Nightmare Fuel / Jessica Jones (2015)

I... know... everything.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

General

• Kilgrave is quite literally the living embodiment of Nightmare Fuel. A man with the power to make you do anything he tells you to (not just what his actual words literally mean but everything he implies by them as well, see "Take care of her"). To give him all your money. To have sex with him. To love him and believe you do. To abandon your own children. To kill your loved ones. To even kill yourself on command. All that's in the hands of a total and complete sociopath who sees other humans as nothing more than playthings, not even people but toys. He sees no difference between people doing something under his command and doing the same thing by their own will; to him, sex with a woman who he's ordered to have sex with him is not rape, and if someone commits murder by his command, it's their doing and not his. That's Kilgrave and thus it's no wonder Jessica is so terrified of him that when she realizes he's back her gut reaction after fighting an outright PTSD flashback/panic attack, is to try to hightail it out of New York. (Fortunately she changes her mind though.) He is one of the most horrific villains in the entire MCU.
  • And with all this in mind? Imagine if Kilgrave actually had a goal beyond 'Make everyone do whatever I want on a whim.' Imagine if he decided to oh say, waltz into the Pentagon and get a hold of the access codes to the nuclear arsenal. Or assassinate the President and take his place. Or if he managed to run into one of the Avengers like Iron Man or even Thor, and turned them into slaves like he did to Jessica. And perhaps most terrifying of all, what if he attracted the attention of other major villains in the MCU, like the remnants of HYDRA or Loki? ^note Which actually happened in the comics. In the Avengers graphic novel Emperor Doom, Dr. Doom took over the world by kidnapping Kilgrave and amplifying his power to affect the entire planet, giving one single command: Obey Doom.
  • Most mind controllers in fiction have some sort of mitigating factor or limitations to their power. Like being unable to force a victim to do things they wouldn't want to do, or having to use mundane persuasion on top of the more fantastical methods to get them to budge, or there's always one strong willed individual who will ignore them or at least half ass their commands. Or even using brute force will exhaust the would-be controller. Not Kilgrave. When he speaks, it doesn't matter how absurd or out of character the demand is. He doesn't have to break down any mental defenses first. You will do it or die trying. And he doesn't even have to expressly state the command in details, it's enough if he alludes to it or implies you want to do something. Example? "You can leave. No no, not that way." *points at the window of a penthouse building*
• The various ways that Kilgrave gets his victims to mutilate or kill themselves certainly will make some people shiver. Jumping off a roof like he tried to have Simpson do, or slitting your throat like he makes Ruben do, is mundane compared to having your face ripped off or impaling yourself through the mouth with a pair of garden shears.
• There's also the fact that, if someone is prevented from carrying out his orders, they will go insane and do everything in their power to go back to what he told them to do. In the very first episode, Jessica finds Hope lying in a bed in a pool of her own urine because Kilgrave told her to stay right there, and when Jessica tries to drag her out the apartment, Hope screams and fights her with all her strength in order to get back in the bed. And then there's Trish grabbing a bullet off the ground and trying to shove it in her skull because Kilgrave told her to put a bullet in her head and her gun was depleted.
  • Imagine if someone was given an order impossible to complete. He once told a man to screw himself before he realized the full extent of his powers. He spares Jessica the details, but the look of disgust on his face said it all.
• Among the most terrifying aspects of Kilgrave are how little he cares about the welfare of others and simultaneously how petty he is. On the first point, consider the first family we see him taking up with. He could easily have dealt with their children in a way that still allowed them to use the house. He could have told them to keep the noise down or go to their room for a few hours or just stay out of his way. But because he doesn't give a shit about anybody else, he choose the most expedient course of action that got him what he wanted: go stand in that room. And he likely thought nothing more of it until his command wore off.
  • On the point about his pettiness, imagine that if you say something that slightly annoys the wrong person, they can make you just stand there. Forever. And as far as you know at the time, it very well could be forever. All for the crime of being slightly annoying to him. And unlike other forms of this kind of abuse of power (annoying a cop leading to you being arrested on a minor charge or whatever), it requires almost *no effort* for him to do it.
  • There's also the fact that he never says "You may use the bathroom if necessary." It's shown numerous times that people often have accidents on themselves while under his control; the fact that he never prevents it means he either cares that little for his victims, or he gets off on degrading people in such a base manner. Neither would be out of character.
• And if you're most familiar with David Tennant from his time as the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who, Kilgrave is even creepier because Tennant uses the same Estuary English accent he used as the Doctor. It just feels wrong hearing lines like "Children should be seen and not heard. Or better still, not seen and not heard. Get into that closet!" being said in the Doctor's voice.
  Little Girl: I have to go to the bathroom.
  Kilgrave: You can go in the closet. Get in there.
  • Tennant reuses a lot of The Doctor's inflections, mannerisms, and ticks, basically giving you the impression that you're watching the Doctor's evil twin. Or a glimpse as to how he would have played The Master.
• If Kilgrave himself isn't enough to make your skin crawl, his Leitmotif sounds like something straight out of a horror film - an eerie piano piece interspersed with strange distortions. It gives the impression that Kilgrave is something more akin to an Eldritch Abomination than a superpowered sociopath.

