I’ve been rewatching Jessica Jones, and Kilgrave as a villain is more terrifying than most Marvel villains for the simple reason that - for women especially - he is so real. He is what we deal with every day.

Whether it’s your own father saying “you shouldn’t dress like that” or a boyfriend saying “when you’re with me you can’t talk to other men” or random men in the street telling you “you’d be prettier if you smile”, Kilgrave is the kind of villain we spend our lives surrounded by.

Personally, I had one such fellow who liked to list all the ways he was going to dress me up and the places he would take me and more and more graphic stuff and how much I was going to like it all, without ever asking me my opinion on the matter. One line from Kilgrave brought that chap screaming back to me: “you’ll love it”. Actually, no, pal, I don’t think I will.

And that’s the most realistic part of Kilgrave as a villain. He seems charming, and he looks smart, and he can be polite and amiable, but there’s still this creeping insidiousness as he tells you what you can and can’t do. He is the living incarnation of what we fear: a man who can actually completely control you, taking away every part of your identity and dressing you up like his living doll, there to satisfy and entertain him.

He is the kind of man who would shoot up a town because the girl he liked wouldn’t go on a date with him. He’s the ‘nice guy’. This show has blatantly and openly made the ‘nice guy’ the villain and made it absolutely clear that when a man thinks a woman is just an object there for his satisfaction, he is a bad guy and should be hated and feared.

I want to give them a standing ovation for it.