Because she has a psychic block, she discovers she’s immune from Kilgrave, but it doesn’t stop him from hurting others to manipulate Jessica. Like his comic counterpart Zeediah Kilgrave, known as the Purple Man for his matching skin and attire, he can manipulates people for his own ends with just a word or a phrase. For instance, if he says to you, “jump off a building”, you can only watch helplessly as your body does exactly as he says. The series is considered neo-noir and has been compared to Game of Thrones for its portrayal of rape culture, but the difference is that the Netflix series is supposed to take place in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City, in our world whereas Game of Thrones can divorce its reality from modern viewers by being set in a medieval fantasy.

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Though the series itself is a dark neo-noir, it covers the hard topics of rape culture, trauma, rape deniers, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Critics claimed the series was both necessary and innovative for exploration of these themes.

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Let’s look at the example of Kilgrave, our villain. In the comics, his body produces chemical pheromones which give him his powers but they have also been portrayed to induce visual hallucinations or trigger emotional responses or desires. In Jessica Jones, he retains similar abilities with the act of smiling being a very high stakes reaction. “Kilgrave’s obsession with smiling is a pointed comment on the widespread phenomenon of men hectoring women on the street, and the point of the comparison is to drive home that the difference between ‘be happy’ and ‘look happy’ is vast.” Lili Loofbourow points out in her article for The Guardian. For Kilgrave, it is about control, for his victim’s it is about escaping because as Loofbourow observes: “Kilgrave’s victims aren’t – despite appearances – automatons or zombies. It would be better, perhaps, if they were. Instead, they’re aware, trapped under glass.” Because of Kilgrave, his victims feel while they are under his control and when they escape (if they don’t die), they feel shame, remorse, victimhood, among other terrible symptoms. But there’s more to Kilgrave that Stephanie Yang of Bitch Media points out:

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Kilgrave is the abuser that so many victims of abuse are familiar with: Everyone on the outside sees a charming, friendly, affable man. On the inside, within his relationships, he is completely and totally in control. And just like real life, he doesn’t see anything wrong with what he does. Instead, he maximizes every opportunity to be cruel and violent. Just to make a point, he’ll keep someone from blinking for hours, order a young woman to kill her parents, and literally force women to smile. Jones is just one of many of his victims—he routinely turns women into his personal slaves. In a society that pillories survivors of abuse who aren’t “perfect victims” or “didn’t fight back enough,” the show makes clear that it doesn’t matter that Jones is stronger and wilier than your average human. She can literally leap a building in a single bound, but she’s just as manipulated by Kilgrave’s powers as anyone else. She escapes his clutches only by luck and a fortuitously timed violent accident that leaves him temporarily incapacitated.

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David Tennant’s portrayal of Kilgrave as a charming man is important as well. At least until he does not get what he wants and starts his cycle of abuse, control, manipulation, and in some cases, rape.