Season 1

Episode 1, AKA Ladies Night

• Jessica's flashback to Kilgrave taking her to the restaurant. David Tennant makes "then smile" terrifying, especially if you're a viewer who relates to having abusive partners.
  • Relatedly, the increasingly horrified expression on Jessica's face as the restaurant worker relates how everyone suddenly started giving a customer anything he asked for, no matter how outrageous. You can practically see the moment where she realizes what's going on.
  • Also related, after she stops reeling from the realization that he's back, what is the first thing Jessica, private eye who has no qualms breaking a door's glass with the head of an unruly customer, tries to do? Get out of town pronto. O.O.C. Is Serious Business, indeed...
• When she finds Hope in a hotel bed, Jessica tells her to get dressed, but Hope says she can't, and Jessica realizes Kilgrave told her not to move. Hope has been frozen in that spot for five hours, even wetting the bed. When Jessica drags her up, Hope screams as if in pain at going against what she was ordered to do.
• Even worse is when Jessica reunites Hope with her parents who happily take her down an elevator. Just as the door closes Jessica sees Hope pull a gun from her purse. She races downstairs just as Hope shoots her parents, then delivers a message from Kilgrave to Jessica: "Smile." And then, having completed her orders, she realizes what's just happened.

Episode 2, AKA Crush Syndrome

• Jack Denton, the ambulance driver who was forced to donate both his kidneys to Kilgrave and is left a helpless wreck who begs Jessica to kill him.
• Hope's flat statement to Jessica, "You should kill yourself." Given what Kilgrave could do with her powers, she's not wrong.
• Kilgrave's first appearance on screen, where we see his powers firsthand as he uses them to take over a family's apartment, sends the kids to the closet and tells one to soil herself there, similar to the girl above.
• Jessica comes home from working the case, to find a strange man in her apartment doing who knows what. It turns out to just be the repairman that Trish hired to replace her door, but still, imagine the terrifying scenarios that must have been going through her head, especially given that for all she knows, he was sent by Kilgrave.

Episode 3, AKA It's Called Whiskey

• Trish tries to use her talk show to raise some sympathy for Hope, but when Jeri is doubtful, Trish, who knows very well Kilgrave is real as well as what he did to Hope and Jessica, starts a tirade which devolves into bashing Kilgrave. Kilgrave immediately calls the show, and hearing his voice is enough to reduce Hope to a screaming fit:
  Kilgrave: First time caller, long time listener. Trish, I want to applaud your courage. You've always been a hero to the downtrodden. Self-preservation be damned. It's admirable. But my question is, if there really is a man with the abilities you've described, someone who could make anyone, anywhere, do whatever he wanted them to do, seems to me that insulting him would be wildly dangerous. Or, let's just say it, stupid in the extreme. Everyone has feelings, even, um, how did you put it? Sadistic, corrosive men? Are you worried he might, I don't know, make you kill yourself? Or worse? I'll take my answer off the air.
• We see Reva's death in detail: Kilgrave tells Jessica to "take care of her". Jessica promptly swings at Reva's chest, throwing her backwards through the air about twenty feet, caving in her chest. Her non-reaction to being hit also suggests that Reva was killed instantly.

