By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Recently, the success of Deadpool & Wolverine gave Marvel a much-needed shot in the arm after the high-profile failures of Quantumania and The Marvels and the equally high-profile scramble to find a new villain for the franchise after Jonathan Majors’ legal woes. Now, Kevin Feige and crew must figure out how to sustain this momentum or the real Big Bad may prove to be the superhero fatigue threatening to “doom” Avengers: Doomsday before it even premieres. The solution is easy, though: Krysten Ritter wants to reprise her role as Jessica Jones, and a revival of her hit show is the secret weapon Marvel needs in order to survive.
Krysten Ritter Is Marvel’s Secret Weapon
While Krysten Ritter’s Marvel character is always sarcastic and aloof, the actor behind her couldn’t contain her fangirl excitement after learning that Head of Streaming, Television, and Animation Brad Winderbaum said he wants to see Jessica Jones return to the MCU. She called his response “exciting” and asked, “isn’t that the guy who makes the call?” She finished her thoughts by encouraging him to “get it going” and that “I’ll be ready” for her hardnosed detective’s return to this cinematic universe.
There was an undercurrent of humility in Krysten Ritter’s response, a kind of tacit admission that she wasn’t sure if any of the Marvel powers that be were ready to bring Jessica Jones back. However, I have a theory as bold as it is simple: the MCU needs Jessica Jones more than Ritter needs the MCU. And that’s because a revival of her show could help Marvel stay exciting and relevant, replacing the malaise of superhero fatigue with genuine excitement for the future of this franchise.
One straightforward reason for this is that Jessica Jones is a known quantity and a proven hit with a demographic that Marvel needs to appeal to more: women. Krysten Ritter’s original Netflix Marvel show arguably laid the groundwork for later buzzy, female-centric Disney+ shows like WandaVision and Agatha All Along. The unprecedented failure of The Marvels means that Disney needs more content that appeals directly to women, and Agatha’s recent success is proof that this demographic enjoys watching the adventures of sassy bad girls more than those of high-flying, nigh-invulnerable heroes.
More Major Villain Casting
Additionally, part of what made Jessica Jones so popular in the first place is its stellar casting, including Doctor Who icon David Tennant playing against type as an amoral monster who can make his victims do literally anything that he commands. Tennant is a busy guy, but Marvel was able to get him to come on board for an amazingly memorable single season. These days, many great actors hesitate to sign on with Marvel because they are intimidated by contracts tying them down for a decade, but a Jessica Jones “villain of the season”-style revival would bring more buzzworthy names (temporarily, at least) to future projects.
Finally, a revival of Krysten Ritter’s seminal show could re-energize the franchise, signifying to fans that no part of Marvel’s sprawling comic universe was off-limits when it came to live-action adaptation. Before her Netflix show, Jessica Jones was a relatively obscure character, someone whose one big comic (Alias) finished its 28-issue run back in 2004. Fans around the world fell in love with the character because of the brilliant TV show, and a successful revival might convince execs to pilfer the weirder corners of the Marvel universe rather than simply running its most popular characters into the ground with tired stories and even more tired actors.
It’s impossible for me to be objective about this. You’ve probably clocked that I’m a huge fanboy of Krysten Ritter in general and Jessica Jones in particular, so my advice to Marvel execs is inevitably biased. But I’m someone who loved the Alias comics decades ago, and it warmed my frozen fanboy heart to see how the Jessica Jones show gave one of Marvel’s most unconventional characters a legion of new fans.
And you don’t have to be a hard-drinking private investigator to put the clues together and arrive at a simple conclusion: only a Jessica Jones revival can pull Marvel out of its creative slump and make even the most jaded fans excited once more for the future of this cinematic universe.
Source: ComicBook.com
