(Spoilers ahead for the season 3 finale of Marvel’s “Jessica Jones” on Netflix)
Over the past four years, Netflix tried to carve out its own corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to call its own — ostensibly it was just as much a part of the MCU as the movies but they ended up staying separate, with Netflix ending up with owning more or less its own smaller scale Marvel universe. But now, with “Jessica Jones” season 3, that universe has ended. At least as far as we know.
The season finale of “Jessica Jones” season 3 can function well enough as a series finale, but since it doesn’t involve any kind of big teamup among all the different heroes we’ve seen on these shows over the years — Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Colleen Wing, Misty Knight, the Punisher, etc. — it certainly doesn’t feel like a universe finale.
And that’s especially true because of the one major crossover this last season of “Jessica Jones” has to one of the other shows.
Said crossover involved Luke Cage (Mike Coulter) popping in to check on Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) in the finale. He’s there to weigh in on Jessica’s current situation — they’ve solved the whole situation with Sallinger, but now they’ve got Trish (Rachael Taylor) turning into a Punisher-type figure.
Luke compares the situation to that of his own conflict with his brother Willis back in season 1 — not a totally fair comparison given that Willis was actually a real villain and Trish is just killing bad guys instead of putting them in jail.
Luke says something pretty intriguing later in the conversation — “If I ever go too far, I hope that someone gives enough of a s— about me to take me down.”
“Is that a risk these days?” Jessica asks in reply.
“Some would say it’s inevitable,” Luke states.
It’s such an intriguing exchange because it teases where “Luke Cage” season 2 was leading — with Luke functioning as a sort of crime boss at the end of the season, it felt very much like it was taking Luke in a villainous direction. But that’s only intriguing in theory, since we’re probably never going to see this potential Jessica Jones vs. Luke Cage battle that this scene would appear to be setting up.
And so “Jessica Jones” and the Netflix Marvelverse ends not with closure, but with a look ahead at a future that we, at least, will not get to see. But there’s something to be said for this living universe reminding you that life goes on, even if it won’t play out on our TV screens.