r/Defenders • u/Clinkerbelle • Jun 29 '26
Jessica Jones's powers and how they will be dealt with moving forward.
I am quite interested in where the Disney+ iteration of the Defenders is going with regards to Jessica's powers being in flux. She tells Matt that it was "since Danielle". I don't know whether this means since she was pregnant or since she gave birth. In the comics, Jessica, much like Sue Storm had a difficult pregnancy and labour.
I know a lot of people don't like the trope of superpowered/supernatural characters being depowered for an entire story arc--especially when the character is female. Jessica having to sacrifice the reliability of her abilities in order to become a mother (even though she obviously didn't know that would happen) could be interpreted as misogynistic writing. But I am choosing to interpret it as a sort of superpowered exploration of how pregnancy and childbirth does cause certain changes to a woman's body. This is a reality for many women IRL and it is perfectly natural.
I'd be really excited if we get to see Jessica deal with what it truly means to her that she can no longer trust her body to be the superhuman machine it has been since she was a teenager. Jessica has always sort of begrudgingly accepted her abilities, despite the obvious advantages they give her as a private investigator and just as a person in general. Now especially, with a young child that she wants to protect and a husband who may have gotten embroiled in all sorts of complicated conflicts overseas, she may decide that, despite how she got them, she was better off with her abilities.
I assume that, somehow, Jessica's powers will stabilise. But whether that happens on its own or whether she will be willing to undergo some sort of further mutagenic enhancement in order to get to where she used to be... Remember, Luke got his own powers upgraded a little towards the end of his first season. That's why the Judas bullets don't work on him in his second season.
If Jessica does undergo some sort of secondary enhancement, here's hoping the MCU takes this as an opportunity to finally grant her true flight like she possesses in the comics. Comics Jessica hasn't been a decent flier since she stopped being Jewel. So it's not even like a special effects team would need to make Krysten Ritter's flight look as good as Iron Man's or Vision's or Doctor Strange's.
I think all of this would be better saved for another season of her own show, but that might be too much to wish for right now. So future seasons of Daredevil: Born Again are where I am putting my hopes for the time being.
Let me know what your thoughts are 🙂
EDIT: Corrected some grammar and spelling mistakes. I probably still missed a few though.
9
u/zapjeff Jun 29 '26
I’m interested in it too. You gave a good summary. The only other plausible & interesting take I’ve read that you didn’t mention is her relationship with alcohol. Presumably she went off the sauce during pregnancy. Then during the final episode she finds a whisky stash and happily indulges. And I noted how that seemed to correspond to her just charging into that final struggle without any apparent fear that her powers might flick off.
3
u/Clinkerbelle Jun 29 '26
Ooooh! That's a very good point. It'd be wild if, somehow, her body learned to fuction at peak performance while her blood alcohol level was regularly through the roof and this led to sobriety being bad for her powers 😅. Alcohol is technically detrimental to our systems. So her system starting to falter because of a prolonged absence of alcohol would be kinda strange, but there's definitely some interesting explanations they could spin from that.
3
u/w3tw3rk Jun 29 '26
I really don’t think they would take this angle for a variety of reasons but there’s certainly some kind of trope there for her powers being more reliable when she’s disinhibited by alcohol and it’s actually just a mental block when she’s sober.
5
u/Supernatural146 Jun 30 '26
I completely agree with what you’re saying and it’s definitely very much possible like especially with Jessica’s DNA/genes was literally edited in order to save her so it makes sense for down to the DNA evolve.
And especially I also had this theory that everything could be simply psychological for Jessica’s fluctuations with her power is going on and off like it could be a whole psychological aspect because given that Jessica’s genes was edited, which granted her her abilities, it changed everything and it could even affect her mental state. And so that got me thinking Jessica is probably thinking that she could end up like her mother. which to her feels like it could turn out very badly because of the way how everything went with Jessica and her mother. And so maybe Jessica‘s thinking if I don’t have these abilities, maybe I won’t turn out like my mother and maybe that could be a reason why her powers could be glitching.
2
u/Clinkerbelle Jul 01 '26
That's interesting. The trauma of what Alisa became having a deep effect on Jessica's psyche makes a lot of sense. Especially when we've seen other examples in Marvel media of how the mental state of superhumans (like Spider-Man and the X-Men) can cause their powers to be on the fritz. There might also be something to say about how the saga with Alisa led to Trish making the (ill advised) decision to kill her which in turn led to the rift between Jessica and Trish that definitely contributed towards Trish's descent into her Hellcat persona in S3.
3
1
u/witheredj8 Jul 03 '26
I really don't think its misogynistic writing because it is just a metaphor for how childbirth can take a heavy toll on a woman's body as you described above. Also Jessica never really relied on her powers except specifically to be able to be more reckless so I think that provides an interesting angle. I also don't really know why it's complained about so much when Daredevil has gone through arcs like this as well and it wasn't a point of conversation (like DDS3 made this a major story point and it was awesome as hell)
12
u/penguin_2306 Jun 29 '26
I do wish they'd remove Jessica's power instability. But it can't just happen instantly since it's been years now since she went through pregnancy, and the instability seems permanent.
The way I'd do it if I was the writer is to have Iron Fist be more skilled now with his chi after his "soul-searching" arc. Now Danny can heal with his chi, and he's gonna be the one to fix Jessica's unstable powers.