Episode 4, AKA 99 Friends

• Trish is thrown into a panic when Simpson comes back to her apartment with another officer, and begins furiously trying to break down her door (getting a battering ram when he finds it's reinforced), convinced that Kilgrave has sent him back to finish her off. It's only when Simpson's partner asks him why he's so sure there's a dead body in the apartment that they realize he's back because he remembers what he did.
  Jessica Jones: Kilgrave didn't send him back.
  Trish Walker: Then why is he trying to break down my door?!
  Jessica Jones: He thinks he killed you. I recognize that look.
  • On Simpson's end, it's a reminder that Kilgrave's victims are 100% aware of the stuff they did while under his control. He's left thinking he killed Trish in the last episode, so he comes back and begins vigorously trying to break down the door with a battering ram, desperately hoping to prove himself wrong. He thinks he's been proven wrong when Jessica and Trish answer the door...only for Trish to show him the bruises he left when he strangled her with his bare hands. Jessica has to take Simpson aside and talk to him in private to get him to calm down.
    Will Simpson: I mean, how can you be standing here? How can you be alright?
    [Trish unravels her scarf to reveal the bruises on her neck]
    Trish Walker: [in a harsh whisper] I am not alright!
    Jessica Jones: Trish, come on.
    Will Simpson: [horrified] I'm... I'm a goddamn monster!
• Kilgrave has a little girl deliver to Jessica a message that Trish is safe for now in light of her apology on the radio. Jessica completely gets the implications of Kilgrave using children to do his dirty work, and tells her how sorry she is. The timing with which the girl's mom comes when Jessica grabs her and she screams, gives the implication that Kilgrave may have also commandeered the mom as well.
• Jessica gets a bunch of Kilgrave's victims to come forward. There are obvious frauds, but then there are the real stories:
  • A father whose young son was acting up on a drive. While the car was stopped at a light, Kilgrave got in and made the guy drive on. Kilgrave got irritated by the kid's crying, so he made the father abandon his son on the side of the road. The man spent a week as Kilgrave's chauffeur and when he was finally released, he was arrested for child endangerment, his wife left him and he lost his job. And that's being lucky....
  • Kilgrave made a woman to play the cello for him without rest until she eventually made a mistake. His response was to make her injure her hands.
  • Kilgrave made a woman follow him around constantly smiling for (at least) hours on end. Painful enough after a time. But what if he wanted her to do something other than smile for hours on end?
  • One man was on a subway platform, waiting for his train, when Kilgrave made him fork over his coat. This would normally be a simple petty crime. But because it's Kilgrave, the act ends up traumatizing the man because of the victimization and lack of control. Kilgrave valued the jacket more than the guy he took it from, seeing the guy as little more than a glorified jacket delivery service.
    • When he's doing his interview, he's wearing a purple dress shirt and patterned necktie, evoking flashbacks for Jessica.

Episode 5, AKA The Sandwich Saved Me

• What Kilgrave did to Malcolm. He used to be a promising and successful social worker until he was "recruited" by Kilgrave and became his spy. Since Kilgrave knew that his powers wear off after roughly 12 hours, he forcefully got Malcolm addicted to drugs he supplied in order to guarantee his return and turned him into a shell of his former self (it helped that, as revealed in season 2, Malcolm was already a party animal and a bit of a user). All of this was done in six months. When Jessica confronts him about being the spy, Malcolm admits that all of his actions were partially of his own free will, just so he could get his next fix. All of this just shows how far Kilgrave is willing to go to get Jessica.
• Simpson has his own hermetically sealed room in an abandoned CDC building. While this is useful for Jessica's needs, it sounds an awful lot like those Black Sites that intelligence communities supposedly use to do any number of terrible things to people. Also, the NYPD has already had a bad year, what with how many of the cops from Simpson's own precinct were in Wilson Fisk's pocket. So you can tell there's a legitimate reason for Simpson to be doing this while not on-duty.
  • He later modifies the room for the express purpose of torturing information out of Kilgrave by partially filling the room with water hooked up to an electrical line.
• Kilgrave turns out to be smart enough to have a backup plan in case his powers get disabled: he just pays a private security firm to send guys to protect him. This ends up ruining the black bag operation as they swoop in, easily tase Trish before she can even step out of the van, manage to overpower Jessica and Simpson, then extract Kilgrave and drive off.
• When Jessica's black bag operation fails, Kilgrave gives her an ultimatum: he'll continue to use and abuse Malcolm, whom he'd be able to hook back onto drugs with his powers, or Jessica can take over Malcolm's job, and send Kilgrave selfies every day at 10:00 a.m. on the dot. So, in order to protect her friend, she has to send selfies to her former rapist, and follow his precise wishes concerning it.

Episode 6, AKA You're a Winner!

• Hope finds out that she's pregnant with Kilgrave's child. Horrified and disgusted at the thought that she's carrying the baby of the man who raped her both physically and mentally, and forced her to shoot her parents, she pays some of the other inmates to beat her up. Unfortunately, this doesn't cause the anticipated miscarriage and Hope still has to take painful abortion drugs to end the pregnancy.
• Jessica's panic when her 10:00 alarm doesn't go off is nerve-wracking. She's lucky Kilgrave lets her off with just a warning.
  You're late. Don't let it happen again.
• Kilgrave uses his poker winnings to purchase a house. At first, it seems fairly innocuous, even bit out-of-character, that he's buying somewhere to hole up instead of just making them give him their house. Then, whilst he's walking about the house he finds a door frame with notches in it, and peels back the wallpaper, in a very "Blink"-esque way, next to it to reveal that it's a height chart for one Jessica Jones. Then the camera cuts to the exterior of the house, and pulls back to reveal a street sign for Higgins Drive and Birch Street. He found the house she grew up in.
  • Before that, there's what he does to the poor guy who tries to confront him about his blatant cheating at poker: he makes the man bash his head into a post repeatedly. Since he never revokes the order, it can be assumed that the guy continued to do so until he died or the post collapsed, whichever came first.
• Luke Cage intends to violently beat to death Charles Wallace, the driver of the crashed bus the night Reva died and convinced he was the one who killed her as he was found drunk while on the job. Jessica, under the control of Kilgrave, was the one to do it. Luckily Jessica intervenes, but Luke was serious about killing a man who was apologetic and repentant instead of denying his presumed guilt.

