The 2025 TV schedule is a bit of a renaissance for the heroes and villains of the Marvel shows that originated over on Netflix. Charlie Cox, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Jon Bernthal have all returned to the small screen with Daredevil: Born Again, and rumor has it that The Defenders could get back together. That would mean Krysten Ritter reprising her role as Jessica Jones for the first time since 2018, and it's hard to think about a possible return without flashing back to David Tennant's terrifyingly excellent performance as Kilgrave. The Doctor Who alum spoke about playing the villain, and his comments make me want him back in the MCU.
David Tennant attended Fan Expo Cleveland and addressed playing the Purple Man to a standing-room-only ballroom of fans, myself included. He explained why he never thought Jessica Jones went too far with Kilgrave, sharing:
In the context of the very brilliant script, it was very well written, very well realized. [Creator] Melissa [Rosenburg] really got a way of telling a very grown up story about a lot of very difficult issues, actually, within a sort of superhero context. The two things kind of shouldn't go together, and yet [the writers] did it with such skill, such deftness that actually managed to talk about some very difficult subjects. Subjects like consent, subjects like childhood abuse, about the ways that people can be broken by the way they're treated as a child, or the way they are when they meet someone who can be very unhealthy for them, all of which doesn't sound like the sort of material that works in a comic book show. But they did the two really cleverly.
I'm personally on the record as considering Kilgrave with his use of his mind control powers to be the scariest villain of the MCU, even though he's certainly not on the scale of an Avengers-level threat like Thanos or Ultron. A lot of that goes down to Tennant's performance, which particularly struck me back in the day when I'd mostly known him prior to Jessica Jones for playing the Tenth Doctor on Doctor Who. Ten may have had his faults as an alien time traveler, but the Doctor certainly was no Kilgrave!
Until quite recently, I'd always been conflicted about whether or not I'd want to see Kilgrave again, going back to when the Jessica Jones Season 2 trailer confirmed Tennant would be back. I wouldn't want Jessica to have to deal with the trauma of having Kilgrave in her life in any way, shape, or form, but I also think that Krysten Ritter and David Tennant are fantastic together.
The actor went on to help sell me on now seeing Kilgrave again in the MCU if The Defenders do get a second shot to stream for fans with a Disney+ subscription:
Kilgrave did some absolutely inexcusable things, and yet at the same time, they managed to sketch out why he might have ended up like that. So it wasn't entirely unmotivated, because he was treated appallingly as a child. He had this thing where everything he requested of someone was immediately granted, which would ruin you. That would ruin anyone. And therefore, we don't approve of what he does, we don't condone it, but within the complexity of that story, we sort of understood how he got there, and I think that was a really brilliant bit of the writing. Of course, as an actor trying to play all that and make sense of all that, there's a lot of material. Yes, he's terrible, he's inexcusable, yet you kind of see how he gets there.
David Tennant clearly wasn't justifying Kilgrave's actions, but just pointed out that the character is that much more interesting for having the motivation he does instead of just causing carnage for the sake of it. Just because Kilgrave didn't see him as a villain doesn't mean the rest of us had to feel the same way, including the man bringing him to life for fans with a Netflix subscription, well before the streamer's Marvel TV library moved to Disney+.
The Good Omens co-lead went on to share that he didn't go full method behind the scenes of Jessica Jones to separate himself from the rest of the cast, saying:
I don't think we did do that. Krysten's so open and so easy to work with, actually, and she's so brilliant. I mean, I also felt quite scared of her when she turned on Jessica Jones. She's quite fierce, but she's not in real life. She sits behind the camera knitting... She's got such a presence. She's brilliant.
Jessica Jones did ultimately defeat Kilgrave, so I don't think anybody could disagree with Tennant's statement that she's "quite fierce." That didn't mean that the character could just shake off what Kilgrave put her through, as we saw in her second season. If the stars align for The Defenders to come back in some form or other, it'd be great to see Kilgrave more as somebody haunting Jessica in absentia rather than returned to life somehow. Krysten Ritter's character has certainly been through enough, but I have no doubt that she'd crush those interactions as an actress.
Given that it wasn't that long ago that Krysten Ritter said she was "ready" to return as Jessica Jones and Daredevil: Born Again is generating all sorts of buzz, the odds seem better than they've been in a long time that we could see her again. The question of whether we could ever see David Tennant again as Kilgrave – whether resurrected, via flashback, or via hallucination/dream sequence – is harder to answer.
For now, you can always revisit both seasons of Jessica Jones streaming on Disney+, and check out Daredevil: Born Again to revisit the corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that started out on Netflix.
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