Jessica Jones: How to Pull Off a First Episode Plot Twist

 Warning: this post contains spoilers for Jessica Jones Season 1. I should have mentioned in my past posts that I'll have lots of spoilers in this blog. It just happens that many things in shows, etc. that are worth discussing are also incredibly spoiler-y.

    The antagonist of Jessica Jones’ first season, David Tennant’s Kilgrave, is one of the MCU*’s best villains. As the result of experiments done on him as a child, Kilgrave emits pheromones that make anyone around him obey his every command. He’s really one of the scariest villains in TV. The show explores all the horrific things Kilgrave can do with his powers. He makes a random stranger throw hot coffee in his face for no reason other than that he kind of annoyed him. At another point, Kilgrave forced someone to donate both his kidneys to him. Kilgrave only needed one, but he made the guy give him both, just because he wanted them.

    A lot of the horror in Kilgrave comes from how nonchalantly he does these gruesome things. All he has to do is make some offhand remark, and whoever it’s directed to obeys him. He ruins people’s lives on a whim.

*Yes, I’m considering Jessica Jones and the other Marvel Netflix shows part of the MCU canon here. No, the movies never reference the Netflix shows, but the shows reference things like The Battle of New York from Avengers. The Raft, the superhero prison from Captain America: Civil War, plays a decent-sized part in Jessica Jones’ plot. And really, until one of the Netflix characters shows up in the main MCU, is there any reason they can’t take place in the same universe? As far as I’m concerned, Seinfeld takes place in the MCU, and years after the series ended Kramer became a victim of the Snap.

(Source: http://www.david-tennant.co.uk/2015/11/photos-over-1000-photos-of-david.html. Yes, this is a thing apparently.)

Another aspect that makes Kilgrave work so well is his sheer power. I don’t mean physical strength, but rather the fact that he has an overwhelming advantage over our heroes (And part of the reason the end of the season felt a bit anticlimactic for me was the weird decision to make Jessica immune to Kilgrave’s powers. Making your villain weaker doesn’t exactly make for a climactic finale).    

 For most of the season, Kilgrave seems unstoppable. He can’t be tried in court, because he would just be able to control everyone in the courtroom. If anyone tries to get close to him, he can just tell them to kill or brutally injure themselves. Jessica Jones manages to make Kilgrave feel overwhelmingly strong before it even has him onscreen.

(Source: https://www.vinereport.com/article/jessica-jones-season-2-cast-plot-news-kilgrave-return-next-season/113773.htm.)

Keeping the villain offscreen is a standard horror technique. Things just feel less scary when you have them in front of you and you can get used to them. Jaws doesn’t show the shark until over an hour into the movie (https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/movies-for-grownups/info-2020/jaws-trivia-facts.html), but it’s scary because, even when it’s not visibly present, you feel its influence everywhere. Jessica Jones does the same thing with Kilgrave. It shows things that demonstrate his power without showing him himself. This is an incredible act of restraint on the show’s part, as David Tennant’s smarmy performance is one of the series’ highlights. They must have been tempted to put him in front of the camera as often as possible, but I really respect the pragmatic decisions they made with the character. 

(Source: https://screencrush.com/jessica-jones-abc-melissa-rosenberg-season-2/.)

Before the show introduces us to Kilgrave, it shows us Jessica’s life as a P.I. It’s an unpleasant job that involves snooping around and looking for the worst in people, which establishes how miserable Jessica is in her life. It also shows us that she has superpowers, in a scene where she picks up the rear end of a car to stop it from getting away. It’s not the most subtle way to drop the information, but it works.

 At this point, Kilgrave’s presence takes the form of Jessica’s intrusive thoughts. She was one of his victims. By the start of the series, Kilgrave has been hit by a bus and allegedly killed, but Jessica still hasn’t recovered from the abuse she suffered under him. His memory is like a devil on her shoulder, whispering in her ear. 

(Source: https://imgflip.com/memetemplate/281654567/Jessica-Jones-Death-Stare.)

He comes into the present plot when Jessica takes on an unusual missing person case. This is where Jessica Jones leans into its subtle noir detective aesthetic, with the old trope of detectives’ cases infringing on their personal lives. The parents of a girl not-very-subtly named Hope come to Jessica for help finding their missing daughter. As Jessica researches Hope’s case, Kilgrave’s involvement becomes more and more apparent. As she recognizes the patterns in his abuse, we learn what Jessica herself went through. Her determination to save Hope drives the plot of the episode. Up to this point, apathy and hating humanity were Jessica’s two biggest character traits, so the fact that she cares about Hope shows how big of a deal Kilgrave is to Jessica.

