica Jones and Luke Cage that tended to be far more physical than your average pairing (no one in the Avengers had vigorous sex after their post-battle shawarma, as far as I know), but like a lot of things in Jessica’s life, nothing good tends to last. After examining all the potential good that Jones could do, we’re about find out what happens where her darker secrets finally spill out.
Seemingly pacified by the deal he and Jessica have worked out, Kilgrave moves onto the next stage of his Jones-obsessed plan which requires him to use his formidable powers of persuasion to enter a high-stakes card game and walk off with ever penny. Meanwhile, Jessica has kept to her end of her humiliating bargin by texting a selfie to Kilgrave at 10am every day, but the upside seems to be that her neighbour and former drug addicted Kilgrave-slave, Malcolm, continues to be safe as he continues to kick the heroin in his system. However, just as matters seem to be almost settling, ripples pick up when Luke Cage walks back through her door with the intent to hire her for a brand new case.
Cage is searching for Antoine Garcia, the missing brother of a nurse who will give him more details concerning the night of his wife’s death once her sibling is brought home. With their relationship sparking back up again Jessica agrees to help, but she has no idea that the endgame of her search could shed more light on a murder she committed under Kilgrave’s influence. As both she and Cage team up and lay the hurt on some local loan sharks who are also searching for Antonine, realisation hits that she might have to tank the case to stop Cage finding out her terrible secret.
Meanwhile, the tragic existence of Hope Shlottman takes yet another hit when we discover that the reason she’s been paying an inmate to rough her up is so she can miscarry Kilgrave’s unborn child which is growing inside of her. Managing to convince Horgarth to smuggle in an abortion pill, Jessica beathes a sigh of relief when the evidence Garcia has ends up being that the bus driver the night of the incident was drunk and it was all covered up. However, once Jones realises that Cage is planning to murder the driver for the death of his wife, Jessica has to implode yet another part of her life and finally come clean. But while things get messy, Kilgrave makes a surprising (and legal) use of his winnings when he makes an alarming purchase – Jessica’s childhood home.
There’s a saying in superhero storytelling that dictates that the more you love a character, the worse you treat them and if this is true, the people behind Jessica Jones must love her very much. Since we first met her, a lot of Jessica’s self loathing comes from the unspeakable things she was made to do while in the company of Kilgrave, with the chief offender being the murder of Reva Connors. However, since then, her self destructive tendencies have led her to do some pretty shady stuff as her guilt first had her stalking Luke Cage and then she ended up sleeping with him despite being “responsible” for killing his wife. It’s a fucked up position to be in, but it’s exactly the kind of stuff that separates Jones from the rest of her superheroine peers. While such characters as Black Widow, Wonder Woman and the Wasp all seem to have their lives is some sort of order, Jessica cultivates the sort of mess that would make even the chaotic existence of Tony Stark seem positively serene and it’s the examination of this that finally manages to push the show over the top. The show has been pretty unflinching in its attempts to graft themes of rape survival, trauma and toxic masculinity into a world that also has a blind, ninja lawyer in it, and at times the more traditional superheroics haven’t mixed as well as they could, but in “AKA You’re A Winner!”, we find everything slotting into place as we creep to the halfway point. Tellingly, the drama mostly revolves about the on again/off again pairing of Jessica and Luke, so it’s no surprise that the creators of this episode take sadistic glee in taking the notion of the Marvel team-up and shitting all over it from a great height.
Before we get to the World’s Mightiest Breakup, the powers that be ensure that all the peripheral stories still carry weight as they go uncomfortably further into the darkness. For a start, Kilgrave may still be being kept on the outskirts of the story, but his little mini-plot that sees him clean out a gambling den and then make a made beat his head repeatedly against a pole ends up with quite the chilling postscript as he buys Jessica’s childhood home in order to upscale his obsessive need. Elsewhere, it’s genuinely surprising that the show would take its themes of rape as far as having Hope seek an abortion as this is really isn’t the sort of plotline we’re used to seeing in the MCU. But while it will be genuinely upsetting to some, it is a good point, especially considering that Kilgrave is no ordinary rapist and it fits the challenging themes the show’s been pushing since the start.
However, while this is impressive, the real find here is that even though Jessica Jones is technically taking it’s eye off the ball again with yet another side mission, it doesn’t make the same mistakes episode 4 did. Focusing mostly on watching Jessica and Luke’s relationship explode is as gripping as it is tragic, and it’s a classic case of a lie by omission going hideously wrong. The best part of it is, while you could forgive Jones for the actual murder, her guilt-fueled behavior ever since has been highly dubious, especially sleeping with man whose wife you killed. As a result, we watch the man who could have been some sort of bastion of peace for a very complicated woman suddenly turn on her, and while calling her “a piece of shit” may be a debilitating blow to what shreds of self respect she has left, it makes for genuinely heartbreaking television. Hell, even the fight scenes pick up the slack better than the last episode, even if it’s strange watching Power Man struggle with a couple of ground level thugs.
While Jessica Jones the character plummets to her lowest ebb, Jessica Jones the show manages to fully harness its potential to serve up an hour of television that strips you to the bone. And yet somehow I feel that the show reckons that their abused heroine can sink even lower as all this occurred without the main antagonist even being present. Hopefully, the show can keep juggling it’s mature themes and sadistic treatment of Krysten Ritter to this standard, because when Jones finally crawls her way out of her hole, the results could be transcendent.
Fuck Marvel Team-Ups, apparently.
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