Jessica Jones: Season 3 (Full Season)

June 16, 2019 9:20 AM - Season 3 (Full Season)

It's the end of the line for Jessica Jones (and Marvel) on Netflix, herein lies the discussion.

Den of Geek:
*Jessica Jones Season 3: Complete Marvel Easter Eggs and Reference Guide
*Who is Erik Gelden? - Jessica Jones Season 3 introduces the mysterious Erik, a new love interest. And yes, he has a Marvel Comics history.
*Season 3 Villain: Who is Gregory Sallinger - Jessica Jones Season 3 puts our hard-drinking hero up against a disturbed new villain, and Gregory Sallinger has roots in Marvel Comics.
*Season 3 Ending Explained - The Jessica Jones season 3 ending has the unenviable task of bringing the entire Marvel Netflix era to a close. Here's what it all means.

*Vulture episode recaps

*AV Club episode recaps

posted by oh yeah! (34 comments total)

Well, this was better than season 2, but season 1 is still the best season for me.
posted by Pendragon at 1:22 PM on June 16, 2019

And at least we don't have a cliffhanger... (looking at you, Iron Fist)
posted by Pendragon at 1:25 PM on June 16, 2019

I'm sorry we didn't get one last cameo from Turk, but I was very happy to see Luke Cage pop up so unexpectedly.

The various Marvel Netflix characters have done umpteen iterations of the "heroes don't/shouldn't kill" argument across multiple seasons/series, so, I guess it's fitting for it to be the crux of this season as well, but, I think they did it well this time.

Well, this was better than season 2, but season 1 is still the best season for me.

Agreed.
posted by oh yeah! at 2:08 PM on June 16, 2019

So ,I loved S1 but sort of lost interest in S2 somewhere between the 2nd and 4th episode. Should I give 3 a try?
posted by signal at 3:16 PM on June 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

i really disliked S1.
i found S2 a lot more interesting, but wasn't all that excited to continue on, to watching S3.
so now i am 3 episodes in, and... it's OK? not great. Trish really is not very interesting to me - though the actress works very hard to make her so, and the character's story is complicated and fantastical enough that it SHOULD make her so, but - meh. it's a slog.
there's not a whole lot else i wanna watch right now, so i'll likely finish this run, anyway.
thanks for posting the links, oh yeah!
posted by lapolla at 3:32 PM on June 16, 2019

OK s3 e4-the seeming big bad is boring the fuck out of me-he talks too much
posted by miss-lapin at 5:18 PM on June 16, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm just about to start episode five. Last I posted, I had just finished the first episode and said I wasn't in a hurry to rush through this. As it turns out, I've been putting off my ironing, and ironing always goes better with something on in the background. It seems that this is the prefect show to iron to--it's not too visual (most of the time) to be distracting plus the dialogue is slow, clear and uncomplicated (so I didn't miss anything while the steam was hissing). I would have been through episode five, but my laptop's battery gave out before my ironing pile did.

I did find the transitions between episodes a bit jarring. Cutting from Jessica bleeding out in the hallway, to whatever Trish was doing (don't recall exactly), to opening with the empathic boyfriend getting dunked, etc.

I know my comments aren't in-depth analysis, but I thought the show's ironing value was worth mentioning.
posted by sardonyx at 7:03 PM on June 16, 2019 [4 favorites]

Iron Woman?
posted by kokaku at 7:40 PM on June 16, 2019 [4 favorites]

ok I finished the season. I found pretty much ALL of the characters annoying self righteous. I mean I actually found myself liking dorothy this season. Which was weird.

I think I'll just pretend s1 was a standalone.
posted by miss-lapin at 2:56 PM on June 17, 2019 [3 favorites]

I'm 4 episodes in and this is boring. I guess I'll leave it on in the background while I do other things, but such a disappointing arc to what started off as such a great show.
posted by kokaku at 8:08 AM on June 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

It is getting better but it's still not grabbing me the way s1 and even s2 did.
posted by kokaku at 1:26 PM on June 19, 2019

Episode 5 needs a massive trigger warning for claustrophobia. Other than that, halfway through I'm enjoying this very much. Last season was a bit of a bust for me, the mommy issues thing isn't something I do well with and I nearly noped out of that. This, though, the questions about what it means to be a hero and resolving horrible issues with a friend is cool. Also I love all the new women and representation - Hogarth's ex-girlfriend and Jessica's new assistant, who I am dying for more development on.
posted by bile and syntax at 11:44 AM on June 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

JJ Season 3: Too Many Second Chances
posted by kokaku at 2:16 PM on June 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm enjoying this as much as the other series, if not more, but I must admit I'm watching it like a modern take on the 70s cop show - The Rockford Files or Starsky and Hutch - and it works really well like that.
posted by Grangousier at 3:36 PM on June 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

I liked it, mostly. I was always interested in what would happen with Trish, liked her a lot at first, but this was sort of meh and sad. I think you can make a case that it was a fairly deep, coherent character study -- we saw different versions of Trish, some more likeable than others, but...it makes a lot of sense that a charming former child actor sets out to become a superhero and ends up a villain.