Episode 7, AKA Top Shelf Perverts

• Kilgrave breaks into Jessica's apartment, examining her belongings and generally invading her space, when Ruben walks in to encounter him. He then commands Ruben to lie down on Jessica's bed and slit his throat. A nice gift to leave behind for Jessica to discover when she comes home later.
• Midway through Jessica's attempt to convince Clemons to have her locked up, the door opens, and Sgt. Brett Mahoney comes in to tell Jessica she's free to go. Jessica leaves the interrogation room, thinking Hogarth had her sprung. Entering the bullpen...she finds every single cop in the room frozen in place, commanded by Kilgrave to point their guns at each other or their own heads.
  Oscar Clemons: What the hell is going on here?! Drop your weapons!
  [Brett pulls his gun and points it at Clemons' head]
  Oscar Clemons: Brett?!
  Brett Mahoney: Shut up. Don't move.
  Kilgrave: [emerges from underneath a desk] Oh, everyone, calm down! You're killing the mood!
  • Why has Kilgrave been stalking Jessica and ruining other peoples' lives? Because in his twisted mind, he thinks he loves her. Terror, disgust and disbelief leave Jessica scrambling for words and trying desperately to make sense of it all.
    Kilgrave: Jessica. You're not surprised to see me. You had to know I'd come for you. Not this fast? I... I will admit to keeping eyes on you. Spies are easy to come by, for me.
    Jessica Jones: Do whatever you're going to do to me, but let them go.
    Kilgrave: Well, I have to protect myself, so...
    Jessica Jones: Then control me, not them.
    Kilgrave: I have absolutely no intention of controlling you. I want you to act on your own accord.
    Jessica Jones: Act how? Suicide? Is that why you've been torturing me?
    Kilgrave: Oh, my God. Jessica, I knew you were insecure. That's just sad. I'm not torturing you. Why would I? I love you.
    Jessica Jones: You have been ruining... my life.
    Kilgrave: You didn't have a life.
    Jessica Jones: As a demented declaration of love?
    Kilgrave: No, obviously. I... I was trying... to show you what I see. That I'm the only one who matches you. Who challenges you. Who'll do anything for you.
    Jessica Jones: This is a sick joke. You have killed innocent people.
    Kilgrave: Oh, well, that... that milquetoast little man-boy? He interrupted me while I was leaving you a present, which, apparently, you didn't even find! Come on! You cannot pretend he didn't irritate you, too. I wanted to slap him after 30 seconds! I know. I realize this will take time. But I'm gonna prove it to you.
  • For once, we see Kilgrave lose his superficial charm when someone's phone rings.
    Kilgrave: Whose is that? [The phone continues to ring as Kilgrave stalks around the room, looking for it] Whose phone is that?!
    [Kilgrave approaches Clemons, the source of the ringing. Upon getting a silent confirmation that yes, this is his phone, Kilgrave takes Clemons' phone and throws it at a wall, shattering it into pieces]
    Kilgrave: THE NEXT PERSON WHOSE PHONE RINGS HAS TO EAT IT!!! [Kilgrave rubs his hands over his face and paces around the room, trying to compose himself] Crappy fluorescent lights and cockroaches and loud cell phones and the smell of piss! I AM TRYING TO PROFESS ETERNAL LOVE HERE, PEOPLE!
  • And he never rescinds that order. Hope no one's phone rang in the next twelve hours or so- oh shit, it's a police precinct. Someone's phone probably will ring within ten seconds of Kilgrave's departure. Then again, his last command was for every one to assume this was all a joke, possibly rendering the command nullified.
  • Among the cops that Kilgrave controls is Brett Mahoney. This allows you to see how Kilgrave's behavior works on someone we're already familiar with: those who came here straight from the first season of Daredevil are familiar with Brett as Matt and Foggy's friend on the force who put the handcuffs on Wilson Fisk, yet he behaves so differently under Kilgrave's control that he might as well be someone else. Most people would react like Clemons does when Brett points a gun at him.
  • In season 2, we learn that Detective Costa was another one of the cops under Kilgrave's control. He says he had nightmares after what happened, and they stopped only once Kilgrave died.

