Jessica Jones showrunner breaks down original S3 ending before show was axed

With the third and final season of Marvel's Jessica Jones now streaming on Netflix, showrunner Melissa Rosenberg is opening up about what the latest episodes were supposed to look like before the series was cancelled. While a lot remained the same, the ending had to be tweaked to give Jessica (and viewers) a bit more closure.

**SPOILER WARNING! The following contains spoilers for Season 3 of Jessica Jones!**

In the closing moments of Episode 13, "A.K.A. Everything," Jessica heads to Grand Central Station for a one-way ticket to Mexico. Just as the clerk slides her train over the counter, the light turns purple and we hear David Tennant's Kilgrave (aka the Purple Man) telling Jessica that she's right to give up and that "it's someone else's job now." Realizing that she cannot allow the past to continue dictating her life, Jones declines the ticket and begins walking back toward her city with a big smile on her face.

"It may have been that Jessica actually just was going to leave," Rosenberg told Entertainment Weekly. "I think that was it when we first were breaking the story, before we even started cameras rolling. Then, as we began to sense that this was going to be the end, we said, 'Oh, my God, she can’t leave, because then our message to the world is, ‘When the going gets tough, a woman should just give up.' So it’s like, 'Okay, that is not the message we want out there.” If we knew there was a fourth season, then we could have brought her back. But just in case it was the end, we did not want to end on that note. It would be contrary to who she was."

The new episodes also find Jessica fighting against an enemy that is near and dear to her heart: best friend/radio host Trish Walker (sometimes known as Hellcat). Following the murder of her mother, Trish goes off the deep-end and begins doling out brutal vigilante justice across Manhattan.

By the end, Jessica must confront her best friend, ultimately imprisoning her on the Raft, a famous prison from the comics. Jeremy Bobb's Gregory Salinger, who was heavily featured in the marketing materials as the "bad guy," was merely just a red herring to throw audiences off the scent of Season 3's real villain.

"[Pitting them against each other] was our intention from the beginning," continued Rosenberg. "All three seasons are very much of a piece, as I’ve said before, like three acts of a play, and at the center of all three of those acts is Jessica and Trish’s friendship and sisterhood. Sometimes, it plays more in the background, sometimes it’s foreground, but we really wanted it to become foreground in Season 3. And so, there’s this little shift that we do. We were presenting Salinger as our big bad for Season 3. But as it turns out, Trish is. And we wanted to bring it to a head between Trish and Jessica, and the results are on film."

See what critics are saying about Season 3 here, then let us know what you thought about the end of Jessica Jones in the comments.