Both Spider-Man: No Way Home and Hawkeye accomplished something massive: they both were responsible for bringing everyone’s favorite Marvel Netflix show back into the fold: Daredevil. Now, thanks to them, fans will get even more of Charlie Cox’s hero in She-Hulk, Echo, and even his own Disney+ series. With the return of Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk, a new question begs to be answered: who might return from the Netflix grave next? Jessica Jones? Luke Cage? Punisher?
When it comes to Daredevil, he has long been touted as one of Marvel’s best live-action heroes. In a similar vein, Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin has been lauded as an all-time great villain.
So who might be able to follow that? Well, on the hero front, the easy answer is Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones. Just like Cox’s vigilante, she too is also paired with an incredible villain in David Tennant’s Kilgrave.
So with the return of Fisk across various MCU projects, is there a world where audiences might see Kilgrave rise again? Well, according to the actor himself, that might be a hard feat to pull off.
The Difficult Task of Bringing Back Tennant
While attending Fan Expo in Boston, Jessica Jones' David Tennant talked about his character of Kilgrave and why returning to the MCU wouldn’t be an easy feat.
Tennant noted how “it’s difficult to get conflict” with Kilgrave, as “he can make you do anything, or he can’t.”
He then went on to admit how “the Marvel Cinematic Universe is full of some very talented writers,” so it wouldn’t be impossible for a quality return to happen:
“The thing with Kilgrave, guys, he’s quite hard to beat, unless you have a very specific skill set. So, it would be quite… I mean, he could wreak havoc with a lot of people, couldn’t he? So it’d be quite nice to see that with a lot of them, I think. But then it would be… The trouble with– I think Kilgrave’s quite a difficult character to write, because it’s difficult to get conflict. Either he can make you do anything, or he can’t. And that’s quite… hard to get quite the story that works there, see what I mean? ‘Cause you’ve either got him wreaking unadulterated havoc, which would be– well, he’d like it. Or you’ve got him just being sort of beaten up by the Hulk who doesn’t hear him or whatever. I don’t know. But the Marvel Cinematic Universe is full of some very talented writers, and I’d be thrilled to see what they had to make of that, for sure.”
Could the MCU Figure Out Kilgrave?
David Tennant makes a valid point. In fact, that’s why the character was dead by the end of Jessica Jones’ first season: he's simply too powerful. Keeping him on the board would present a lot of challenges in maintaining continuity, with future conflicts being hard to flesh out and also challenging to avoid repetitive plot lines.
Obviously, it’s not an impossible feat to give the character's consistently good stories in the comics. After all, he’s been around for quite some time, and it’s seemed to work out for him so far.
With Charlie Cox’s Daredevil returning, Kysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones may not be far behind. But how could Kilgrave show his face again if so?
Well, if the MCU sticks with him being dead, the big bad could still always haunt Jessica Jones’ waking moments—which happened more than once throughout the original Netflix show. If Marvel Studios decides to cherry-pick what’s canon and what’s not, it could keep Tenant’s villain alive so that it can utilize the character in future projects.
Given Kilgrave’s powerful abilities, the MCU could easily find some unique ways to get them intertwined with the wider cinematic universe.
Jessica Jones is now streaming on Disney+.