Episode 8, AKA WWJD?

• Kilgrave's childhood, if it can really be called that. While he's undoubtedly a monster, you can kind of see why he turned out that way. Though it's later revealed he left out some details... like how he later used his powers to enslave his parents, who only abandoned him after he forced his mother to take a hot iron to her own face.
  • There's a reason he was put under so many horrific surgeries- he was born with a degenerative neurological condition that would have resulted in him being brain-dead by the time he was twelve, and his parents were trying to save him. Eventually, they succeeded, but the method they used also gave him his powers, which he immediately put to horrific use.
• Kilgrave claims he can't turn his power off, so he always has to be careful about what he says ("I once told a man to go screw himself. Can you imagine?^note If you want an idea of what likely happened, read Preacher, where the protagonist has a power that's like Kilgrave's. At one point he tells a nasty redneck sheriff to "go fuck yourself", without thinking of the implications. Later on he finds out that the sheriff tore off his penis with his bare hands and put it in his anus. Paramedics were able to keep him from bleeding to death, but the man then had his son bring him his service revolver and shot himself in the head with it.) It's chilling to imagine such a life and becoming accustomed to, and then expectant of, having your absolute every whim obeyed. Put in his shoes, many people would end up acting as Kilgrave does, especially if they've possessed that power since childhood.
  • There's another way that can be interpreted: because Kilgrave's words can be interpreted so many ways, the guy might have actually picked up a drill and literally SCREWED himself. It's hard to say which is worse to imagine.
• Jessica has a dream that starts off normally enough, with her parents telling her to get ready for the family vacation. Then her brother complains that she'd just ruin the trip, we see blood trickling from his head. Her whole family then starts bleeding profusely while accusing her of killing them.
• The sheer, skin-crawling creepiness of how thoroughly Kilgrave replicated Jessica's childhood home, right down to precisely replicating her bedroom. The level of detail showcases just how utterly obsessed he is with her more effectively than anything else he's done up until that point in the series.
• Let's remember that the point of this episode is that Kilgrave has blackmailed Jessica into living with him. While she's immune to his powers, Kilgrave can still exert an awful lot of control of her just through pure manipulation. Jessica has to live in the same house, eat with, and spend time with a man who'd previously and repeatedly raped her, and kept her as a slave for quite some time. Like the photograph blackmail thing from a few episodes ago, this is right out of the worst fears of someone with Jessica's experiences.
• And let's put a cherry on that sundae: Kilgrave uses Jessica's neighbor as a suicide bomber as payback to Simpson for his previous attempt at getting to him, literally returning him his own bomb. For anyone who has experienced a terrorist attack in Real Life, this scene comes as realistically scary.
  • Worse is the fact that this fate was actually considered at one point for Elena Cardenas over in Daredevil.

Episode 9, AKA Sin Bin

• Kilgrave's escape.
  • Jessica is forced to watch as Kilgrave makes his mom stab herself to death with a pair of scissors, all because her method of preventing it was tampered by Jeri Hogarth, as part of her Deal with the Devil. It's made particularly bad because Jessica specifically promised no harm would come to her, but due to Hogarth's betrayal she is unable to intervene until it is too late.
  • Then Kilgrave tells his father to cut his heart out. Luckily Jessica knocks him out before he gets started.
  • Kilgrave tells Trish to put a bullet in her head. The way she just immediately pulls the trigger upon hearing that is chilling enough on its own. Good thing she just spent all of her bullets on the glass.
  • Kilgrave orders Clemons, who is handcuffed to a pole, to follow him. He immediately breaks his thumb and skins his hand to allow it to slide out of the handcuffs.

