|
|
"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | I'd do anything to see the look on her face when she realizes she's helpless. I'd make her want me, then reject her, devastate her over and over and over until she wants to die. Nah, I won't give her that either, she'd wither away like someone dying of thirst or starvation. Be a ring of hell designed especially for her. Or maybe I'll just kill her. | „ |
| ~ Kilgrave considers killing Jessica Jones. |
| “ | For every year you left me alone, stab yourself. | „ |
| ~ Kilgrave orders his mother to stab herself to death. |
Kevin Thompson, best known as Kilgrave, is the main antagonist of the Netflix series Marvel's Jessica Jones, serving as the main antagonist of Season 1 and the posthumous overarching antagonist of Seasons 2 and 3. He is also a mentioned antagonist in Marvel’s Luke Cage and a posthumous antagonist in Marvel’s The Defenders.
He is a sociopath enhanced with the power of mind control and uses it to get whatever he wants and hurt or kill whoever he pleases. He is also the arch-nemesis of Jessica Jones, who he tries to regain control over and have all to himself.
He was portrayed by David Tennant, who also played Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Brendan Block in Secret Smile, Lord Commander in Final Space, Cale Erendreich in Bad Samaritan and Brimscythe in The Legend of Vox Machina.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
In General/Background[]
- Whilst he has plenty of comedic moments, not only are they are only amusing to the audience, but they actually make him worse by emphasizing the incredible extent of his remorselessness and his sadism.
- While he had a rough childhood with his parents frequently experimenting on him painfully and then finally abandoning him, it does nothing to even remotely make him sympathetic because they only experimented on him because they wanted to save him from a brain disease, and they only abandoned him because they were rightfully scared of him as he brainwashed them both for several days, including making his mother burn her own face with a hot iron, nearly killing her. He also brainwashed, raped, and killed countless innocent people who had nothing to do with his childhood at all.
- Simply put, there's really no reason for his atrocious crimes apart from sadistic kicks and he's simply using his past to avoid having to take any responsibility for his own actions.
- Although he has, or had, Blue-and-Orange morality, with David Tennant stating, and Kilgrave's actions demonstrating, that it would be impossible to form a normal sense of ethics with Kilgrave's exceedingly corrupting powers, this does not impair his moral agency due to his sadism and spite towards others, and in any case, he seems to subvert this in that - despite either rationalising via victim-blaming or sincerely not understanding that he is raping women - telling Jessica at the climax of the first season that he will be "raping" Trish.
- In short, whilst it's indeed difficult, if not impossible, for a person with Kilgrave's powers to live a normal life due to not being able to delegate or formulate structures that won't come crashing down after a while - hence why Kilgrave is always shown as alone and not being able to function in any kind of society beyond sponging off others like a parasite - his sadism and raping women as well as that he can formulate all of his verbal interactions as questions to not pointlessly rob people of their agency is what makes him evil in spite of his exceptional circumstances.
- He is a serial rapist, using his brainwashing ability to turn numerous girls into his sex slaves against their wills, including Jessica Jones.
- While it may seem like he harbors tender feelings for Jessica Jones, this has always been treated as the very pinnacle of limerence and it's heavily implied he's more fascinated with her due to her resisting his powers, if not also for her being an empowered human. That he quickly backtracks in saying "first thing - sorry, person" that he ever cared about adds to this.
- While he admits that saving a woman and her children from a hostage crisis feels good, it's only because of the glory and admiration that comes with it which by itself it’s not an inherently evil thing to do but in line with his status, it counts.
- Despite the MCU's massive Heinous Standard, he stands out for forcing dozens of people to have sex with him, a rare crime for the MCU, murdering dozens of others in viciously brutal ways, and having personal villainy towards Jessica Jones, all with limited resources.
- When Jessica once refused to listen to him, he nearly made her cut her own ear off, and while he did stop and comfort her, it was only to make sure that she would remain as his slave.
- He made Jessica kill Luke Cage's wife, Reva.
- After getting hit by a bus and hospitalized, he forced an ambulance driver to donate both of his own kidneys during a transplant. This leaves the driver in a catatonic state, begging for death.
Season 1[]
- He has no problem harming children. He smashes a boy's toy car and then locks him and his sister in a closet, while telling the sister to urinate in there, keeping them stuck for twelve long hours, and once told a man to leave his own toddler son on the curb.
- He tried to force Will Simpson to kill Trish Walker for insulting him and then nearly made him commit suicide by jumping off a building, traumatizing him for life and making him become more aggressive and sociopathic than he already was.
