#once again in case it wasn't clear: I think as it stands trish's story is a tragedy

[cogentranting]

I don't know if you've completed JJS3 yet. If you haven't, save this ask for reserve. But what were your thoughts on how they handled Trish's arc in the end? Personally, I think her ending reminded me of Daenerys being screwed over by bad writing on Game of Thrones, if you get my drift.

I’m gonna preface this by saying I know all the stuff about the Daenerys controversy but I don’t watch the show so I’m not gonna weigh in on that. 

I like Trish’s arc a lot. I thought it was very well set up across the three seasons, so it made perfect sense to me that she would have this sort of descent. It’s not abrupt or out of nowhere. You can see in her childhood issues and the complicated relationship with her mother the roots of the ideas which come to consume her. And it’s a pretty clear progression from where she’s at in season 1 to where she ends up in season 3. You’ve got her ideas about what Jessica should be doing with her powers, where she’s a bit self-righteous but mostly correct and then after being attacked (I think she’s attacked? My memory of season 1 isn’t great, it’s been a while) she starts to become more paranoid and become obsessed with protecting herself. And throughout season 1 and 2 (and defenders) she’s fixated on the idea of making a difference in the world, but in a way that is partially focused on being taken seriously. And all that pushing her to the point of killing Jess’s mom in season 2. 

So it’s this really interesting portrayal of someone moving from idealism and wanting to make difference in the world, but giving in to their own trauma and ego and self-righteousness and ending up in a place where they’re angry and feel entitled to do whatever they want, regardless of what anyone else is telling them,. And it’s linked into her childhood with her celebrity creating her ego but also giving her a strong desire to be taken seriously and redefine herself separate from that, and the addiction tying into her sort of getting addicted to the adrenaline, and they sowed seeds of her being jealous of Jessica’s powers, and the abuse in her past relates to her desire to punish people who are doing wrong. Then there’s the whole relationship with her mother where Dorothy created a sense of Trish being dependent on her which made her death even more devastating. And the way that Dorothy shaped Trish as a child where she put so much responsibility on her shoulders (the pressure of “you have to be successful because all our money is in this” etc) and then pushed her to have this ends justifies the means attitude (pushing the other girl out of a part, and all kinds of shady business stuff like that) which helps Trish to feel like she needs to do this crusade and that its justified no matter who gets hurt, so long as the bad guy is punished. The abuse creates this complicated situation when Dorothy dies, where Trish is still somewhat stuck in that abuse victim mindset of wanting the relationship with her mother to be there and not be hurtful, so when the possibility of that is taken away it’s devastating. And her history of addiction shows that she doesn’t have healthy coping mechanisms to deal with trauma (her season 1 reactions go along with this as well). 

So I think that Trish’s fall is very well written, fits really well with everything they established about her character, and is an interesting, engaging story both on it’s own and for the way that it interacts with and creates Jesscia’s story. Ending it with her going to the Raft makes sense once you get to that point. It’s a super depressing end to that story, but it’s not badly written. 

BUT the biggest thing is I feel pretty confident that it wasn’t intended to be the end of her story. JJ season 3 started filming in June 2018. I can’t find a date for when they finished but probably sometime in the fall, around the time that Iron Fist and Daredevil were airing. And the scripts would’ve already been written by the time that those shows premiered. Iron Fist and Luke Cage didn’t cancelled until October. Daredevil didn’t get cancelled til November. So Jessica Jones season 3 wasn’t written to be the final season. Daredevil’s cast talked about their shock at being cancelled, even after IF LC got cancelled, so before any of those? Jessica Jones probably thought it was safe. To me, it looks like the final scene with Jessica in the train station was re-shot/rewritten when they realized that they were probably getting cancelled. Her decision to turn around and go back was pretty abrupt and I think if it were always the intended course to have Jessica almost leave everything behind and run but then decide to stay despite everything it would have been explored for longer than 5 minutes at the end of the episode. To me, it looks like the intent was to leave Malcolm running Alias, Erik trying to do good, so in very dynamic positions (similar to Foggy moving to the big corporate law firm at the end of DD2 while Karen goes to work for the newspaper), have Trish down and out for the moment but with a little glimmer of her future redemption in the way that she seems to be starting to realize the error of her ways at the very end of the season, and then have Jessica run away to Mexico. Season 4 would have started with Jessica having been gone from the city a while, coming back to find Erik and Malcolm having come to be in very different positions, and maybe Jess is drawn back by something going on with them, or by the potential of a way to save Trish, and having to choose not to run even though so many terrible things happen to her. And I think Trish’s redemption would have been explored in that season. But when the other three shows got the axe, Jessica Jones only had time for small changes, so they did the best they could (which is ultimately pretty good, on at least the part of Jessica, Erik and Malcolm) by having the Killgrave moment which is, in my opinion, pretty effective at prompting that last minute decision in Jessica. So just by adding in that moment and having Jessica turn around instead of going to Mexico, they provide a open ending that gives the implication that Jessica is going to reclaim her life and probably reconnect with Erik and Malcolm. And they only had to rewrite/reshoot half a scene. But Trish’s ending  would have required much much bigger changes to have her end up somewhere else. If they have her not go dark side, they sacrifice their climax (both in terms of plot/action, and character arcs for both Jess and Trish). If they have her just go on the run that lessens the effect of Jessica’s choices at the end. If they rush a redemption in the last episode, that cheapens the whole arc and creates a lot of plot holes. So in order to end Jessica’s story well, they had to let Trish’s arc play out as intended even if that made it really sad.