Episode 10, AKA 1000 Cuts

• Kilgrave commanding Wendy to attack Jeri, saying "You wanted death by a thousand cuts? Then do it!" It's not necessary to make a thousand cuts (Kilgrave gives Wendy some free will), it's still scary.
  • Wendy dies brutally by smashing her head against the table when she falls. Jeri can only lie staring in utter shock at her wife's corpse, knowing that she caused this.
  • It gets worse when you realize that this type of torture is chillingly similar to the torture methods that Gregory Salinger uses in Season 3.
• In the previous episode, Trish luckily had no bullets left in her gun when Kilgrave told her to "put a bullet in your head." Here it turns out she still has to obey that order, meaning she has to hit herself in the head with a bullet until the repeated strain lets it go in. Jessica had to literally put a bullet in Trish's mouth to get Kilgrave's command to stop.
  • In the previous episode, Albert was ordered to cut out his own heart, only for Jessica to knock him out. On recovering, and seeing his wife's body, his response is to try to continue to carry out the command planted by Kilgrave. The only two options to free Albert are for him to either let him do that, or to tie him up and wait 12 hours for Kilgrave's power to dispel (which they do, barely).
  • An understated one, but once they're able to tie Albert up, he starts a conversation as if he wasn't under control. Jessica stresses that the moment he'd get untied was when he would go back to trying to kill himself. A friendly reminder that Kilgrave's victims are fully aware of what's happening to them.
• Hope's death and the situation regarding it is horrible. She slices her throat open which prompts Kilgrave to command the hostages on the bar counter to step forward and hang themselves. Jessica has to use all strength to rip the post from the ceiling to ensure that there is only ONE funeral, not five.

Episode 11, AKA I've Got The Blues

• Will Simpson, after having taken his combat enhancers. He was already out for blood beforehand, but now that his team is dead, he is at his limit. For a start, he murders Oscar Clemons when he refuses to let him go through with killing Kilgrave. Then when he is approached by Kozlov's men, he shoots them both dead as well. Then, he tries to murder Jessica in her apartment, blaming her for all the people that have died. With the red pills in his system he is able to physically match her and even overpower her in combat.
• The effect that the pills have on a human body is terrifying. They heighten the user's adrenaline yet also shut down their pain receptors, causing the person in question to ignore serious injuries. Simpson doesn't even flinch from the burns on his arm one bit and hardly reacts to Jessica's blows at all.
  • Then Trish takes a pill, which nearly kills her because her body is not used to it. Her adrenaline spikes which causes her brain to forget to pump blood to her heart. In short, she nearly dies of a seizure right then and there.

Episode 12, AKA Take A Bloody Number

• It turns out that Kilgrave manipulated Luke so that not only did it appear that he had forgiven Jessica, but he said exactly what Jessica needed to hear. When the deception is revealed, Kilgrave starts laughing like a lunatic as he quotes several romantic things Luke said over the course of the episode, all the while crowing about how it was his chemistry with her, his relationship that was what Jessica truly desired.
  Kilgrave: "I want you to know, I forgive you for everything. I'll say it every day for as long as you need to hear it."
  Jessica Jones: You heard that?
  Kilgrave: [smirks] I WROTE IT! [singsong voice] SURPRISE!
  [Luke appears and punches Jessica on the face, throwing her across the room]
  Kilgrave: Mr. Cage had been ordered to ring me about your exploits since before he blew up his seedy little bar. Uh, the 12-hour window at that point was actually 16 hours. Now it's 24... and a hundred yards. Did you think he was more powerful than me? With his unbreakable skin? Is that why you desired him?
  Luke Cage: You really thought I could forgive you? You killed my wife.
  Jessica Jones: That's not you talking, that's him.
  Luke Cage: Shut up.
  Kilgrave: I tried so hard to avoid this, Jessica. This is not what I wanted. But you failed the test. [into mike] Kill her.
  [Luke starts approaching Jessica]
  Jessica Jones: No. You can fight this. Luke. [Luke tries to punch her, she grabs his fist. Both keep pushing each other, until Luke prevails.]
  Kilgrave: Every move he made was mine. Those tender moments. Those sweet things he shared, it was all me. It was our sexual tension. It was all me! You chose wrong, Jessica. You always have. Stop her, Cage!
  • Kilgrave's power has now increased dramatically. Now instead of being under a control for just 12 hours, a victim is susceptible to his command for an ENTIRE DAY. Then there's the fact that he can control hundreds of people at once. If he really wanted to, he could send an army after Jessica. Which is almost exactly what he does in the next episode.
  • Kilgrave unleashing Luke Cage, super-strength and unbreakable skin, against Jessica. Watching a character who we've seen in a near universally positive light turn into an Implacable Man who silently proceeds to show exactly how much he has been holding back. Even the ending of the confrontation involves Jessica having to shoot him at point-blank range with a police-issue shotgun.
• In a non-Kilgrave related case, Dorothy Walker's visit to Trish's apartment is this for anyone who grew up with abusive parents. She just walks right in, examining the place like Smaug would a hoard of gold, acting like she has every right to be there when she very clearly doesn't. The scene comes complete with the guilt tripping, emotional manipulation, and self-serving motives of a textbook abuser (many of which we saw in the flashbacks), and it's hard to watch if you know what Trish is going through. Doubles as a CMOA for Trish, as you can see how much it takes out of her to tell her mother to leave.