- He gets Malcolm to become a junkie and bring him photos of Jessica in exchange for more drugs.
- Basically everything he does to Hope Shiftwell is torture; raping and impregnating her (which is why she gets an abortion), forcing her to gun down her parents and thus incriminating her, and it all ends with her committing suicide in order to remove herself as a bargaining chip.
- He makes a random man throw hot coffee into his own face, and then another commit suicide via swallowing a pair of garden shears.
- He cheats his way through a poker game with some rich men by telling them to quit, and when one of the players demands a rematch, Kilgrave tells him to repeatedly bash his own head into a column just for being a sore loser.
- Although he buys Jessica's house instead of killing its current residents, not only does he pay for it with money he earned dishonestly, but he clearly does so in a hugely misguided attempt to earn Jessica's approval.
- He makes Jessica's neighbor, Ruben, climb into her bed and slit his own throat there just because he brought her banana bread.
- He makes Jessica's annoying childhood neighbor suicide-bomb Will, which ends up giving him enough brain trauma to become a homicidal maniac, hence being responsible for all of his wrongdoings.
- He heavily considers killing Chuck, a complete stranger, for holding his own family members at gunpoint. While he may have deserved it, Jessica correctly calls him out on sanctimoniously thinking that's for either him or her to decide.
- Although Jessica tortured him brutally, it's not played for sympathy as he absolutely deserved it.
- After his mother stabs him with scissors in self-defense, he spitefully makes her commit suicide by stabbing herself for every year that she left him alone. He then tries to do the same to his own father by nearly making him dissect his own heart out of his chest.
- Whilst sympathetic in his breakdown towards his parents and he admittedly sobbed and apologised to his mother, he subverts this alongside with any fleeting care he had or demonstrated towards his parents when she stabbed him, as he icily orders his own mother to kill herself, and nonchalantly beckons his father to do the same. He definitively subverts this beyond any doubt with his flippant dismissal of his mother's death as a "cold-blooded monster" and rationalising her death away as doing the world a favour, and when he brutally has his father's arms cut off and causing him to die slowly from shock and blood loss.
- This, with the foreknowledge that they did so out of remorse and guilt for his evil being their responsibility as well as admitting that they still sincerely love him, does not therefore make him sympathetic, or subverts the sympathy.
- In short, Kilgrave exceedingly demonstrates that he is "Wholly Debased" in shedding or subverting all of his redeeming qualities.
- This, with the foreknowledge that they did so out of remorse and guilt for his evil being their responsibility as well as admitting that they still sincerely love him, does not therefore make him sympathetic, or subverts the sympathy.
- Whilst sympathetic in his breakdown towards his parents and he admittedly sobbed and apologised to his mother, he subverts this alongside with any fleeting care he had or demonstrated towards his parents when she stabbed him, as he icily orders his own mother to kill herself, and nonchalantly beckons his father to do the same. He definitively subverts this beyond any doubt with his flippant dismissal of his mother's death as a "cold-blooded monster" and rationalising her death away as doing the world a favour, and when he brutally has his father's arms cut off and causing him to die slowly from shock and blood loss.
- He tries to make Trish shoot herself in the head after she shoots him in self-defense.
- He tells Jeri's ex-wife Wendy to give her a "death by a thousand cuts," forcing the former's current fiancée Pam to kill the latter in self-defense.
- Before escaping again, he nearly forces Malcolm, Robyn, Jackson and Donald to hang themselves just to distract Jessica.
- He makes Jessica and Luke fight each other, which puts the latter into a coma.
- He has his father's arms amputated by another one of his thralls, which he bleeds to death from.
- When cornered by Jessica at the docks, he orders the dozens of people there to tear themselves apart just as a distraction.
- Out of pure spite towards Jessica, Kilgrave tries to leave with her best friend Trish and turn her into his plaything. He'd make Trish slit her own throat if he ever saw Jessica again.
Seasons 2 & 3[]
- Even after his death, he still continued to taunt Jessica and provoke her to attack people and eventually was nearly successful in turning her away from her heroic work for good.
Trivia[]
- Although having a rough childhood doesn't excuse his crimes as an adult, it can be argued that he wouldn't have become so vile if certain events had played out differently. His parents experimented on him without anesthesia, he grew up without support or guidance, and he even seemed genuinely remorseful for burning his mother's face until she stabbed him. Even David Tennant (his actor) sympathizes with him because of it.
- Kilgrave and his comic version are the only versions of the Purple Man to be Pure Evil.
External links[]
- Kilgrave on the Villains Wiki
- Kilgrave on the Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki
- Kilgrave on the Marvel Wiki
