How Trish Is Getting Closer To Her Marvel Superhero Persona On ‘Jessica Jones’

Spoilers for Episodes 1-5 of Jessica Jones Season 2. Season 2 of Jessica Jones follows Jessica's quest to discover how she got her powers. Following the car crash that killed her family, Jessica disappeared for 20 days before she woke up in the hospital with new abilities. Trish is interested in helping Jessica discover how she got her powers, but something is up with her as well. Trish exhibits powers in Jessica Jones Season 2.

You'd be hard pressed to find a better friend in the world of television than Trish Walker. Even when Jessica is off on the most ill-advised of investigations, Trish is almost always there to support her. Whether attempting to escape the wrath of Kilgrave or beating up a movie director for information, Trish and Jessica make quite the power couple. Jessica has always been the more physically strong of the two, but Trish proved in Season 1 that she's able to pull her weight when it comes to combat. However, does that get taken to the next level in Season 2? While it doesn't seem yet that Trish has any extraordinary powers, the show could be setting the audience up for a big reveal.

In the original Marvel comic book universe, Trisha "Patsy" Walker is actually the superhero Hellcat, who has worked with the Avengers as well as the Defenders, keeping the world safe from all manner of bad guys. While the Trish of Jessica Jones hasn't been seen trying on any catsuits, it's clear that she's been working on being able to defend herself. She has her own in-home fighting gym and has proven to be more than capable in the line of fire. However, when it comes to capital-P "Powers," Trish seems to just be a normal person with a knack for doing the right thing.

However, a few times over the course of Jessica Jones, Trish has gotten a brief boost in adrenaline courtesy of some drugs. In Season 1 she took drugs that Simpson used to become a better fighter, and in Season 2 she's seen taking drugs again that are linked to the mysterious IGH. Trish's use of illegal substances to enhance her abilities may seem helpful for now, but chances are that Trish is digging herself into a hole by relying on them. As someone who is friends with an active alcoholic in Jessica and former heroin abuser in Malcolm, it's unfortunate that Trish doesn't see what a reliance on substances has done to her friends. She could be opening herself up to similar consequences, but the tragedy of addiction is that it can happen to anyone.

However, just because Trish doesn't realize she has powers doesn't mean that Trish is powerless. In fact, it's worth questioning just how Jessica Jones and Trish became friends in the first place. Their connection started when Trish's mother took Jessica into their family for good publicity, after Jessica had been experimented on by IGH. Most of Jessica's memories from her time with IGH had been buried within Jessica's mind, who is to say that Trish didn't suffer a similar fate? Perhaps Trish's mom is the connecting factor between Jessica and IGH that no one has discovered yet.

If Trish's mom is so heartless that she would consent to her 15-year-old daughter being abused by a 40-year-old director for the sake of a movie role, it's not outside the realm of possibility that the same mother would allow experiments to be performed on her daughter in the name of giving her powers. Besides, what would be more marketable than a child actress who happened to be an actual superhero?

Spoilers for Episodes 6-13

Trish eventually convinces IGH's Dr. Karl to perform his experiment on her, in the hopes that she'll obtain powers. She ends up becoming very ill, but she recovers. And at the very end of Episode 13, Trish makes a miraculous catch with just her foot that may be proof that her reflexes at least are now superhuman.