Trish may not be the central character of Jessica Jones, but her life is just as complex and knotty as Jessica's. What Jessica's adoptive sister lacks in super powers, she makes up for in influence thanks to her popular radio show. However, Season 2 shows Trish starting to go through some changes, and she may take up the superhero mantle that Jessica has been denying. Does Trish Walker become Hellcat in Season 2 of Jessica Jones? She certainly seems to be going in that direction.
Spoilers ahead for Episodes 1-11.
Tricia Walker of Jessica Jones and Patsy "Hellcat" Walker of Marvel Comics have a similar backstory. In the series, Trish's mother pushed her to fame as "Patsy," a children's television star. However, in the comics, Patsy's mother is a comic book author who uses Patsy as inspiration. While serving as inspiration for a comic book series is likely less traumatic that Trish's mother selling out her daughter in the name of fame, it eventually pushed Patsy to become "Hellcat." Considering everything Trish has been through so far, it's a wonder that the Jessica Jones version hasn't tried to don a catsuit and start fighting crime. Still, she has been finding ways to bring the pain in Season 2 of Jessica Jones. Trish may not have adapted the name "Hellcat" yet, but she is starting to adapt the personality of a full-on crimefighter.
Trish may be becoming Hellcat, but she'll likely have a much different path than the Hellcat of the comics. For starters, it's doubtful that Trish Walker will begin working as a sometimes-member of The Avengers like her comic book counterpart, or that she'll end up personally saving Hell (yes, actual hell) from the extra-dimensional villain Dormammu, featured in the Doctor Strange film. The Marvel-Netflix Universe has gone to some pretty weird places, but Trish probably won't be taking a trip to hell any time soon. Unfortunately for Trish – she seems to get into a hell of her own in Season 2 of Jessica Jones.
Season 1 of Jessica Jones revealed that Trish has her own in-home combat gym, and that she's been working on her self-defense skills. It also shows her taking some of Will Simpson's mysterious pills to give herself brief adrenaline boosts. Season 2 finds Trish getting her hands on another performance-enhancing drug from her former partner, this time in the form of an inhaler as opposed to pills.
This inhaler seems to provide Trish with a boost of energy and strength, but it's not long before she's abusing the mysterious substance that she grabbed from Simpson and getting ill. It doesn't seem to be turning her into a superhero. If anything, her use of the inhaler is causing Jessica and Malcolm to worry that Trish has relapsed and found a new substance that she relies on to get through her day. (In flashbacks to Jessica's college years and Trish's brief pop star career, it's probably cocaine.)
The fact is that Trish already has all the skills she needs to become a superhero. In the comics, Hellcat doesn't have any powers that can't be gained by athletic training, which makes her unique amongst many Marvel heroes. However, Trish doesn't seem to think she has what it takes to be super, as later in the series she ends up asking Karl perform the same procedure on her that gave Jessica her power. It doesn't go well — she ends up in the hospital and Karl ends up dead.
Jessica and Malcolm both call out Trish for being "obsessed" with superpowers. And Trish tells Jessica at one point that she feels as though Jessica is wasting hers. She believes that she can be the willing superhero that Jessica isn't, but Jessica doesn't want her sister to carry the burden that she does. But Trish has shown that there's really no stopping her when she's after something she wants, and what she wants now are enhanced abilities.
In her finale scene of this season, Trish drops her phone and nimbly catches it with her foot. So it seems as though Dr. Karl's experiment, though it landed her in the hospital, may have worked after all.
