The second season of “Jessica Jones” seemingly begins with an approach best described as “back to basics.” After a first season of emotional catharsis, followed by beating down a bunch of ninjas during team-up series “The Defenders,” the emotionally damaged P.I. with superpowers (Krysten Ritter — don’t call her a superhero) has returned to do what she does best: drink, fight, make poor bedroom-related decisions, and maybe, if she gets around to it, unpack the mystery of her past.

After killing her tormenter Kilgrave (David Tennant) at the end of Season 1, Jessica seems to have come to terms with the fact that if she’s going to move on with her life, she’s going to need some answers when it comes to what led to her getting superpowers in the first place. But that doesn’t mean she’s comfortable with acknowledging that she’s a killer, or that she’s ready for those answers once she gets them.

Everybody’s got their stuff they’re dealing with, to be fair. After “The Defenders” (where “Jessica Jones’s” supporting characters only got the most bare bones of attention) it’s refreshing to return to a narrative format where the personal issues of Malcolm (Eka Darville) and Jeri (Carrie-Anne Moss) can get a little more concentration. In fact, one of the most compelling new storylines revolves around Jeri confronting a medical issue that’s (so far) completely disconnected to the overall narrative, but puts the character front and center in a way that leaves us wanting more.

Season 2’s all-female directing staff, including Minkie Spiro and Deborah Chow, keeps the show’s noir bent in place though doesn’t push too hard into the realm of art — but the clean approach works, as does Ritter’s always grounded and believable performance. What doesn’t work is the lack of direction on a plot level. The early episodes add a few new players to the action, including J.R. Ramirez as Jessica’s new super and Terry Chen as a rival P.I. (Chen might be remembered best as Ben Fong-Torres from “Almost Famous,” but over 15 years later he’s still pretty groovy.)

Meanwhile, supporting the narrative and honestly driving it forward the most is Jessica’s best friend Trish (Rachael Taylor). The more active role Trish takes is welcome, especially given that Season 2 suffers from what we may be forced to officially deem Marvel-Itis — a condition which infects the patient with drawn-out narratives and seasons of television that are at least three episodes too long.

At least thanks to Trish, the story has some forward momentum. The most difficult thing about these opening episodes is that they fall into the trap so many superhero stories do, seeming to suggest something about Season 2 of “Jessica Jones” that wasn’t necessarily true in Season 1: A superhero is only as good as her supervillain. This is disappointing on a number of levels, not the least of which is that it implies Jessica can’t carry a story on her own, which is certainly not true.

Yet it’s the introduction of Janet McTeer as a mysterious figure connected with Jessica’s past who is the most dynamic element of these early episodes. While she has potential as a foil, there’s not enough of her to keep us hooked, not to mention the lack of the emotional hook that we had with Kilgrave in Season 1. It should be an emotional journey on something like an equal level, given that both storylines feature some form of violation for Jessica. Unfortunately, the path remains a bit too meandering.

There was an undercurrent of terror throughout “Jessica Jones” Season 1 that gave the series a darkness and dynamism which elevated it over previous Marvel series; Season 2 lacks that in its first five episodes. Yet there are still eight to go, which is plenty of time for Jessica to make bad decisions in her fight to do right. And one thing remains unchanged — her story is singularly hers, uncompromising and unapologetically all about what we’ve come to love about this character. The point of Jessica Jones isn’t that she’s a hero, but that she’s still standing despite everything that’s happened to her, and everything she is. So even if her story takes its sweet time to get going, we’re still glad to be on the journey with her.

In Season 1 of the Marvel series “Jessica Jones,” the titular character, an alcoholic and unfriendly private investigator with superpowers, tracked down and eventually killed the villain Kilgrave, a smarmy, effete Brit with mind-control powers. Kilgrave had kidnapped and repeatedly raped Jessica years before, but, because she was under his control, she endured it all with a smile. (Literally: one of Kilgrave’s favorite uses of his power is compelling women to smile.) The nature of Kilgrave’s mind control raises difficult issues of complicity for his victims, some of whom have been forced to do terrible things. They know that they were acting on his will and not on their own, but they don’t know why their wills weren’t stronger than his. With Kilgrave finally dead, Jessica (Krysten Ritter) returns to life as a private eye but remains uncertain about how capable she is of being a force for good. Press coverage of Kilgrave’s exploits has given her a reputation as a vigilante, willing and able to take on evil men, but she’s uncomfortable being portrayed as stronger and braver than she really feels. Season 1 ends with her at her desk listening to voice mails from men and women begging for her help.

The new season of the series, which premièred on Netflix last week, is even darker. Still tormented by flashbacks and nightmares, Jessica is making a shaky attempt at building a “new normal,” one in which she has stability and routine, if not much companionship or sobriety. But when her best friend and adoptive sister, the journalist and former child star Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor), discovers that a shadowy corporation called I.G.H. may have something to do with how Jessica got her powers, Jessica is drawn into another showdown against a strong villain. This time it’s a mysterious, superpowered figure who is murdering anyone who gets too close to uncovering I.G.H.’s secrets.

