Jessica Jones (season 1)

Development

In October 2013, Marvel and Disney announced that Marvel Television and ABC Studios would provide Netflix with live action series centered around Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage, leading up to a miniseries based on the Defenders. Melissa Rosenberg was brought on to showrun the Jessica Jones series, to be reconfigured as a "page one do-over" from an original project she had developed in December 2010 for ABC. In December 2014, the official title was revealed to be Marvel's A.K.A. Jessica Jones, but that was shortened to Marvel's Jessica Jones in June 2015. The season consists of 13 hour-long episodes.

Writing

The writers for the season worked in Los Angeles, with one member of the writing team on set in New York for filming. Actress Carrie-Anne Moss talked about how the scripts developed through the production of the season, explaining that the dialogue usually did not change much while filming, but scenes were altered to accommodate the filming locations when necessary. Rosenberg stated that, since Jones is a private investigator, there would be some procedural elements to the show, "but that’s not our focus. There are cases. In particular, there is a large case that carries over the season." Elaborating on this, Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb said that the "fun about being a private detective is that the line between what’s legal and what’s not legal gets very blurred....her drive is not always necessarily to solve the case, as much as it is to go, 'Okay, can I pay the rent? How am I going to get through this day?'" He also added that inspiration for the season came from "the noir films from the ‘40s" and "film[s] like Chinatown."

Describing the tone of the season, Loeb said, "When we first started talking about Daredevil, we promised that we were telling a story that was first a crime drama and then a superhero show. This is more of a psychological thriller. This speaks to when you think about what happened to Jessica and what sort of destroyed her life and how she tried to put it together, and then to have to confront the person who deconstructed her world, that’s a very powerful, emotional place to start from." On approaching rape and trauma in the season, Rosenberg wanted to avoid actually showing rape, which she called "lazy storytelling" and often a way to "spice up" male characters, and preferred to just make the trauma a part of the characters' everyday lives rather than an "issue" for the season to tackle. When asked about the adult nature of the season, including the use of sex, Rosenberg explained that Marvel would only not allow showing nudity and the use of the word 'fuck' in the season. Regarding all of the social issues the season covered, such as "issues of choice, interracial relationships, domestic violence, [and] issues of consent" while also exploring "feminism and being a woman in this world", Rosenberg said, "It was never our intention going in [to hit a social issue], and I think the minute you intend to do that, you’re stepping up on a soap box. If you’re digging into the dark side of the human psyche and all the different experiences we go through, and as women we go through, you’re going to find those things. If you treat them honestly and with respect, you’re also going to hit social issues."

Casting

The main cast for the season includes Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones, Mike Colter as Luke Cage, Rachael Taylor as Patricia "Trish" Walker, Wil Traval as Will Simpson, Erin Moriarty as Hope Shlottman, Eka Darville as Malcolm Ducasse, Carrie-Anne Moss as Jeri Hogarth, and David Tennant as Kilgrave.

Appearing in recurring roles for the season are Susie Abromeit as Pam, Colby Minifie and Kieran Mulcare as Robyn and Ruben, Clarke Peters as Oscar Clemons, Michael Siberry and Lisa Emery as Albert and Louise Thompson, and Robin Weigert as Wendy Ross-Hogarth. Danielle Ferland, Gillian Glasco, Ryan Farrell, and Paul Pryce also recur as victims of Kilgrave who join a support group established by Jones, while Rosario Dawson and Royce Johnson reprise their roles of Claire Temple and Brett Mahoney, respectively, from Daredevil.

Design

Stephanie Maslansky returned as the costume designer for Jessica Jones from Daredevil, and was assisted on the first episode by Jenn Rogien, who crafted Jessica Jones' leather jacket, faded jeans, and boots costume. On Jones's costume, Maslansky said she "considers her clothing to be an armor and a shield and something that helps her maintain a distance from other people and privacy. It keeps her from having to deal with the rest of humanity in a certain sort of way." At least 10 versions of Jones's jacket were made, which started as an Acne Studios leather motorcycle jacket that had any "bells and whistles and any additional superfluous design details" removed. 20 pairs of jeans were used, with both sets of clothing being aged and distressed.

