There are two factions of NYC residents: those who leave and those who stay. Those who declare their undying devotion for it and those who finally have to admit that to remain in such an environment is to collude in a mass delusion. One that insists, “This is the greatest city in the world.” And, to be sure, for some people, it is. It just so happens most of those people typically have scores of money. Chances are, they probably also acquired it like one of Jessica Jones’ (Krysten Ritter) bad guys. But as is the case with most who spend too long in New York, the line between what’s bad and good quickly becomes blurred, even when one is trying their best to veer toward the spectrum of the latter.
For the longtime sidekick of the series, Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor), her intense desire to “do something” and “be important” in the same way as her best friend and adopted sister only continues to escalate. Unfortunately for Jessica (but fortunately for the rest of humanity), that already led to the killing of her also superpowered mother, Alisa (Janet McTeer), in season two. Yet if she didn’t think her dynamic with Trish could possibly get more complicated, she soon finds out there’s a fresh Hell(cat) ahead as her bestie gets her long-awaited wish of becoming superhero material. Feeling it’s somehow kismet that she should rise just as Jessica very literally falls after being stabbed by a masked man in her hallway, Trish essentially assures Jessica in her “Patsy” tone, “I’ve got this.” But Jess knows that Trish has always been too enthusiastic about “helping” others by punishing the ones she deems unworthy of existence. And it’s this trait–this need within her she has to “set the scales of moral imbalance” straight–that colors the entire arc of the third and final season.
New to the narrative is yet another emotionally complex and physically superior being by the name of Erik Gelden (Benjamin Walker), whose empathic abilities he tends to use more for his own financial gain (via blackmail) than bothering with the lost cause of helping humans. Jessica encounters him, naturally, at a bar, where he wagers he can get fifty dollars out of her to admit that he makes the best burger she’s ever tasted. She’s game enough until the aforementioned masked man shows up at her door as a result of being blackmailed by Erik, who arbitrarily demands money of people he can sense have done something wrong, he just doesn’t know what exactly. This time around, however, he has invoked the psychotic wrath of a serial killer who can’t be blackmailed: Gregory P. Salinger (a.k.a. the Foolkiller). Like another famous white male with that last name, Gregory is disgruntled. Convinced that Jessica and “her kind” are exemplars of what makes the world’s knaves think they can get away with cheating. Getting ahead by taking the easy way out with the happenstance of their abilities. If it sounds ironic when taking into account Salinger’s overt white male privilege and the fact that he–like Trish soon will–thinks he’s doing good by ridding the earth of certain types of people, well, there’s some clear intent there on the part of the writers. For it’s always the most sinful who are the first to cast stones, ain’t it?
At the backdrop of all this hemming and hawing over the meaning of true good versus true evil is, of course, New York City–itself a place that people constantly argue in favor of on both sides. As such, it is the ideal place for the morally fraught world of Jessica, and those who think they can do a better job at heroism than she. Something Trish has long suspected she would be capable of had she been given Jessica’s “gifts”–that she would have what it takes to be stronger (i.e. not fall prey to the alcoholism of a 1960s ad man). As Trish puts it to everyone’s least favorite lawyer, Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Ann Moss), “She doesn’t understand what I’m doing because she can’t do it. She can’t make the ultimate sacrifice.” Jeri prompts, “Which is?” Looking at Jeri as though she should know the answer already, Trish returns, “Everything.”
As Trish ponders on just what, exactly, that might mean, as she’s come to the third act of her inevitable showdown with Jessica, we find her poetically sitting inside one of the buildings of the corrupt developer, Jace Montero, that she ends up killing in one of her recent rashes of violent moral self-righteousness. Trish’s back faces the classic silhouette of the city as she wrestles with her moral outrage. The faint satanic red glow that every New Yorker knows is emanating from the H&M logo plays up the hellish blackness Trish finds herself in both literally and figuratively. But despite her Hellcat vision allowing her to see in the dark, she seems to have lost track altogether of the light. New York can tend to do that to people, regardless of being superhuman or not. Make one go batty with power–or rather, the power they don’t actually have to control anything, least of all their own basest whims and desires.
Throughout the midpoint episode, “A.K.A. The Double Half-Wappinger,” Jessica refers to the thankless burden of giving a shit–which is something that is very much antithetical to living in New York, world capital of selfishness. The place one goes to make something of herself (no man really comes to mind at the moment, just Madonna). Thus, Jessica’s bemoaning voiceover, “This is what happens when you give a shit–the world flings it back to you,” layers on a further dichotomy to the fact that she lives deep within that shit (specifically in Hell’s Kitchen).
As the divided line between how Trish chooses to stave off badness and how Jessica chooses to increases, their ultimate showdown allows the latter the chance to say of Trish’s devolution, “I thought this was because of what Salinger did to you. Or maybe it was a side effect of your powers. But it has been there all along.” The “it” in question being a predilection toward “flexible ethics.” Something that every long-term New York resident must adopt at some point in order to persist. To keep their head above mutating water. Jessica finally concludes, “You were right about one thing. I don’t have what it takes. Maybe you do.” In summation, this line, this assertion of the divide between “what it takes” and having a certain hesitation to fully engage in what that entails boils down to this: It is impossible to live in New York for an extended period of time without becoming something you don’t recognize. For many Midwestern/Bible Belt U.S. citizens (and some foreigners who manage to eke by in between), this feels like a good thing. The liberation to be the version of “yourself” you always wanted but could never be in your stifling hometown milieu. But if that self is so far-removed from any of the core values you were once capable of sustaining when money (and “social status”) wasn’t your sole pursuit, then how can you have become anything other than Hellcat herself–succumb to the same taint as Trish?
Jessica, of course, seems determined at the conclusion of the series to prove that there are still some “bona fide” souls left in the true City of Sin (Vegas is just Dubai with tackier frills).
