The “Daredevil: Born Again” team on injecting the binge-drinking P.I. strongwoman into season 2.

How Jessica Jones became the next Defender to rejoin the MCU

The "Daredevil: Born Again" team on injecting the binge-drinking P.I. strongwoman into season 2.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in Vanity Fair, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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March 17, 2026 12:30 p.m. ET

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Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones in 'Daredevil: Born Again' season 2. Credit:

Courtesy of Marvel Television

- Members of the* Daredevil: Born Again* creative team explain why Krysten Ritter's Jessica Jones became the next Defender to rejoin the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

- "Jessica has been part of the conversation since when I started," showrunner Dario Scardapane tells EW.

- Ms. Jones will serve a comparable role in season 2 as Jon Bernthal's Punisher in season 1.

When Dario Scardapane joined the team of *Daredevil: Born Again* as showrunner, Matt Murdock wasn't the only Defender of Hell's Kitchen under discussion.

Krysten Ritter officially returns in season 2 as Jessica Jones, reuniting with actor Charlie Cox after the previous era of Marvel Television on Netflix. Before Marvel's parent company launched its own streaming destination with Disney+, Ritter headlined her own three-season *Jessica Jones* TV series from 2015-2019, which existed alongside Cox's *Daredevil*, Mike Colter's *Luke Cage*, Finn Jones' *Iron Fist*, Jon Bernthal's *The Punisher*, and their own *Avengers*-like miniseries, *The Defenders*.

In *Daredevil: Born Again, *Ritter returns to the MCU for the first time since. The P.I. strongwoman aids Mr. Murdock in his rebellion against the authoritarian regime of Mayor Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio). Bernthal's Punisher played a small part in season 1, and now Ms. Jones will serve an equivalent role for season 2.

"Jessica has been part of the conversation since when I started," Scardapane tells **. "She's part of this particular world and, in this case, when you're doing a story about 'vigilantes are now being hunted,' 'vigilantes are now underdogs,' what does that look like with that particular underdog? And that just puts a smile on a writer's face."

Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones in 2015's 'Jessica Jones'. Netflix

To the question of "why Jessica?" and not any of the other Defenders, Scardapane praises the work of showrunner Melissa Rosenberg on the original *Jessica Jones* series, which he calls "some of the best genre writing that I'd seen."

"We were really about how these characters have developed and evolved and grown up since the Netflix shows ended," he says. "Jessica Jones, in particular, has interesting life events that we wanted to explore, and the banter between Charlie and Krysten is so damn good. We needed to get that flavor in."

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Cox himself pointed to their characters' banter back in the days of *The Defenders*. "Just by the nature of who Jessica is and who Matt is, they both give as much as they get," he says. "I'm not sure we were aware of it when we were shooting it. So we've been really waiting for this opportunity for so long now to put these two on screen together and have more fun with them."

According to Sana Amanat, an executive producer for Marvel, the team wanted to be deliberate in how they incorporated the super-human boozy brawler of Hell's Kitchen back into the mix. It wasn't, as she puts it, dropping her in to throw punches — although the character does that in spades.

"We want to just at least be thoughtful with the limited time that we have, but be thoughtful with why they're here and why they're returning and where they've been and establish them in the context of this world," Amanat says.

Krysten Ritter, Finn Jones, Charlie Cox, and Mike Colter in 'Marvel's The Defenders'.

Sarah Shatz/Netflix

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"When you've got eight episodes per season, you run out of real estate really fast," Scardapane points out. "*Really* fast in terms of all the different people we would love to do stories with. And both Sana and I are diehard JJ fans from way back."

Is the return of Matt Murdock, Frank Castle, and now Jessica Jones a signal of a larger Defenders reunion with the other guys, Luke Cage and Danny Rand? Scardapane, sitting next to Amanat, grows cautious of what he says next.

"That's not really up to me," he responds. "Jessica's with us because Jessica's awesome and you'll see in this story what that means. Did I dodge that good enough?"

*Daredevil: Born Again* season 2 premieres March 24 on Disney+.

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