Because Jones's costume does not evolve much throughout the season, Maslansky used flashbacks to show how her costume had evolved to the present day: for 'pre-Kilgrave' Jessica Jones, Maslansky gave the character "more pulled together" clothes, albeit "still kind of edgy" clothes that did not change who she was as a character, but were just "different". For instance, in a flashback to Jones working in a corporate environment, she does not wear a suit, instead "wear[s] her jeans and find[s] a really cool jacket, maybe a vintage thing, maybe something that she borrowed from Trish". For a flashback where Jones wears a large sandwich costume, a "variety" of costumes were ordered online, with the chosen suit then distressed to "look dirty and old"; "a mere shadow of its former sandwich self," becoming "more of a hoagie than a sandwich." In another flashback, Jones imagines escaping Kilgrave's control. The bright yellow dress the character wears in the dream sequence was chosen for its juxtaposition to the character's real situation, with Maslansky calling it "so beautiful and so free and so light".

For Kilgrave, Maslansky used many suits created by designer Paul Smith, rather than custom-making them as she originally planned, as Smith "was all about purple" in the previous fashion season. On the suits, Maslansky added that the designers "wanted to find a place where we could utilize clothing in shades of purple, but not go so over the top that it would look silly and that he would stop feeling ominous or menacing." Expanding on this, Maslansky called purple a traditionally "fairly friendly color, and he’s anything but friendly. So I had to find ways to make him be ominous and frightening and terrifying. I found that I needed the right proportion of shades of purple to other shades that were similar: navy, black, maroon." Maslansky felt Luke Cage was also someone "who wears his clothing like an armor," with his wardrobe consisting of T-shirts, jeans, leather jackets or an army jacket. For a character like Trish Walker, who does not have the same kind of "statement costume" as Jones, Maslansky tried to create a certain character style. Maslansky said that Walker's uniform is fashion, so "even when she was hanging around the house, she was wearing a pair of Rag and Bone jeans with a Chloé top, and this was her version of a T-shirt and jeans." Maslansky added that Robin was "a blast to dress" because of her "quirky" personality, yet she was still able to "put herself together aesthetically." For Malcolm, as his story progressively became brighter throughout the season, so did his wardrobe, becoming "a little brighter and a little more hopeful."

Filming

In February 2014, Marvel announced that Jessica Jones would be filmed in New York City. In April, Marvel Comics' editor-in-chief Joe Quesada stated that the show would be filming in areas of Brooklyn and Long Island City that still look like the old Hell’s Kitchen, in addition to sound stage work. The season went into production in February 2015 in The Bronx at Lehman College with the working title Violet, and aimed to film each episode over nine days, on average. Filming concluded in mid-late August. Other filming locations in New York City used included: the East Village's Horseshoe Bar for Luke's Bar; the 33rd Street PATH station and a PATH train; the 101st Street area for the exterior of Jessica's apartment (with the interior apartment settings created on a sound stage); Douglaston, Queens for Jessica's childhood home; the Angel Orensanz Center for Jessica and Luke's fight in "AKA Take a Bloody Number"; Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower and Pier 88 for locations in "AKA Smile"; the Meatpacking District; Nolita; near the 39th Street entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel; Tribeca; Bryant Park; Union Square; Gramercy; Greenpoint, Brooklyn near the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant; Long Island City, including the Allied Extruder Factory for the weed growing facility, with exteriors shots taken from near Calvary Cemetery; the Queensboro Bridge on the Queens side; the Manhattan Bridge; the Brooklyn Navy Yard; Bethesda Terrace and Fountain in Central Park; and Industry City.