Likewise, I was fascinated with what they did with Hogarth. From the beginning of the shows, really. You really don't want to like her, you admire her willpower and competence, the audience is inclined to be sympathetic/forgiving when she's helping the good guys, but she's really a villain in her own right and nowhere has that been better shown than in her love affairs. It is satisfying and sad when Kish tells her that she will die alone.

This has been my favorite Marvel TV show. It hasn't been fun, though. Jessica's world is a shit-ton of sadness dulled slightly by whiskey.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 5:08 AM on June 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

I enjoyed this. Was pretty ambivalent towards Trish at first, but she grew on me. I totally get why some people would be more than ambivalent towards the character - former child actor, blonde-smile-in-high-heels CVS shill - but that kind of explains the character and her choices.

Personally I like training montages and this is just about the sweet spot in terms of amount.

Yes, Jessica not getting a break and continues to crawl into a bottle is sad. This was a pretty golden child/ dark child archetypal story.

The reason I grew fonder of Trish was that the character chose to break bad/ go beyond the pale instead of applying some introspection - after accidentally killing her first murder. She fell right into the sunk cost fallacy hole and it ended up destroying her.

Really couldn't stand the 'main villain' because of the smarm/ narcissism/ puffery but Hogarth was a solid tragic villain. Would really like to see Carrie-Ann Moss get more consistent work.

JJ has been my favourite of the Marvel TV shows, followed by DD. Will be interesting to see if we get more (and of what quality) in the future.
posted by porpoise at 11:34 AM on June 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

Honestly I was just relieved when they finally started wearing gloves when breaking into places.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:14 AM on June 23, 2019 [7 favorites]

I enjoyed this season - it started well and ended well, it just had a flabby middle.

I think Trish was the real big bad. Sallinger was a standard crime-procedural villain. He was more like real-life killers than TV villains: the only reason he wasn't caught is because no-one was looking. But he interpreted that as a sign of his genius, and thought he was the star of the show. Meanwhile, Trish is justifying her increasing use of indiscriminate violence...

I found myself shouting at the TV when Trish was going on about Jessica not being up to the job, about her not caring. Jessica putting herself in Salinger's power was a calculated risk, but it was still a bigger risk than anything Trish deliberately did and was a proof of love. But Trish was unwilling to see that. And it's consistent with what we've known of her from the start, grounded in the environmental differences between her and Jessica.

Erik was fun, and actually a better match for Jessica than any of the goody-two-shoes or psychopaths she's had before. I got Nathan Fillion vibes from the actor, was that just me? I dunno what they thought they were doing with Malcolm - I've always liked him but his plot line this season was weak.

So overall I liked this season more than S2, while of course it couldn't match up to S1. It's a good send-off for the small-scale heroes on Netflix. And it circles back to the beginning of S1, about the ways that abuse can affect us. No romanticism about it making you a better person, but it's not inevitable that it will define you either.
posted by harriet vane at 7:52 AM on June 23, 2019 [7 favorites]

And my love for Jeri needs it's own comment. Jeri remained true to herself until the end: completely selfish and very good at her job. Sometimes she'd tell herself that others would appreciate her self-interested actions, but five minutes later when the truth became obvious she'd just power on with her plan anyway.

I love her and Carrie-Anne Moss for never giving an inch. Her ending is perfect and I'd be so upset if she'd redeemed herself or softened or given in. Die alone, Jeri, and give Death such a steely fucking look he wonders if he made the wrong choice.
posted by harriet vane at 7:55 AM on June 23, 2019 [6 favorites]

On the good side, Carrie Anne Moss was delightful, and I remain amused that Eric's power is basically alignment detection in comic form. The viewpoint changes were enjoyable in a Rashomon kind of way, and reminded me a bit of Damages into the bargain.

On the meh side, I was pretty exasperated by yet another season of "killing people is wrong, but coercion and massive head trauma is A-OK" from the New York heroes, but then I generally think JJ had the same issues as House of Cards - the writers decided on the twists in advance and then just didn't sell them to me very well.
posted by tautological at 4:21 PM on June 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

At some point I bailed out of every other NetFlix Marvel series (not counting Punisher which I haven't tried). Only stayed true to JJ, because I enjoyed it, but I haven't really engaged with this series at all. Stopped halfway through and watched something else. Went back to it and saw it through while second-screening Stuffe On Internet. Bit trad admittedly, but favourite episode was probably the second one, with Trish's training/viewpoint.