Episode 13, AKA Smile

• Having Luke Cage's unbreakable skin has its pros, but it also comes with a few catches: like when internal injuries cause fluid to build up in your skull from a point-blank shotgun round to your head, the only place a needle could go into your body to drain it is through your eye socket. Luke's having a seizure while Claire does this, so if the super strong Jessica wasn't there to keep his head steady, someone would've had a very bad day. In fact this treatment is about as risky as what Claire has to do to Luke after Diamondback uses Judas bullets on him.
• Albert's death. It's done by Kilgrave ordering Justin to, in his words, "remove Dad from the face of the Earth", which involves cutting off Albert's arms at the shoulders. Then he orders Justin's husband to inject himself with drain cleaner. Even worse, Justin is physically unharmed despite chopping off Albert's arms with a hacksaw and stuffing one of them down a garbage disposal. Meaning he now has to live with not only his husband's death but the horrors he himself was forced to commit. Is it any wonder Kilgrave's victims are often Driven to Suicide?
  • Albert is still barely clinging on to life when Jessica finds him.
• Kilgrave, still unsure of whether or not his amplified power has worked on Jessica, threatens to take Trish with him and disappear. Jessica has to keep a perfectly blank face while he describes in detail what he plans to do with her adopted sister, and even forces Trish to kiss him in front of her. Everything depends on Jessica's non-reaction, and had her bluff not worked, her best friend would have been condemned to a life of sexual slavery and psychological torture with no hope of escape.
  Kilgrave: You'd do anything to protect her, wouldn't you?
  Jessica Jones: Yes.
  Kilgrave: Yeah, perhaps I chose the wrong sister. Hmm? From your perspective, I'll be raping her every day. My skin will be touching hers. She'll be my plaything. She'll be my slave. [sighs] And in her mind, she'll be dying, ain't that right?
  Jessica Jones: Yes.
  Kilgrave: We're leaving. If Patsy or I ever hear from you, or see you, see anyone who looks like you, she will slit her own throat. It's the ultimate contingency.
  • It's also profoundly disturbing to see Kilgrave's glee when he's finally convinced that Jessica is under his control again, frantically assuring her that he knows that she'll grow to love him. He genuinely believes that he's not doing anything wrong.

Season 2

Episode 1 - "AKA Start at the Beginning"

• Simpson secretly following Trish wherever she goes.
• The monster that was created alongside Jessica and Whizzer. Who- or whatever it is, the short glimpse the audience gets through the flashback is already unsettling enough.
• Jessica’s brutal beatdown of Cheng is this considering it is Jessica who assaulted him first and as Cheng tries to defend himself (while at the same time goading her). The beating gets worse with Jessica nearly killing him before coming to her senses.

Episode 2 - "AKA A Freak Accident"

• The reason Simpson has been following Trish is because IGH have been trying to kill her to stop her chasing her story. He's not on his Psycho Serum anymore (instead an inhalant that has a lesser effect which doesn't seem to affect his sanity), and is revealed to be The Atoner before whatever else IGH cooked up comes after Trish again. He goes to fend it off while Jessica gets Trish out of there, only for them to double back to find that the real culprit has killed Simpson by twisting his neck nearly a clean 180 degrees.

Episode 3 - "AKA Sole Survivor"

• Searching the basement of Dr. Hansen's building, Jessica reaches into the incinerator and pulls out the charred remains of a human head. Jessica drops it in shock when she realizes what she's holding, while Trish covers her mouth and almost vomits.

Episode 4 - "AKA God Help The Hobo"

• Alisa's brutal murder of Nick Spanos, Pryce Cheng's fixer and best friend. Nick is attacked as he's loading the stuff he stole from Jessica's apartment into his van, and when we next see his body, his entire arm has been torn off and the interior of the van is covered in blood.

Episode 5 - "AKA The Octopus"

• Following an argument with her mother, Trish takes Simpson's inhaler, and the camera does an extreme close-up of her pupils dilating.
• Watching Alisa smash that piano to pieces.
• It's a minor one, but Inez freaks out when Malcolm pulls up a crime scene photo of Luanne McClure. He admits that he found it on an online black market for crime scene pictures. Just the fact that there are people who pay money to see such gory material raises a lot of shivers.

Episode 7 - "AKA I Want Your Cray Cray"

• Alisa was horribly disfigured in the crash, and spent five years in induced comas as IGH treated her. All disturbing stuff, not helped by an extended look at her flayed face.
• We see the event that gave Inez her lacerations: Alisa gets loose and attempts to escape to go seek out Jessica. First, she pushes Inez into a glass container hard enough to embed shards of glass into her back, then, as Luanne tries to push the emergency button to call for help, Alisa grabs her and snaps her neck in similar fashion to how she killed Simpson in the second episode. We are given a focus shot of these two, Inez lying maimed on the ground with huge glass shards sticking out of her back, unable to move or turn away from her dead coworker.