Concerning inspirations on the season, Loeb revealed that "Chinatown... is one of the things that influenced Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos when they created the character. So those kind of beautiful, long, wide expansive shots, where people sort of come into frame and go back out of frame and someone’s in the foreground and then someone is way in the background and they’re having a conversation, that’s the stuff that makes it interesting." Director of Photography Manuel Billeter and episodic director S. J. Clarkson took inspiration from the comics in terms of their color palette, while looking to the works of Wong Kar-wai as reference to create "unconventional" compositions, with Billeter explaining, "There were a lot of foreground elements [and] headroom as well, and we never wanted to show an open frame. We wanted to create a sense of claustrophobia." Billeter shot the season with a Red Epic Dragon camera in 4K resolution, with 5K used for some visual effects shots, and with Panavision PVintage lenses; he focused mostly on static frames and "good composition", but did occasionally employ a camera dolly or steadicam. For lighting, Billeter noted that many New York street lamps had been changed from sodium-vapor lamps to LEDs, so he tried to recreate the "warm, dirty color of sodium vapor" for night exterior scenes.

Production designer Loren Weeks described Marvel's Hell's Kitchen as having "a little more [East] Village quality." To achieve the explosion at Luke's Bar, Weeks said, "We could not take out the windows [at Horseshoe Bar], which are [made up of] multiple small colored glass and metal frames. We didn’t know frankly when we picked that location that we would have that explosion... What we did was build a fireproof box in the entrance and we had a cannon in there which blew out debris and smoke and some fire. And then we did a lighting effect on the inside and then the rest of the explosion was handled by visual effects." For the scenes on the PATH train and station, location manager Jason Farrar noted that production had exclusive use of the tracks and platform during the day when ridership was low to get their shots.

Visual effects

Shade VFX created over 600 effects shots for the season, with "invisible" effects "the showpiece, helping to push forward the darker elements the series." Therefore, effects supervisor Karl Coyner and producer Julie Long worked closely with the crew on set to "execute stunts, set extensions, explosions, wetwork and fire sequences" while filming, rather than have Shade create those effects digitally. An effect that Shade was required to create was tinting Kilgrave's skin purple "in a few key scenes" where he is using his powers, a nod to the comic iteration's purple-skinned appearance.

Music

At the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con International, Sean Callery revealed he was composing music for Jessica Jones, eventually stating that the music required for each episode ranged from 9 to 20 minutes, totaling approximately 415 minutes of music for the season. A soundtrack album for the season was released digitally on June 3, 2016.

All music composed by Sean Callery, unless otherwise noted.

Marvel Cinematic Universe tie-ins

On existing in the MCU, specifically in the same world as the other Netflix series, Rosenberg said, "Jessica Jones is a very, very different show than Daredevil. We exist in a cinematic universe, [and] the mythology of the universe is connected, but they look very different, tonally they’re very different… That was my one concern coming in: Am I going to have to fit into Daredevil or what’s come before? And the answer is no." On references or "easter eggs" in the season, Rosenberg explained that "A little is always there and in the writer’s room we have some fanboys that know all this stuff and they’re all geeking out with different stuff....a lot of references are to the [Alias comic]." She also said that nods to the larger MCU are in the season, with each episode having a "little something in it."

Jeryn Hogarth is closely associated with Iron Fist in the comics, and also worked with Luke Cage as part of those characters' Heroes for Hire team. Like Daredevil, the season makes references to the events of The Avengers and the Avengers (specifically Hulk and Captain America, though not by name). Jessica also mentions Angela del Toro as another private investigator, who in the comics is the hero White Tiger and has connections with K'un-Lun and Iron Fist. Paul Tassi, writing for Forbes, was disappointed with how the season fit into the larger MCU, feeling the season seemed "removed from the world of The Avengers" and did not acknowledge Daredevil enough given that "it’s supposed to be sharing at least this little corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with it." Eric Francisco of Inverse countered that Jessica Jones's lack of overt connections to the MCU was "the show's chief advantage. Besides demonstrating how physically wide open the MCU's scope really is, Jessica Jones also proves the MCU's thematic durability."

