Octopus DNA Is More Popular Than Ever, Thanks To 'Jessica Jones' Season 2

Jessica Jones Season 2 had a lot of throwaway filler in the first five episodes, as the production took time with the reveal of who Janet McTeer was playing. But fans sitting down to watch the show didn't realize what details were important, and what were merely red herrings to throw them off the scent. The biggest red herring that fans fell for arrived in Episode 5. We know because the Google spike was off the charts. Jessica Jones Season 2 popularized octopus DNA so much so, the term rocketed up on Google the day the series arrived on Netflix.

To be fair, when Jessica is tracking down the doctor behind IGH, it seems like this is a very important clue to the mystery of what made her a person with superpowers, and perhaps an explanation that could explain Luke Cage and Kilgrave as well. Fans may remember that there was a time when we thought all three of their abilities were connected. Since Kilgrave had Jessica kill Luke Cage's wife Reva Conners, and in his series, Cage realized that Reva may have been part of the group responsible for what was done to him, it seemed like perhaps there was a connection.

When Jessica's sleuthing lead her to David Kawecki (played by Daniel Everidge), a mentally-challenged man who was doing time in a high-security lockup for a murder Janet McTeer's character was responsible for, it seemed like she might be getting closer to the answer. Especially when David began spouting off about "De Novo" and how the genes of an octopus can suddenly mutate out of nowhere and start fresh, with something that didn't exist before... like Jessica and her sudden abilities.

Behold, the power of a single scene:

It seemed like a real clue when it comes up towards the end of Episode 5. The parallels between Jessica's sudden powers as a "De Novo" mutation seem extremely likely. Especially when one takes into account the conversation Jessica has with McTeer early on. Posing as Dr. Lesley Hansen, she tells Jessica that the powers were a side effect of the project, which was taking dead people and bringing them back to life.

Unfortunately, as fans know now, that was a lie. Jessica didn't die, she was just really close to death. The powers may have been a side effect, but the octopus DNA, like Clue's communism, was just a red herring.

In reality, the show didn't really care that much about where Jessica's powers came from. What really mattered was that Janet McTeer's character was actually Jessica's mother, Alisa, who has survived the crash too, and had been alive and under the control of Dr. Karl all these years.

But that didn't mean that the producers behind Jessica Jones failed to notice they'd had an effect on the week's Google search terms. In fact, they decided to turn it into a way to pull in another short-lived (but slightly more important) character from the early episodes, Robert Coleman's "The Whizzer." Or at least have a little fun at the mongoose lover's expense.

That seems a little cruel to say about a character who's so old he's been around since the 1940s in the Marvel canon. No, really, "The Whizzer" is one of Marvel's oldest superheroes, a character who gained his powers after being bitten by a mongoose in Africa, and an old school friend of Bucky Barnes back in the day. Seems rather insulting that they recast him as a one-and-done character for the series, and now are letting the world know about his porn preferences. Maybe Jessica Jones Season 3 will learn a bit more respect. (But probably not.)