Episode 8 - "AKA Ain't We Got Fun"

• When Jessica is sedated and bound by Dr. Malus, she freaks out and screams at him not to touch her. It doesn't matter that he's actually a nice person who acted in self-defense and has no intention of harming or violating her. Being absolutely powerless before a man is the exact thing rape survivors have nightmares over.

Episode 10 - "AKA Pork Chop"

• Jessica's Accidental Murder of Dale Holliday, the serial killer guard. While simultaneously blinded from pepper spray and assaulted by Dale, she snatches the baton he was using and whacks him in the head with it, only she swings too hard and it busts his head open.
  • Even worse, Jessica hits him so the tonfa-style baton's handle impacts his head, not the baton itself. If she'd been able to see, she might have hit him with the broader side, instead of all the force focused on the end of the handle, and the blow might not have been fatal.
• Dale Holliday himself. He's a sadistic prison guard who kills inmates who defy his streak of terror, and keeps their numbers as trophies. Another example of showing that Humans Are Bastards.
  EAT YOUR PROTEIN, 46592!

Episode 11 - "AKA Three Lives and Counting"

• The PTSD of accidentally killing Dale causes Jessica to begin having visions of Kilgrave. They become increasingly regular until she's seeing Kilgraves everywhere and actually throttles an innocent man against a wall.
• In the end when Jessica finally conquers her demons, Kilgrave’s last words before disappearing aren’t an angry or rueful “you’ll see me again” or something akin to that nature, but just a calm “I’ll be here if you need me,” showing that Kilgrave will always be a part of Jessica's psyche.

Episode 12 - "AKA Pray For My Patsy"

• Jeri's baroque revenge on Shane and Inez really stands out for how pointlessly cruel it is: she could easily have just gone to the police and filed criminal charges, but instead goes right to psychologically manipulating Inez into killing a man who apparently really does love her, before sending her away for that. As harsh as she was before, this is a Jeri Hogarth who truly has nothing left to lose.

Episode 13 - "AKA Playland"

• You don't know just how utterly broken Trish is until she kills Alisa in cold blood. Not only does she not show an ounce of remorse or think committing murder is wrong, she flat out states that she did it just to feel powerful, just to feel good enough to be the one who "saves" Jessica. The way she shows up at Jessica's doorstep and acts like killing her mother in front of her is something they can hash out over a drink shows that, in contrast to someone like Karen Page who was shocked and torn up over killing James Wesley and self-aware of the repercussions, Trish Walker is completely divorced from reality and mentally destroyed.
  • Another disturbing factor is how Trish is totally oblivious to how much she has traumatized Jessica by shooting her mother right in front of her eyes. She is completely unable to understand how Jessica would understandably react to this.
  • And another factor is that Trish, a woman who is bordering on becoming an example of The Sociopath is developing powers. If she keeps going down this path, Jessica might not be able to stop her from killing anyone else and the police wouldn't stand a chance. What could have been Trish's Superhero Origin is becoming more like a Start of Darkness.
• And just after this, when Jessica jumps off the Ferris Wheel and grabs Trish's gun, it's entirely conceivable that Jessica is ready to Pay Evil unto Evil and shoot Trish dead for what she's just done.
  • And to keep herself out of jail and close the case to everyone's satisfaction, Jessica has to live the lie that she killed her mother, not Trish. Jessica will be hailed as a hero for putting an unrepentant monster in the grave again, but this time not only is it not true, that monster was her mother.

Season 3

• Most could agree that Gregory Salinger is the scariest aspect of Season 3. To clarify, the man is a vicious Serial Killer who loves to torment and torture his victims before killing them. Just think of an Evil Counterpart of THE PUNISHER, that's how scary this guy is.
  • Perhaps the scariest aspect is that his victims die as a result of the knife wounds he causes them. In other words, their victims die slowly.

Trailers

• The first teaser, zooming around a purple-tinted New York as Kilgrave faintly calls, and then howls, Jessica's name. Any knowledge of the characters makes it utterly chilling. It's not a storm that's oncoming; it's something much worse.
  • And the "Evening Stroll" teaser retains that purple tint.
• The "All in a Day's Work" teaser, which is just Jessica putting up pictures of some investigation... except Kilgrave is talking over the teaser, saying that he knows about Jessica, about her friends, about her gifts, that he knows everything. And then camera pulls back and all the pictures become his eyes (As pictured to the right). And Jessica is tinged in purple.

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