1. Jessica Jones season 1
It took the Marvel Cinematic Universe a full decade to release
a superhero movie with a female character as co-lead, and those who want a solo superheroine movie still have to wait until next March for
Captain Marvel. Meanwhile, in the second season of the Marvel/Netflix franchise, showrunner Melissa Rosenberg and star Krysten Ritter created
a definitive female superhero for the 21st century. Private investigator Jessica Jones had her own personal struggles to deal with (including alcoholism, a crappy apartment, and wearing the same pair of jeans over and over), but she also channeled the anger of every woman struggling against the oppressive control of the patriarchy.
Never has the patriarchy had a more fitting avatar than the purple man himself: Kilgrave, a man who exercises effortless domination over everyone simply by talking over them, was a doubly horrifying villain for the way David Tennant inverted the nerdy charm of his
Doctor Whorun into a dark, poisonous version of male entitlement.
With
Luke Cage and
Iron Fist now canceled, the future of the Marvel/Netflix universe remains up in the air. But if one thing is certain, it’s that Jessica Jones is a character who should endure.
—
Christian Holub