Spoilers for Jessica Jones Season 1 are below, so make sure you’re finished with it before reading.
2015 was a year positively stuffed to the clouds with interesting and multi-faceted villains, something helped in part by the amount of new comic book series debuting. But few antagonists, if any, were as flippantly brutal and emotionally debilitating as David Tennant’s Kilgrave in Netflix’s Jessica Jones. It took a small while after the finale was over to come to terms with Kilgrave’s death, but it sounds like his absence from the show might not be permanent now that we know Season 2 is happening. According to showrunner Melissa Rosenberg:
I mean, if you have David Tennant you want him around forever. He's such an extraordinary actor and one of the loveliest people you'd ever want to work with. But the show is called Jessica Jones, and it's about Jessica's arc.
Speaking at this year’s TCA press event, Rosenberg was joined for the panel by Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb, who went on to say that actress Krysten Ritter, along with the rest of the cast and the show itself, was made all the better by Tennant’s “extraordinary” performance as the mind-controlling Kilgrave. I mean seriously, his powers turned him into one of the world’s most untethered sadists, but there was still just enough humanity there to give audiences a semblance of sympathy for the murdering rapist. He’s not only one of the best characters of 2015, but one of the greatest live-action villains of all time.
I know what you’re saying: all the acting abilities in the world can’t unbreak a character’s neck, and we definitely saw Jessica breaking his neck in the finale. And you’re absolutely right. But nobody said that Tennant would be reprising the role of a still-alive-in-the-present-day Kilgrave. Considering the extreme damage done to his victims’ mental states, particularly that of Jessica’s, then he hardly has to still be living and breathing in order to create chaos for others. He just has to be remembered.
Ritter seems to imply this here, according to DigitalSpy, as she describes how the character will move on after murdering her nemesis.
It's very conflicting, in terms of Jessica's headspace. He's the reason she got up every day, why she went out into the world, he really gave her a purpose. And I don't think the past trauma just goes away with his death.
Considering how solid and psychologically pummeling Season 1 of Jessica Jones was, it’s hard to consider just what will have to be done to make it better in Season 2 whenever it debuts. But one surefire way to do it is to keep David Tennant around to whisper sweet nothings into Jessica’s subconsciousness. Would you guys want to see more Kilgrave next season?
