SPOILERS are ahead for Jessica Jones Season 1. Ultimately, every superhero has to defeat his or her arch-nemesis — but it still came as a surprise to some viewers when Jessica Jones killed Kilgrave at the end of Season 1. David Tennant quickly became an integral part of the Netflix series, thanks to his performance as the slimy abuser-slash-supervillain, that it was hard to imagine the future of the show without him. Well, now fans don't have to; according to Entertainment Weekly, David Tennant is returning for Jessica Jones Season 2, although the news is frustratingly scant when it comes to details of how exactly Kilgrave will resurface.
Per EW's report, Marvel TV is keeping Kilgrave's return "under wraps" for now — unsurprising, considering Season 2 won't premiere until sometime in 2018. The only extra intel they were willing (or able) to dish out was a behind-the-scenes photo of Tennant on set with star Krysten Ritter… which offered no information on how exactly Kilgrave is coming back But while the mere fact of Tennant's involvement in Season 2 is extremely exciting by itself, it still begs the question of how the show will explain Kilgrave's presence, given the pretty final-seeming neck snap he received in the Season 1 finale.
There are a few ways in which it's possible to imagine Kilgrave making a comeback during the course of Season 2. The least exciting — and therefore the most probable — possibility is that the villain will simply make appearances during a sequence of flashbacks. Flashbacks have been important on the show since the beginning, and just because Kilgrave is dead doesn't mean his impact on Jessica's life is over. In fact, one of the major themes of Jessica Jones is the lingering effects of trauma, so it would make sense for the superstrong hero to still have some reckoning to do with her history with Kilgrave.
In fact, there's strong indication that Season 2 will be plumbing the depths of Jessica's past, with Oscar-nominated actress Janet McTeer having been cast in a mystery role as a character who has "an enormous impact on Jessica's life." Many fans theorize that McTeer will be playing Jessica's mother in flashbacks — and if this is true, then it would be easy to imagine Kilgrave also featuring heavily in those memory sequences.
On the other end of the spectrum, the more exciting — although less probable — possibility is that Kilgrave is somehow still alive. In the Marvel comic books, one of Zebediah Killgrave's superpowers is accelerated healing, which could be used to explain how he improbably bounced back from a broken spinal cord. The character has plenty of comic storylines left to explore if the writers decide to go down this route, including "Fear Itself" (in which he takes control of the minds of several inmates in a prison in which he's incarcerated), "Villains For Hire" (in which he recruits a team of baddies like Avalanche, Death-Stalker, Scourge, and Shocker), and "Purple Children" (in which he uses all the kids he's fathered around the globe to take over the world).
Finally, there's a possibility that straddles the middle ground between these two extremes; a way of bringing Kilgrave back that doesn't require literally resurrecting him, and doesn't relegate him to sepia-toned flashback sequences. Given that the villain's superpower is mind-control, it's not hard to imagine that somehow a bit of his consciousness will continue to stick in Jessica's mind, even after his death. In the same way that Harry Potter always carried a part of Voldemort's soul with him, it's possible that Jessica will continue to be haunted by Kilgrave — quite literally — even after she triumphed over him last season.
Given the show's focus on the lasting repercussions of trauma, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the avenue the writers choose to go down. A villain who refuses to leave your mind even after you've vanquished him? What could be more terrifying than that?
