WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Jessica Jones Season 2, streaming now on Netflix.


Although there was grousing online about the slow start of Jessica Jones Season 2, the pace quickened with revelations about the private investigator's past and her powers, Trish Walker's obsession with the shadowy IGH, and, oh, yeah, Jessica's mother, who didn't die in a fiery car crash but is instead a murderous superhuman. Amid all of that, there was also room for satisfying character arcs for Jeri Hogarth and Malcolm Ducasse, with all of the threads coming together in the heartbreaking season finale, "AKA Playland."

While Trish, Jeri and Malcolm each makes an important choice in the final episode, Jessica's is taken away from her. But in the end, they end up in much different places than when they began the season, emotionally, at least.

Jessica Jones

Jessica Jones Season 2

After having spent the past 17 years blaming herself for the car crash that killed her family, Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) is confronted with not only the truth about the origin of her superhuman, but also with a woman who has her mother's voice, perfume and same bad taste in wine, but a different face. Horribly injured in the accident Alisa Jones (Janet McTeer) was saved from certain death by Dr. Karl Malus of IGH, who also treated Jessica. However, she required so many gene-editing treatments that she emerged from a coma five years later a different woman, physically and mentally. Although much stronger than her daughter, Alisa flies into a murderous rage that makes Jessica's anger issues seem almost charming by comparison.

So by the time mother and daughter are unexpectedly reunited, Alisa has already committed a half-dozen murders (mostly in an effort to erase any links to IGH and her lover Karl), with no indication that she's capable of stopping. In a gut-wrenching decision, Jessica turns her mother over to the police, and then attempts to secure for her an easier sentence (life in prison versus isolation at The Raft). When Alisa escapes, she kidnaps Jessica and the two flee north in an RV, stopping only to rescue a family from a car crash reminiscent of their own; under vastly different circumstances, perhaps they might've been superheroes -- a team, even.

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Avoiding pursuing police, they end up at the beachfront Playland amusement park, which holds sentiment for both of them, from happier times long ago. But instead of escaping by water on a boat, as they intended, Alisa instead powers up the Feris wheel, the ride she and Jessica used to enjoy together. When Jessica warns the police will see the lights, Alisa flatly replies, "Let them come," resigned to her fate and determined not to be responsible for her daughter's death. "It's good that it's here." It's certainly noteworthy that the scene is flooded with blues and purples, tones so closely associated with Kilgrave. But here it's her mother he tries to spur her into action, saying, "Hero isn't a bad word, Jessica. It's just someone who gives a shit and does something about it."

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However, a moment of tenderness is disrupted by a single bloodshot, and a spatter of blood, as Trish Walker fires a single shot from the ground, killing Alisa. Her reasoning, at least on the surface, is sound: She had to stop Alisa before she killed Jessica, or the police killed them both; she was saving Jessica. However, viewers, and Jessica, have to wonder whether that's the truth. Although Jessica earlier insisted that “The moral of my shitty story is, if your dead parent comes back to life, stick ’em back in the ground," the loss of her mother, for a second time, is devastating, and forever alters her relationship with Trish. "I look at you now and all I see is the person who killed my mother." But while Jessica is now without a biological or adoptive family -- "untethered," she says -- she isn't entirely alone, as the season ends with her joining her building superintendent/love interest Oscar and his son Vido in a moment of normalcy: a family meal.

Trish Walker

Trish Walker in Jessica Jones Season 2

A former child star turned talk-radio host, Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor) has always been ambitious, and at times overbearing, but she's always had Jessica's best interests at heart. After all, it's Trish, 10 years sober, who fusses about Jessica's alcohol consumption, bails her out of jail and checks on her whereabouts; heck, as we learned in flashback, she even paid for college. But in Season 2, what seemingly begins as a genuine interest in exposing IGH for the experiments it conducted on Jessica 17 years earlier develops into something far less selfless: Trish is envious of Jessica, and wants superhuman abilities of her own.

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She gets them, in a limited dose, when she obtains the inhaler used by Will Simpson to replace the combat enhancers that sent him over the edge in Season 1. With augmented strength and senses, and accelerated healing, sets off looking for trouble, and she finds it -- on a city bus, and outside a bar, where she rescues Malcolm from attackers. Trish likes the surge of power, and the feeling of playing hero, the inhaler's addictive qualities be damned. When the inhaler runs dry, she pays a private lab to analyze its contents and try to replicate them. When that fails, she kidnaps Dr. Karl Malus so she can undergo the same experiment he performed Jessica years earlier. Jessica interrupts the procedure and rushes Trish to a hospital, where she nearly dies. "Patsy always wanted to be extraordinary," her mother Dorothy tells Jessica. "You just showed her what that looks like."