Release

Jessica Jones was released on November 20, 2015 on the streaming service Netflix, in all territories where it is available, in Ultra HD 4K. In January 2015, a month after Marvel announced a 2015 release for the season, Sarandos had said that it was "too hard to say now" if the season would actually release in 2015, with Netflix's plan to release a Marvel series approximately a year apart from each other after Daredevil's April 2015 release. However, Netflix soon confirmed that the season would indeed release in 2015, announcing the November 20 release date in September. The season was enhanced to be available in high dynamic range after its initial release by post-production vendor Deluxe.

Marketing

In May 2015, Marvel announced plans to reprint Alias, the comic that the series is based on, with new covers from David Mack, the original cover artist on the comic who is also providing artwork for the series' opening credits. The reprints, which were all released digitally in June 2015, and up to issue 15 in two trade paperbacks in September, were intended to both celebrate the history of Jessica Jones, and introduce new audiences to the character ahead of the release of the season. In late September through early October, Marvel and Netflix released short teasers for the season, which chronicled a day of Jones' life. Also in early October, Marvel digitally released a 12-page one-shot comic by the original Alias creative team—Bendis, Gaydos, and Mack—set in the universe of the television series. The one-shot was created as an exclusive for New York Comic Con, where a print version was distributed. The comic sees Jessica Jones coming into contact with Daredevil character Turk Barrett, and includes a short sequence featuring Daredevil, to celebrate "the connective tissue that will build between the series." Also during New York Comic Con, Marvel set up a street marketing campaign, and screened "AKA Ladies Night" on October 10, while at the Marvel Booth fans could take their picture with the Alias Investigations desk, with Kilgrave's eyes appearing in the background of the final animation. Marvel additionally partnered with Uber during the event to provide select riders with complimentary trips to or from the convention in custom designed SUVs.

A full trailer was released at the end of October, with Meagan Damore of Comic Book Resources feeling that it helped establish the same tone as Daredevil and introduced "Marvel's creepiest villain yet" with Kilgrave. She also compared Jessica to some of the other female characters of the MCU—Black Widow, Melinda May, and Peggy Carter—feeling that Jessica stood out from the others because she does not have "a sense of togetherness" and was the most relatable because of her struggle with trauma, and that the season would have the amount of creative space required to explore the character that the other female characters were lacking. A second trailer was released on November 10, 2015. Sarene Leeds of The Wall Street Journal felt that this trailer highlighted empowerment, compared to the first that "was about illustrating the fear behind Jones’s past". The season held its premiere in New York City on November 17.

Home media

The season was released in Region 4 on December 7, 2016, on Blu-ray and DVD.

Audience viewership

As Netflix does not reveal subscriber viewership numbers for any of their original series, Symphony Technology Group compiled data for the season based on a sample size of 15,000 people using software on their phones that measures television viewing by detecting a program's sound. According to Symphony, from September to December 2015, episodes of Jessica Jones averaged 4.8 million viewers during a 35-day viewing cycle. The data was presented by Alan Wurtzel, NBCUniversal president of research and media development, in a presentation aimed to provide "perspective" when stating "digital platforms are hurting the traditional TV business". Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos responded to the data by saying that "the whole methodology and the measurement and the data itself doesn’t reflect any sense of reality of anything that we keep track of." A further study from Symphony, for the same time period, found Jessica Jones to be one of the four most watched series in the 18 to 24 demographic, ahead of any broadcast network series.

Critical response

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 93% approval rating with an average rating of 8.1/10 based on 54 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Jessica Jones builds a multifaceted drama around its engaging antihero, delivering what might be Marvel's strongest TV franchise to date." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 81 out of 100 based on 31 critics, indicating what the website considers to be "universal acclaim".