At first, the second season drags, hampered by rapidly multiplying subplots that achieve little. An angry rival detective, who tries to poach Jessica to work for his firm, could be dispensed with entirely, and so could a strange affair between Trish and Malcolm (Eka Darville), Jessica’s handsome assistant, which seems mostly like an excuse to show two very good-looking actors in their underwear. The show suffers, too, from the absence of the charismatic Kilgrave, who was played by the excellent David Tennant; he provided direction and moral stakes, and was satisfyingly hateable (imagine a well-read Martin Shkreli). In its first few episodes, Season 2 is directionless and distracted. Then Jessica’s mother appears.

Jessica has long thought that her family was dead, killed in the car crash from which she emerged with her superhuman strength. In this season, we learn that her mother (Janet McTeer) has been kept alive by I.G.H. and subjected to an experimental gene therapy that has given her super strength, like Jessica’s, along with a new face and a vivid, frightening temper. It is Jessica’s mother who has been murdering those who get too close to the truth about I.G.H., including one particularly brutal dismemberment outside of Jessica’s apartment building. Trish tries to warn Jesssica away, imploring her to avoid her dangerous mother or else use her powers to kill her, so that others can be saved. When mother and daughter finally meet, Jessica faces the choice between regaining the family she’s lost and losing the one she’s created.

Throughout Season 2, Jessica is awed and terrified by her own anger. A man who finds her professionally threatening tries to ruin her business, and she throws him through a glass door. This moment and others prompt horrified self-reflection: Who has she become? She winds up in a court-mandated anger-management program, which she doesn’t like, either. The show’s trajectory from Season 1, which was defined by Jessica’s victimhood and fear, to Season 2, which is defined by her rage, feels apt for this moment—as does Jessica’s encounter with a powerful movie executive who preys on teen-age starlets (she punches a hole in his Tesla)—even though the series wrapped filming in September, before the first Harvey Weinstein stories broke. It’s not a coincidence that every episode was directed by a woman, and that most were written or co-written by women, as well.

It is the relationships between women that provide Season 2’s most spiky emotional terrain. Jessica understands, but cannot reconcile, that her mother both loves her and is a murderer; she knows that Trish, collapsing under the pressure of her investigation into I.G.H., needs help, but Jessica can’t bear to give it. She defends Trish to her mother, and then defends her mother to Trish, even as they both make choices that hurt her. It’s a still-rare sight, in television if not in life: the image of a complicated woman navigating a morally complicated situation, complete with conflicting loyalties and competing demands on her sympathy. When Jessica and her mother come upon a hideous car wreck—much like the one that killed Jessica’s father and brother—they leap into action and save the family pinned inside of a flipped sedan, which had crashed into a chemical truck. It feels like they have come full circle. But when Jessica’s mother runs to rescue the truck’s trapped driver, the explosion that follows triggers a glimpse of guilty relief on Jessica’s face: she hopes that her mother is dead, so that she can stop wondering whether or not it is O.K. to love her.

The supernatural element in “Jessica Jones” is less central to the substance of the show than it is a tool to open doors in the plot. (In fact, the primary way that Jessica uses her super strength seems to be in yanking open locked doors.) The season’s best scene comes when Jessica, already scared and uncertain about what she and her mother have in common, accidentally kills an enemy during a fight. Horrified, she sits by the body for hours, hugging her knees and weeping. She hallucinates an image of Kilgrave, her rapist, applauding her. Coming in the wake of the

MeToo moment, the scene holds a particular resonance. Women are becoming aware of the power they possess, and some are not entirely comfortable with it—not certain that they want it; not certain that they will be able to craft a more just world than what men have been able to; not certain that they have the strength, heretofore unimaginable, to use this power for the service of good. As Jessica rocks back and forth before the body of her victim, it’s easy to see her terror at her own act as a kind of mourning—a grief for the innocent, passive person that she once imagined herself to be. That person is dead.

Was Jessica Jones Season 2 GOOD?

With improved pacing and strong character work, Jessica Jones Season 2 is a competent followup to an electrifying debut season. It takes everything Jess fans loved about the character and her world and improves upon it. The effect is dampening, an unfortunate blunting of season one's brutally efficient edges.

Was Jessica Jones Season 3 good?

Just when you think this is a series in need of a shock jolt, Jessica Jones season 3 suddenly puts itself in a strong position to pay off its promises. While it wasn't the most electrifying way to start a season, it moved the pieces in place for what will hopefully be a strong final season.

Who is the main villain in Jessica Jones Season 2?

However, though Alisa was the primary antagonist of the show's second season, she is far from the worst character. No, that award goes to Trish Walker, Jessica's adoptive sister and best friend. Trish wasn't always a villainous character.

What happens to Malcolm in Jessica Jones Season 2?

After making the guard's death look like suicide, Jessica begins to hallucinate Kilgrave. Trish knocks out Malcolm and asks Malus to give her abilities like Jessica's, and he agrees. Jessica tracks down Malus and Alisa but they escape when she's forced to deal with Malcolm, who she then fires.