It's there in the season finale that Trish is questioned about where Jessica might've fled with Alisa. "She wouldn't just leave me," she tells the detective, echoing Jessica's own words to Alisa earlier in the episode. However, that's precisely what it looks like is happening, which may cast Trish's decision to kill Alisa at Playland in a different light: Was Trish really trying to save Jessica, or was she ensuring that Jessica wouldn't leave her? In the end, it looks as if she might've lost Jessica after all. However, as we see in her final scene of the season, she appears to display cat-like reflexes, suggesting that either the inhaler or Malus' interrupted experiment has lingering effects. Whichever the cast, Trish may have gotten what she wanted after all, at a steep price.

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Jeri Hogarth

Jeri Hogarth on Jessica Jones Season 2

Of course, Trish Walker isn't the only one seeking to exploit Jessica's backstory for their own purposes. Diagnosed in the season premiere with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease, powerful attorney Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss) is faced with the prospect of a rapid physical decline as she loses muscular control. Already at war with the partners in her law firm, who attempt to use her health to force her out, Jeri turns to Jessica to dig up dirt them. But of course, Jessica is a little preoccupied, so the case falls to her "associate," Malcolm Ducasse (Eka Darville).

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Jeri's needs intersect with Jessica's past when she's asked to keep safe, a homeless woman who once worked as a nurse at IGH. It's from Inez that Jeri learns of Shane Ryback, another IGH experiment with wondrous healing powers. Unfortunately, Shane is in prison, which requires Jeri to use her legal prowess to free him -- in exchange for him healing her, of course. He lays hands on Jeri, who's convinced she's cured of ALS. But it's all a scam, of course, hatched by Inez and her boyfriend so they can clean out Jeri's luxurious apartment.

But this is Jeri Hogarth, who clawed her way from a tiny mobile home to the top of the legal world. She's not about to allow her law partners, let alone a couple of two-bit grifters, defeat her. Acquiring a gun from the ubiquitous Turk, she convinces Inez to murder Shane, and then enters into a relationship with the former nurse. That leaves only her partners at Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz, which is where Malcolm comes in with the evidence indicating they've been laundering drug money. She receives double the "generous" severance that they previously offered, allowing her to leave, with all of her clients (including Rand Enterprises) to begin plans for her own firm.

Malcolm Ducasse

Malcolm in Jessica Jones Season 2

Now clean and sober, Jessica's neighbor Malcolm Ducasse (Eka Darville) seems to have his life back on track in Season 2. Except that, the closer you look, you realize he's essentially Jessica Jones, only without the alcohol and attitude. When he's not hooking up with women online, Malcolm is desperate to learn everything he can about the private investigation business as Jessica's "associate." Unfortunately, however, Jessica treats him as poorly as everyone else, "firing" him repeatedly, using him when he suits her needs, and ignoring him when he doesn't. Trish Walker uses him, too, going so far as to sleep with him when she's high on that IGH inhaler.

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But Malcolm has skills, and he puts them to work to take up Jeri's case, and sets off to dig up dirt on Chao and Benowitz. It turns out that isn't difficult, as Benowitz is closeted and likes to prowl gay bars (a secret Malcolm refuses to exploit), and he and Chao both apparently launder drug money (which, as we saw, is fair game for Malcolm and Jeri). In the closing moments of the finale, we see Malcolm, smartly dressed in a suit and tie, is now an associate of Pryce Cheng, the unscrupulous private investigator who offered him a job earlier in the season as part of his bid to absorb Alias Investigations, or else put it out of business.

"There are tasks for which Jessica Jones is not well-suited," Jeri tells Pryce. "Some, like this one, she may even object to." Described cryptically as a "business opportunity" whose legality may be a little murky, the case stands to bring Malcolm into direct conflict with his former mentor in a likely third season.


Streaming now on Netflix, Jessica Jones Season 2 stars Krysten Ritter, Rachael Taylor, Carrie-Anne Moss, Eka Darville, J.R. Ramirez and Janet McTeer.