The early screening of the first episode at New York Comic Con was met by a very positive reaction from the crowd. George Marston of Newsarama gave the first episode a 10 out of 10, saying the season "strikes a balance between self-aware noir and Marvel’s first flirtations with psychological horror....not just another hit for Marvel and Netflix, but a landmark moment for female superheroes on TV." Eric Goldman of IGN felt that "Jessica Jones starts out with a strong premiere episode that...easily goes further than anything in the MCU in terms of sexuality." He called Ritter "a commendably tough, sardonic" Jessica Jones and praised the supporting cast for the strong impressions they made, later scoring the episode an 8.5 out of 10. Evan Valentine of Collider.com gave the episode 5 stars out of 5, feeling that Tennant would "ascend to the same level as Tom Hiddleston’s Loki and Vincent D'Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk as one of the cornerstones of villainy in the MCU". Katharine Trendacosta of io9 also had positive thoughts on "AKA Ladies Night", highlighting the episode's use of light and color, especially with purple, and the way it portrays New York as how it "actually looks—not overly bright and shiny and clean, but not suffering a never-ending power-outage either". Abraham Riesman noted the episode's presentation of sexuality, which "was shockingly and refreshingly honest", compared to Marvel's other films and television series. He concluded by applauding the season's bringing up of the topics of rape and PTSD.

Reviewing the first seven episodes of the season, Maureen Ryan of Variety gave positive thoughts on Jessica Jones, stating, "The show, which features an exceptional performance from Krysten Ritter and sure-handed guidance from executive producer Melissa Rosenberg, is not just a contender for the title Best Marvel-related TV property; in a supremely crowded TV scene, it is one of the year’s most distinctive new dramas." Jack Shepard of The Independent, also on the first seven episodes, felt the season "not only matches [Daredevil] but exceeds expectations." Shepard gave exceptional praise to Tennant's Kilgrave, feeling he was one of the best villains produced by Marvel, and possibly "the best on-screen comic book villain since Heath Ledger’s Joker." Forbes' Merrill Barr stated that after seeing the first seven episodes, "the answer is a resounding yes" if lightning could strike twice for Marvel Television, claiming, "In no uncertain terms, Jessica Jones is the best thing Marvel Television has ever produced. It contains all the hopeful anticipation of [Agents of ] S.H.I.E.L.D., all the feminist-overtones of Agent Carter and all the grittiness of Daredevil."

Deadline.com's Dominic Patten also had praise for the season, particularly Rosenberg's influence on it, the coverage of topics such as "PTSD, abuse, assault, shame, and death" and the cast, highlighting Tennant's Kilgrave as the actor's best role as well as the MCU's best villain. Mary McNamara from the Los Angeles Times felt Jessica Jones "rewrote the definition of superhuman" and was "a marvel", lauding the season's "breathtaking" examination of recovery from a sexually, emotionally and physically abusive relationship. Daniel Fienberg for The Hollywood Reporter was also positive, saying the season "looks and feels a bit like a cable anti-hero series—but it's really more of a post-hero story, making it fascinating and unique in a marketplace that doesn't lack for costumed do-gooders of all types." His one criticism was that "the show shares Jessica's monomaniacal fixation on [Kilgrave] and the result is a sort of narrative claustrophobia...Everything in these opening episodes ties back to Kilgrave and Kilgrave is such a twisted figure that it's hard for any light to get in." Melissa Maerz of Entertainment Weekly was slightly more critical of the season, awarding it a "B". Though Maerz felt Ritter was a good choice for Jessica and enjoyed the cinematography, she felt the season "could've made for a gritty character drama if it weren't for the noir clichés (saxophone music, shadows through glass) and a procedural structure that's very CSI: Marvel. The show's biggest weakness is the same as Jessica's: It starts out with extraordinary potential, but somewhere along the way, it loses what make it special."

