Marvel’s Jessica Jones quickly became a fan favorite for its focus on female empowerment, but now the show is taking that commitment behind the scenes. At the Transform Hollywood Symposium Friday, executive producer Melissa Rosenberg confirmed that all 13 episodes of the Netflix original’s second season will be directed by women. Only three of the nine directors from Season 1 were women.
Season 2 of Jessica Jones, which Rosenberg confirmed was halfway through the writing process in September, won’t premiere until 2018 at the earliest. However, fans will get a chance to see Jones kick ass when she joins The Defenders in 2017.
In the 2015-2016 season, only 17 percent of television episodes had female directors — up from 16 percent the year before. Director Ava DuVernay — who passed on directing Marvel’s Black Panther movie — made news earlier this year when she announced her show, Queen of Sugar, would be helmed entirely by female directors
Jessica Jones won a Peabody Award and gained Marvel praise for taking on challenging themes like sexual assault and mental illness. It proved that a show with a female superhero could be just as appealing to men and women as the rest of the heavily-male Marvel canon.
But despite having strong female characters, Marvel still has a lot of catching up to do with rival DC Comics behind the scenes. So far, none of the Marvel films have had female directors. There’s a chance that might change when the director for Captain Marvel, the first female-led movie for Marvel, is announced. In an October interview with IGN, Kevin Feige, head of Marvel Studios, expressed a commitment to finding a female director for the movie.
If Marvel really wants to show its committed to diversity, it needs to expand its film universe to focus more on films that are led by women in front of and behind the camera. Season 2 of Jessica Jones hopefully shows just the first of many efforts by Marvel to get more women behind the camera.
