Marvel’s Jessica Jones is more about addiction and relapse than it is about superheroes

There’s a tendency to lump Marvel’s Jessica Jones together with the rest of television’s current crop of superhero shows. It is, after all, about a superpowered detective with the strength to lift cars and defeat the mind-controlling monster of a man who’s out to get her. But defining the show only by the presence of superhuman abilities would be selling it short. Jessica Jones’s dark beauty stems from the ways in which it thoughtfully tackles the ordinary stories of broken humans.

The most beguiling of these is the show’s real and bleak commentary on the relentlessness of addiction, and how it can affect anyone, even people with superpowers. There are moments when the story ends up in such a raw and awful place, and in such a superb way, that Jessica Jones becomes hard, stifling even, to watch.

When you strip away the patina of super strength, mind control, and ass-kicking, Jessica Jones is full of stories about addicts and the addictions that haunt them, often with no resolution at all. The show forces us to live with the unfair idea that we can’t entirely “fix” addiction even if it’s self-inflicted, and that there’s always a chance it will hurt us again.

If Jessica Jones is meant to be a reflection of addiction, Jessica’s sad neighbor Malcolm (Eka Darville) represents how hard it can be to get help.

When the series begins, Malcolm is portrayed as a junkie who can’t help himself. He’s wasted in his apartment building’s common areas, falling over himself in elevators or strung out in the lobby. No one really cares about him. Jessica, our hero, is of the mindset that as long as he doesn’t harm her, she doesn’t care what he does. She doesn’t realize the harm (or maybe she does and doesn’t care) that he’s inflicting on himself. There’s a moment in episode four, “AKA 99 Friends,” when Officer Simpson (Wil Traval) threatens Malcolm, but Jessica calls him off.

“He’s probably watching the ceiling melt,” Jessica says. “Malcolm, go sleep it off.”

Our perception of Malcolm slowly begins to change as we learn more about his story. We see a picture of what he looks like cleaned up. We find out he wanted to do social work. We realize he wanted to help people — and that’s what compels Jessica to help him. Malcolm is a human beneath his drug-induced haze.

There’s a sad message buried in Jessica’s willingness to help Malcolm: that non-addicts only help or think of addicts as humans once we know more about them, once we deem them worthy of helping, but this measured kindness frequently doesn’t happen at all since we don’t often care to get to know them in the first place.

Kilgrave (David Tennant), who has the power of mind control, doesn’t fit neatly into Jessica Jones’s narrative of addiction. When members of the support group that Jessica has organized for Kilgrave’s victims talk about being under his control, it sounds like they’re talking about the depths of alcoholism, a drug addiction, or a binge: They have a blurry recollection of events but were unable to fight Kilgrave or his influence. Meanwhile, by the end of the season, Kilgrave himself is addicted to his own power.

But there’s something fascinating about the role he plays in Malcolm’s life, as both a dealer and the disease of addiction itself. Kilgrave chooses Malcolm to stalk Jessica on his behalf because Malcolm is Jessica’s neighbor. Kilgrave could have chosen anyone who lives in her apartment building, and his selection of Malcolm represents the unfairness of the disease. But in order to keep Malcolm on a string, Kilgrave introduces him to actual drugs, since Kilgrave’s mind control powers eventually wear off — drug addiction is much stronger than Kilgrave’s influence. There are times when Malcolm stalks Jessica because he wants drugs, not because Kilgrave is compelling him to.

“Sometimes I did it just for the drugs,” he tells Jessica in episode five, “AKA A Sandwich Saved My Life,” while he detoxes on his bathroom floor. “I’m telling you I had a choice.”

There’s a theme of selfishness here. As much as we want to blame Kilgrave or whatever outside factors are fueling Malcolm’s addiction, it’s his fault, too. He admits it. And when he’s detoxing while Jessica is with him, she admits that helping him get clean is as much about fixing herself as it is about fixing him. She tells him he’s just a pawn in Kilgrave’s game — another person she can’t help — meant to hurt her. It’s here, when Malcolm realizes his own selfishness, that he can finally break free.

There’s no other character on Jessica Jones who pushes you through a gamut of emotions like Wil Traval’s Will Simpson. At first he’s a cop Kilgrave has brainwashed to kill Jessica’s friend and stepsister, Trish Walker. He’s also ordered to commit suicide, which he almost does but for some last-minute heroics from Jessica. Then he becomes Trish’s lover. Later, he’s injured and becomes addicted to pills — given to him by a mysterious doctor from his past — that will enhance his recovery and fitness. Will’s addiction and subsequent devolution into a husk of a human being feels like a deep disappointment when you consider he had a second chance at life.

In a haunting, uneasy episode called “AKA I’ve Got the Blues,” we come to realize that Will has fallen into a full-fledged relapse. His eyes are vacant. He makes painful small talk, trying to hide the fact that the drugs have altered his behavior. And we watch as he shows us he’s past the point when anyone can save him.

Will’s descent into madness takes place throughout Jessica Jones’s first season — we see him threaten Malcolm and also have a sexual relationship with Trish, a woman he once tried to kill — but I had this idea, in my head at least, that when Jessica saved him from committing suicide early in the season, that he would be okay. As we watch him pop pills and have a Shining-like moment with Trish and Jess, it’s clear he isn’t. It now looks like he’ll be a villain, a riff the idea that addiction is a lifelong struggle even when someone is “better.”

Will’s arc is heartbreaking, because it confirms that no one is really safe in this world. Everyone — sweet, cleaned-up Malcolm; Jessica; the members of the Kilgrave survivors’ support group — is vulnerable. It doesn’t matter if you’ve already been saved and see the light. While Jessica Jones is definitely a show about healing from addiction and trauma, it’s also brutally honest about how fleeting that healing can be. Survival isn’t a given; it’s something that each character must work toward. But not every character has the will to survive.