Goldman, later reviewing the whole season, gave it a 9.3 out of 10. He commended all the actors, the relationship between Jessica and Trish, and the episode "Sin Bin", though was critical of the character Robyn. Additionally, Goldman also felt the season spent "too many scenes devoted to Jeri’s marital strife" and that it hit its peak "a bit before the actual end of the season" similar to Daredevil, with most of the thrilling moments earlier in the season.

Analysis

Libby Hill of the Los Angeles Times commented on how Jessica Jones exposed modern day sexism and misogyny through Kilgrave's use of the phrase "Smile", calling the season "the most innocuous and incisive cultural critique" from Marvel to date. Hill likened an early scene that shows Kilgrave asking Jones to smile, and her obliging, to "similar well-meaning scenarios [that] play out in the real world time and again each day" many in the form of gendered street harassment, that resonates with many women. Hill also added that "Kilgrave serves as an exaggerated representation of perceived consent," due to the response he gives later in the season to Jessica about never knowing if someone is doing what they want or what he tells them to do. She concludes that "Jessica Jones is revolutionary because in acknowledging casual misogyny and exaggerating its most destructive tendencies, it exposes the pervasive toxicity therein. It does all of this without making a show of its politics, instead resting easy on the knowledge that all too many women will relate to the subtleties of its premise." Amy C. Chambers, writing for The Science and Entertainment Laboratory, noted how the season moved away from sexism even more so than the comics, by changing Kilgrave's abilities from phermone based, with a particular effect on women, to viral, with equal effect no matter gender, indicating that "powerlessness is not gendered."

Kwame Opam at The Verge chose to examine rape and the nature of consent in the season. Comparing Jessica Jones to other television series that have depicted rape (Game of Thrones, Orange Is the New Black, and Outlander), Opam felt that "since rape is one of the show’s core themes, we never need to see it... rape is a foundational part of the text, and its presence is constant. Even if it’s invisible, it’s always there." He also felt the season took the time to examine how rape happens and what it means, especially in terms of power and consent, concluding, "Jessica Jones moves the conversation about rape forward by treating it as a complex subject worth investigating, rather than as spice for a story...Maybe we don’t need to see it anymore to grasp how violent it is. Maybe our energies are better spent thinking deeply about why it happens at all." The Guardian's Lili Loofbourow also discussed the season's depiction of rape and consent, noting the complications that come with Kilgrave telling his victims how to feel rather than just how to act, and saying, "however exceptional Kilgrave’s power seems, the moral quagmire it produces is all too common. It’s the condition of the rape victim who had an orgasm during her assault. It’s the condition of the soldier trained to kill when he suspects his targets are innocent. It’s the condition of the battered woman who goes back to her abuser and stays “of her own free will”. It’s the condition of...any person, really, who agrees, whatever the context, to consent to forgo consent in the future." Loofbourow also discussed the character of Simpson, comparing his power-inducing red pill to the anti-feminist "red pillers", and noting that his taking of the pills "renders him not just dangerously delusional, but so utterly at odds with nature and reality of any kind that he will forget to breathe unless he counteracts the pill’s effects."

Accolades

Jessica Jones was included on multiple Best/Top TV Shows of 2015 lists, ranking on People's (1st, along with Daredevil), Indiewire and The Star-Ledger's (2nd), NPR's (3rd), ScreenCrush's (4th), Digital Spy's (5th), Complex's (6th), Vulture's (7th), Slate Magazine's (9th), and TV Guide's (11th). It was also included on un-ranked lists from Maureen Ryan of Variety, Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times, The Week, and Wired. In December 2015, IGN named Jessica Jones the Netflix's best original series released to date, and it was named one of the Best New Shows of 2015 by Ryan, as well as the tenth best new show of 2015 by Entertainment Weekly's Jeff Jensen. The Atlantic named "AKA WWJD?" one of the best television episodes of 2015. Additionally, Jessica Jones was the second most trending television series search on Google for 2015.