I'll certainly give it the second chance sometime, probably on a full series rewatch.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 5:56 PM on June 24, 2019

I remain amused that Eric's power is

Totally; the "you're allergic to me!!!!1!!" was terrifying. That a power is being sensitive to corruption - cool. But yeah, in his shoes, I'd retire asap, too.

"killing people is wrong, but coercion and massive head trauma is A-OK"

Read you, and agree - Trish's accidental killings feel like they could have been avoided by every "super" who got their abilities earlier, when presumably stakes are lower (playground, even).

That Trish didn't reflect on that and kept on amateur-hour heroing and killing more people instead of bringing them to justice was part of the storytelling.
posted by porpoise at 8:32 PM on June 24, 2019

I liked the Netflix Marvel series in general and I'm glad that it ended on a rather good JJ season. I could have watched more of these characters. There should be a spin-off about the adventures of Detective Costa and Eric Gelder. Still, I think that those "street-level superheroes" stories could have been wilder, fully embrace fantasy (not just ninjas) and have superheroes doing superhero things, rather than just punch people very hard. And even then only Daredevil and Castle did this on a regular basis: Jessica Jones' most useful ability was to break locks and Luke Cage punched doors; I'm not sure what Iron Fist's fist actually did apart glowing. More over-the-top villains like Killgrave, Fisk and Bullseye, and less family drama. It's not that the drama was bad - I loved what Carrie-Anne Moss, Rebecca De Mornay and Sarita Choudhury did in JJ S3 -, but it was repetitive in the end: JJ S2&3, IF S1&2, LC S1, Punisher S2 were all about siblings (full, half, foster), best buddies or parental figures going evil. And DD S3, IF S1 and JJ S2 all had a previously dead or lost dad or a mom found alive.
posted by elgilito at 5:43 PM on June 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

I got Nathan Fillion vibes from the actor

Yes, yes, yes. So much yes.

Count me amongst those that doesn't really care about Trish. Episode 10's replay of older scenes through Trish's eyes was excruciating. I miss David Tennant.
posted by bfranklin at 8:12 AM on June 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Count me on the "Better than S2, not as good as S1" team - although it's been so long since I watched the first two seasons that I feel like a rewatch is in order.

Partly because I think that part of the reason Trish seems a little . . . unsatisfying as the main villain is that the show overall didn't really spend enough time and effort on Jessica's & Trish's relationship history to get a strong motivational sense of why Trish would be so invested in wanting powers of her own and how she turned so quickly to deciding that she could do better than Jessica. But that could just be me not remembering things, hence the desire for a rewatch.

I did like that Dorothy Walker - who was borderline-caricature Stage Mom - got a lot more nuance and complexity in her character this season.
posted by soundguy99 at 11:40 AM on June 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Will be interesting to see if we get more (and of what quality) in the future.

Unfortunately, more seems highly unlikely at this point.

Jessica Jones' Krysten Ritter Shoots Down a Potential Revival: 'I Feel Good About Closing the Door' After Season 3

Though fans have speculated that Jessica and friends might resurface on the Disney+ streaming service, which launches in November, Variety previously reported that the deal for the original four Marvel shows included a clause that keeps the characters from appearing in any non-Netflix series or films for at least two years after cancellation. (As a spinoff of Daredevil, The Punisher is not a part of that arrangement.)
But even if the show were to return down the road, it may not have the same creative team involved. When asked if she’d be interested in revisiting Jessica Jones someday, series creator Melissa Rosenberg echoed Ritter’s sentiment of finality.
“I feel like this is a really complete, closed chapter,” Rosenberg shares. “I mean, never say never. But I feel ready to tell all new stories.”

posted by soundguy99 at 11:48 AM on June 26, 2019

I was thinking more along the lines of 'similar kind of shows' rather than any continuation of the extant MCU TV shows.
posted by porpoise at 12:52 PM on June 26, 2019

As someone who was eighteen when Risky Business was released, I only just the other day from this thread learned that Dorothy was played by Rebecca De Morney and that was weird.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 5:52 AM on June 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

On balance I enjoyed S3 and thought it worked, though I agree S1 was the strongest (though the hardest to watch). But I don't feel they really worked through whatever it was that snapped in Trish that allowed her to become a bad guy. The murder of her mother would be the obvious pivot point, but that wasn't an adequate fulcrum against which she would end up attacking her adoptive sister or taking Kith hostage.

I get that the whole point of this season was the strain of hero-dom, how much it takes out of you and how some people can't handle it, but they should have spent a little more time on that.
posted by adamrice at 9:45 AM on July 4, 2019

Ah, I really enjoyed this season, it's excellent. It really builds off 1, and 2 tho less. Mothers are everything, as before.

