Speaking at an actors' panel alongside Will Arnett and Wagner Moura during Netflix’s CES 2016 keynote, Krysten Ritter spoke about Jessica Jones and what it means to have a strong female lead in a male-dominated superhero world .
“Jessica Jones is a really unique character that we haven’t seen before,” Ritter said during the panel. “The superhero genre is kinda a boy’s playground. It’s really exciting to have this amazing female character with a global audience, come out, making some noise, it’s been really exciting.”
While Jessica Jones isn’t Netflix’s only original series with a strong female lead – The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Orange Is the New Black spring to mind – it is the first superhero show that Marvel has helped create that features a woman as the asskicker-in-chief.
Daredevil, which was nominated for several Emmys and was Marvel and Netflix’s first collaboration, features a male lead character. The much-rumored but seemingly never-going-to-happen Black Widow movie, which would have featured Scarlett Johansson as the lead in her own superhero movie, is dead in the water by all accounts.
With the fate of season 2 of Jessica Jones hanging in the air, let’s just hope that Netflix doesn’t kill the one superhero show they have with a strong female lead. Netflix, which renewed Daredevil eleven days after it was first released, has not yet renewed Jessica Jones for a second season, despite the fact that it premiered more than a month ago.
Marvel is currently developing two other shows at the moment, but neither feature a strong female lead character. Legion, which just recently cast Rachel Keller (Fargo) as the female lead, is being developed for FX and revolves around Professor Xavier’s son and the X-Men universe.
Hellfire, which is being developed for Fox, revolves around a young special agent who learns of a secret society full of millionaires who call themselves “The Hellfire Club.”
