It’s not clear what Marvel is up to with its Netflix series, even as we’re coming up on Daredevil‘s April 10th release date. That said, we do know that A.K.A. Jessica Jones stars Krysten Ritter and Mike Colter, and now, we may know the ultimate villain of the series.
This requires a little backstory: back in the ’60s, Daredevil had a somewhat goofy villain called The Purple Man. After being hit with nerve gas and turned purple, the unsubtly-named Zebediah Killgrave gained mind control powers and became the sleaziest creep in the Marvel Universe — short of Starfox. That comes into play for Jessica Jones when he captures her, mentally tortures her, and then tries to use her to kill Daredevil.
Needless to say, she and ol’ Zeb aren’t members of each other’s fan clubs. And, if an audition video that was leaked and quickly yanked off the Internet is any indication, he’s going to be a major antagonist in the new series; the audition features Jessica begging for money to escape “Kincade” and detailing her history with him. It lines up almost exactly with the comics.
Sure, it could be an entirely new villain… but considering the character is closely tied to Daredevil and Jessica Jones, and Marvel owns the rights, it seems unlikely they wouldn’t use such a character. And the Purple Man, when effectively written, is a great villain: Mark Waid and Chris Samnee just used him as the anchor to a hard-edged horror thriller in Daredevil‘s current book. Besides, we really want to see some poor sucker running around in purple makeup. Is that too much to ask?