The villain is so real, and so hateable. He's up there with Killgrave for putting that kind of constant pressure on our protagonists. if you miss Killgrave, this season is 'Killgrave, but sociological, instead of psychological'.

and the big flaw in the plotting, maybe is that patsy only brings up Killgrave, like once? during her turn.

and having a male empath is such a jessica jones via Octavia Bulter move. I enjoyed that trope flipped, as the empath character is usually a woman in sci fi.

I feel like this whole series captures dynamics about having a caretaking job, and undergoing secondary trauma of having an occupation that is a never ending slog, in a manner of emotional detail that the hundreds of terrible police procedurals and nurse shows have never dared. Having such a job, I do love it so.

You can say that it is repetitive, but i think that is the point, the hero has to confront the same challenges over and over and over like a damn nightmare, and keep winning and winning and winning again, just to keep head above water.

the glory of this show is the slow changes that jessica, patsy, malcolm, and hogarth undergo to their characters as time passes, although really the characters stay the same throughout. the characters are like a fine layer cake, yeah the layers are the same, but the detail and the nuances are there, as characters react differently, and then the same, to the repeated situations. Again, this is the boredom of caretaking work dramatised, so well.

I really enjoyed the dual perspective, where moments were repeated from one character's perspective, then anothers, so you really get to feel why the characters are motivated to act like they do, and why they change--it can be a bit of a slog, but the show is really showing and not telling you why the characters change, even in the callbacks to season one, and repeating character motivations over and over, and I really enjoy that. There's a real honoring of the audience for watching.

but yeah, i can get why many people will say that it is slow. i couldn't stop watching it.
posted by eustatic at 11:40 PM on July 6, 2019 [8 favorites]

That's a great comment eustatic. I really enjoyed this season, thought it capped off the series really well and you have summed up the reasons very well.
posted by roolya_boolya at 2:03 PM on July 7, 2019

Some Nathan Fillion, yes, but Erik was really a Baby Liam Neeson.
posted by jjwiseman at 4:20 PM on July 12, 2019

Just finished and am satisfied enough with the ending, though I’d happily watch more JJ. Even when I was annoyed at the plot or characters, I kept thinking about the representation. So many scenes with only women talking to each other, no men involved. And sometimes the women were POC, or trans, or lesbians, or a combination of the above. It’s a low bar, but sooooooo many shows don’t meet it. I’ll miss a show where over 50% of the recurring or main characters in one season are women: Jessica, Trish, Dorothy, Jeri, Kith, Zaya, Gillian, Brianna. Even a lot of the smaller named roles, like the two overzealous detectives trying to pin the police officer’s death on Jessica (Imada and Defford) are women, one a woman of colour. The overzealous, obstructionist police chief in Sallinger’s hometown (Chief Velasco) is a woman. I think in most shows, those smaller detective/police chief roles would go to men as the default, or at most one would be a woman. But in JJ, the default was always to foreground women and I will always appreciate it for that.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:25 AM on July 29, 2019 [3 favorites]

Well this left things in a weird place. Not in and of itself, mind you - I think this episode did a fantastic job of tying up JJ as a series - but in what we now know the greater MCU timeline to be. The events of Seasons 2 and 3 must logically take place between roughly Civil War (when the Raft is introduced) and Infinity War (when the snap occurs.)

This basically means that Widow and Cap broke their buddies free from the Raft but left other inmates to rot there which, damn that's cold. Though I guess Helmut Zemo is in there despite not being, to my knowledge, "powered" in any way. Weird. Anyway, F&WS confirms that the Raft is still in existence, we haven't really explored what the blip meant for a hyper-remote underground prison housing (mostly) superpowered criminals.

This, combined with Charlie Cox's Daredevil being in No Way Home, combined with where they left Trish - broken and defeated but still very redeemable - says to me that there's a story there that would be awesome to see told, even if only tangentially through other properties. A Super who fucked up, but whose damage is realistically way less than that of most of our "heroes," and who presumably now sees her desire for heroics and her lack of control in that state through the light of her other struggles with addiction, in a floating prison in the middle of the ocean when the world suddenly goes to shit and the Raft is going to be basically nobody's priority, would be a hell of a thing to see.

Anyway, great season for Trish/Rachael Taylor. Ritter put in great work as always (and got to direct here as well, which she did a fantastic job of) but this season's arc really belonged to Trish. Malcolm kinda got left hanging, arc-wise, but I'm glad that every season got to play different runs on the central Shakespearian tragedy of Jeri's life. Not only did it get to revel in what Carrie Anne Moss can do (which was always incredible) but it was important that this series, which was so much about needing to trust in the workings of the system rather than appointing oneself the ultimate arbiter of anything, was so deeply cynical about the "System" throughout as well.

(On that note: do we ever see inside a courtroom in this whole series? We know that Jeri has built herself a formidable reputation but by the time we know her, every move she makes seems to be outside of the actual justice system, relying on her reputation, or more often, blackmail. Huh.)
posted by Navelgazer at 7:24 AM on April 11, 2022