The two are joined by principal cast members Mike Colter, Rachael Taylor, Wil Traval, Erin Moriarty, Eka Darville, and Carrie-Anne Moss.

Critics praised the performances of Ritter and Tennant, as well as the season's noir tone, approach to sexuality, and coverage of darker topics such as rape, assault and posttraumatic stress disorder.

[17] Melissa Rosenberg was brought on to showrun the Jessica Jones series,[18][19] to be reconfigured as a "page one do-over" from an original project she had developed in December 2010 for ABC.

[25] Edward Ricourt, a member of Marvel Studios' writer program who had written a Luke Cage film script that had never come to fruition, was brought on to advise the series since it introduced the character.

This speaks to when you think about what happened to Jessica and what sort of destroyed her life and how she tried to put it together, and then to have to confront the person who deconstructed her world, that's a very powerful, emotional place to start from.

"[31] The main cast for the season includes Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones,[2] Mike Colter as Luke Cage,[3] Rachael Taylor as Patricia "Trish" Walker,[4] Wil Traval as Will Simpson,[5][6] Erin Moriarty as Hope Shlottman,[5][6] Eka Darville as Malcolm Ducasse,[5] Carrie-Anne Moss as Jeri Hogarth,[7][8] and David Tennant as Kilgrave.

[9] Appearing in recurring roles for the season are Susie Abromeit as Pam,[10] Colby Minifie and Kieran Mulcare as Robyn and Ruben,[13] Nichole Yannetty as Nicole,[12] Clarke Peters as Oscar Clemons,[6] Michael Siberry and Lisa Emery as Albert and Louise Thompson,[15] and Robin Weigert as Wendy Ross-Hogarth.

[11] Danielle Ferland, Gillian Glasco, Ryan Farrell, and Paul Pryce also recur as victims of Kilgrave who join a support group established by Jones,[14] while Rosario Dawson and Royce Johnson reprise their roles of Claire Temple and Brett Mahoney, respectively, from Daredevil.

On the suits, Maslansky added that the designers "wanted to find a place where we could utilize clothing in shades of purple, but not go so over the top that it would look silly and that he would stop feeling ominous or menacing.

[24] In April, Marvel Comics' editor-in-chief Joe Quesada stated that the show would be filming in areas of Brooklyn and Long Island City that still look like the old Hell's Kitchen, in addition to sound stage work.

[35] The season went into production in February 2015 in the Bronx at Lehman College with the working title Violet[36][37][38] and aimed to film each episode over nine days, on average.

[30][40] Other filming locations in New York City used included the East Village's Horseshoe Bar for Luke's Bar; the 33rd Street PATH station and a PATH train; the 101st Street area for the exterior of Jessica's apartment (with the interior apartment settings created on a sound stage); Douglaston, Queens for Jessica's childhood home; the Angel Orensanz Center for Jessica and Luke's fight in "AKA Take a Bloody Number"; Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower and Pier 88 for locations in "AKA Smile";[41] the Meatpacking District; Nolita; near the 39th Street entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel; Tribeca; Bryant Park; Union Square; Gramercy Park; Greenpoint, Brooklyn, near the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant; Long Island City, including the Allied Extruder Factory for the weed-growing facility, with exteriors shots taken from near Calvary Cemetery; the Queensboro Bridge on the Queens side; the Manhattan Bridge; the Brooklyn Navy Yard; Bethesda Terrace and Fountain in Central Park; and Industry City.

We didn't know frankly when we picked that location that we would have that explosion... What we did was build a fireproof box in the entrance and we had a cannon in there which blew out debris and smoke and some fire.

For the scenes on the PATH train and station, location manager Jason Farrar noted that production had exclusive use of the tracks and platform during the day when ridership was low to get their shots.

[43] An effect that Shade was required to create was tinting Kilgrave's skin purple "in a few key scenes" where he is using his powers, a nod to the comic iteration's purple-skinned appearance.

"[30] Jeryn Hogarth is closely associated with Iron Fist in the comics, and also worked with Luke Cage as part of those characters' Heroes for Hire team.

[51] Jessica also mentions Angela del Toro as another private investigator,[51] who in the comics is the hero White Tiger and has connections with K'un-Lun and Iron Fist.

[61] A full trailer was released at the end of October, with Meagan Damore of Comic Book Resources feeling that it helped establish the same tone as Daredevil and introduced "Marvel's creepiest villain yet" with Kilgrave.

[75] As Netflix does not reveal subscriber viewership numbers for any of their original series, Symphony Technology Group compiled data for the season based on a sample size of 15,000 people using software on their phones that measures television viewing by detecting a program's sound.

Jumpshot, which "analyzes click-stream data from an online panel of more than 100 million consumers", looked at the viewing behavior and activity of the company's U.S. members, factoring in the relative number of U.S. Netflix viewers who watched at least one episode of the season.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Jessica Jones builds a multifaceted drama around its engaging antihero, delivering what might be Marvel's strongest TV franchise to date.

He called Ritter "a commendably tough, sardonic" Jessica Jones and praised the supporting cast for the strong impressions they made,[85] later scoring the episode an 8.5 out of 10.

[87] Evan Valentine of Collider gave the episode 5 stars out of 5, feeling that Tennant would "ascend to the same level as Tom Hiddleston's Loki and Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk as one of the cornerstones of villainy in the MCU".

[88] Katharine Trendacosta of io9 also had positive thoughts on "AKA Ladies Night", highlighting the episode's use of light and color, especially with purple, and the way it portrays New York as how it "actually looks—not overly bright and shiny and clean, but not suffering a never-ending power-outage either".

"[92] Deadline Hollywood's Dominic Patten also had praise for the season, particularly Rosenberg's influence on it, the coverage of topics such as "PTSD, abuse, assault, shame, and death" and the cast, highlighting Tennant's Kilgrave as the actor's best role as well as the MCU's best villain.

[93] Mary McNamara from the Los Angeles Times felt Jessica Jones "rewrote the definition of superhuman" and was "a marvel", lauding the season's "breathtaking" examination of recovery from a sexually, emotionally and physically abusive relationship.

[82] Daniel Fienberg for The Hollywood Reporter was also positive, saying the season "looks and feels a bit like a cable anti-hero series—but it's really more of a post-hero story, making it fascinating and unique in a marketplace that doesn't lack for costumed do-gooders of all types."

[96] Libby Hill of the Los Angeles Times commented on how Jessica Jones exposed modern day sexism and misogyny through Kilgrave's use of the phrase "Smile", calling the season "the most innocuous and incisive cultural critique" from Marvel to date.

Hill likened an early scene that shows Kilgrave asking Jones to smile, and her obliging, to "similar well-meaning scenarios [that] play out in the real world time and again each day" many in the form of gendered street harassment, that resonates with many women.

Hill also added that "Kilgrave serves as an exaggerated representation of perceived consent," due to the response he gives later in the season to Jessica about never knowing if someone is doing what they want or what he tells them to do.