From White Tiger to Hellcat and every 'Avengers' reference in between.
“Sweet Christmas!”
By now, you’ve all had time to binge-watch Netflix’s newest and arguably best superhero series, Marvel’s Jessica Jones, and discover all the Marvel Easter eggs buried in the first 13 episodes. There are enough to make you say, well, see above. (And then see No. 4.)
(WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Marvel’s Jessica Jones.)
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Here are 13 of the best Easter eggs, comic book callbacks, and references to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe in season one of Jessica Jones:
1. “And Then There’s the Matter of Your Bill”: Right off the bat, you know showrunner Melissa Rosenberg and the Jessica Jones team are going to provide plenty for comic fans to geek out over. One of the first scenes of the series is a shot-for-shot recreation of Jessica’s introduction in Alias #1, by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos.
2. The Avengers: There are the occasional passing references to The Hulk (aka “the big green guy”) and Captain America (aka “the flag waver”), but, as with Daredevil before it, Jessica Jones also explores real-life effects of a superhero showdown. In the episode “AKA 99 Friends,” a client, Audrey Freeman, seeks retribution for her parents who died in “The Incident” -- or, the Battle of New York from the first Avengers film.
3. Power Man: In “AKA It’s Called Whiskey,” during Jessica and Luke Cage’s post-coital trip to a food truck, he mentions that his unbreakable skin and various other powers come from “experiments.” This is surely something that will be explored via flashbacks when his series debuts in 2016, but FYI: Luke -- then Carl Lucas -- was framed for a crime and, while imprisoned, volunteered to undergo experiments meant to duplicate Captain America’s Super-Solider effects. Suffice it to say, it didn’t go as planned.
(Bonus: Reva Connors, Luke’s wife that Jessica murdered, is actually one of his girlfriends in the comics too, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see more of her in flashbacks either.)
4. “Sweet Christmas”: Luke’s catchphrase from the comics, which they actually managed to incorporate twice in the series. (Once, after sex, and then during the warehouse raid in “AKA You're a Winner”.) More surprisingly, Mike Colter managed to make it sound cool!
5. Jewel: One of the funniest allusions of the series. In a flashback in “AKA The Sandwich Saved Me,” Trish creates a mockup spandex super suit for Jessica and suggests a superhero name, Jewel. To which Jessica replies, “Jewel is a stripper’s name, a really slutty stripper, and if I wear that thing, you're going to have to call me camel toe.”
Well, the Jessica Jones of the comics did use the alias Jewel, and that super suit is an exact replica of the costume that Jewel wore.
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6. Danielle Cage: A more subtle, wink-wink reference comes in “AKA Top Shelf Perverts,” when Jessica goes to Luke’s bar and his right-hand barman, Roy, tells her, “You just wanted to tell him you love him, you want him back, you're gonna have his baby.” Who knows where the Netflix series will go, but in comic cannon, Jessica and Luke do get married and have a baby, Danielle.
7. Hellcat: There is a lot to dig into with Trish Walker. There’s her past, as the redheaded child star Patsy Walker, all referenced within the show. “Patsy” rose to fame in a teen comedy comic of the same name, and those same comics apparently exist in Jessica Jones -- Trish accidentally beats up a fan who wants her to sign a copy of a real-life “Patsy Walker” comic.
There are also plenty of nods to Trish’s potential future as Hellcat, a superhero identity she eventually assumes in the comics. Trish trains in Krav Maga for self-defense. She constantly urges Jessica to be the superhero she can’t be. And the closest she gets to Hellcat status this time around is when she pops a red pill and takes on Sgt. Simpson, but who knows what the future has in store for her.
8. Nuke: There’s no Sgt. Will Simpson in Marvel comics, but there is a Frank Simpson, aka the psychotic Daredevil nemesis Nuke. Frank Simpson was a black-ops solider who goes to fight in Vietnam...and comes back hell-bent on vengeance. Will seems to be an updated take on Frank, complete with the same pills that Nuke took in the comics: Red, to get going; blue, to come down; and white, to keep him balanced.
Seeing as Simpson’s body disappeared at the end of the season, will he return as Nuke in Jessica Jones’ inevitable season two? Or could he crossover and go head-to-head with Daredevil?
9. White Tiger: When Luke tries to hire Jessica to help him track down a missing person, she suggests another “top-notch” P.I., Angela Del Toro. (“Reasonable rates,” Jessica says.) This isn’t a throwaway referral: In the comics, Del Toro is a trained investigator -- though she works as a FBI agent -- as well as the superhero White Tiger, who wears a Jade Tiger amulet to gain super strength, speed, and martial arts skills.
10. Heroes for Hire: This one takes a bit of an explanation: First of all, Jeryn Hogarth in the comics is man and, while he is indeed a lawyer, predominately works for another hero: Danny Rand aka Iron Fist. In the finale, Jeri -- gender-swapped for TV -- tells Jessica that she is being forced out of her law firm by her partners, which Jessica tells her not to let happen.
It isn’t so much an Easter egg as a prediction, but keeping Jeri in her high-power legal position could set her up to take on a bigger role later on, representing Heroes For Hire, Luke Cage and Iron Fist’s team-up team.
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11. Daredevil: There are a few throwbacks to Daredevil, the show -- like the fact that Antoine’s marijuana warehouse in “AKA You’re a Winner” is the same factory that Madame Gao used to traffic heroin -- you can even see the burn marks from when Wilson Fisk set it ablaze. There’s also plenty of vague talk of Claire Temple’s “friend” in the finale. But has The Man Without Fear been present all along? Because one shadowy figure in the opening credits looks an awful lot like him.
12. Goldfish: The yacht that Kilgrave attempts to escape in during the finale, “AKA Smile,” is named Goldfish, a nod to Jessica Jones creator Brian Michael Bendis’s pre-Alias work, the crime comic, Goldfish.
13. Purple Man: A number of changes have been made to Jessica Jones’ big bad in adapting him from comic to television. First of all, in print, he’s named Zebediah Killgrave, not Kilgrave or Kevin Thompson. He is also known as Purple Man and is literally a purple man. So when Kilgrave gets pumped full of drugs to increase his powers and momentarily takes on a purple hue, it’s a clever, perfectly-placed nod to his comic counterpart.
Is it wrong that we’re kind of going to miss Kilgrave in season two? He was so good at being so, so bad.
Plus, speaking of Marvel, as you re-watch Ant-Man, keep an eye out for these 13 Easter eggs (including the first reference to Spider-Man!):