When we find Hope, Kilgrave is once again physically absent but symbolically everywhere. Jessica finds Hope pinned to a hotel bed, frozen by Kilgrave’s command even though she has no physical restraints. This is our first real demonstration of his ability. We never see him utter the words, but we see the effect of it. Hope wants to get up, but she can’t make her body disobey the command, no matter how much she wants to. Jessica then explains to Hope how the ability works.

The fact that Jessica knows the specific rules of his ability, including its potential loopholes, shows how much history the two have together. (In a later episode, Kilgrave tells Jessica’s friend Trish to put a bullet in her head. Jessica gets around this by having her put the bullet in her mouth. Since it's technically in her head, it satisfies the command.) This is basic writing advice, but it’s great to have your character feel like she’s a real person who existed before the events of the show.

Jessica saves the day by dragging Hope from the bed. Jessica takes Hope to her parents, and briefly leaves her with them.

Hope then shoots and kills her parents. She tells Jessica that Kilgrave commanded her to do it if she escaped.

(Source: https://hogyvolt.blog.hu/2016/02/23/jessica_jones_1x01_avagy_a_holgyek_ejszakaja.)

A plot twist is always a delicate balance between two extremes: expectedness and surprise. A twist has to be surprising, but it also has to make sense. If it comes out of nowhere, the audience will feel cheated. If it has too much buildup, the audience will wonder why the story wants something so obvious to feel important. The audience might not even register it as a twist.

This plot twist makes sense because we know Kilgrave has the power to make people follow his commands. It’s surprising because we didn’t know that he thinks things through enough to have a contingency plan like that. We didn’t know that Kilgrave could make more complex commands, i.e. “if X, do Y” instead of your basic “Do Y.” Hope’s parents are also developed a lot in the episode prior. They’re not treated like throwaway characters.

There’s a third, less-talked-about element to good plot twists, and that’s their weight. Something unexpected happening doesn’t automatically count as a plot twist. It has to mean something for the story. Luke learning that Vader’s his father, for example, has a lot of implications for Luke’s personal journey as someone who wants to leave his humble origins to become a hero. The plot twist in Jessica Jones’ pilot is important for several reasons:

- It gives us our first glimpse into Kilgrave’s genius. He doesn’t just have the power to manipulate people. He’s also smart enough to think three steps ahead, and he always covers his tracks.

- It shows how twisted Kilgrave is. He not only abducts Hope, but he makes her kill her parents to keep her in his grasp.

- It raises the stakes. Kilgrave feels more dangerous than he did before the twist.

- Because no one can prove Hope was mind-controlled, she has her parents’ blood on her hands. Contrary to what we may have thought, her case is extending beyond that first episode.

Essential to all these points is the fact that the show follows through on them. Nothing is worse than a show that makes it look like someone dies at the end of one episode only to have them turn out fine at the beginning of the next (cough Riverdale cough). Let’s look at how Jessica Jones follows through on the points above in the remainder of season one:

                - Kilgrave is shown to be just as, if not more of, a genius than in that first episode.

                - Kilgrave does even more messed up things. At one point, he tells a guy to stand in one place forever. We see the guy a few hours later, quaking in fear but still standing there, with wet pants. There’s also that part where he buys Jessica’s childhood house because he wants to live there with her.

                - For the most part, Kilgrave feels just as dangerous as he does here. At one point he gathers everyone Jessica holds dear and puts them in nooses. At another part, he makes Luke Cage fight Jessica, a battle she doesn’t win easily.

                - Proving Hope’s innocence forms the backbone of most of the rest of the season’s plot. Her parents definitely do not come back to life.

How To Write a Twist Like Jessica Jones.

Now that we’ve broken down Jessica Jones’ killer twist, we can begin to see how you can use its same techniques in your own writing:

- Be aware of your audience’s expectations and knowledge-sets going into the twist. Something that might seem like a big moment in your head might be obvious if you drop too many clues. On the other hand, the audience will feel cheated if the twist feels random or illogical. Give them something that’s in the realm of possibility, but still clearly deviates from where they thought the story was going.

- When writing beginnings and early installments, take advantage of the fact that your audience knows less about your characters than you. This is the perfect time to surprise them.

- Make it make your protagonists’ job harder. A protagonist who continually struggles is compelling.

- Make the twist matter. If your characters are dealing with its implications several episodes or chapters down the road, it’ll make that moment feel even more important. If the twist doesn’t matter one episode later, it’s going to feel cheap. You need to prove to your audience that your twist is a big deal if you want them to be shocked by the next one.

 

That pretty much covers the main points I took away from Jessica Jones’ pilot. Leave your observations and feedback in the comments below. Pretend Kilgrave told you to.