Scans_Daily

Realistic argument between Jess and Scott: he really wants to help, but he's in a featureless black landscape with no signposts and no sun. And Jess, for her part, wanted to escape from the memories Madame Web churned up, not to be asked to unpack them for Scott's benefit.

Y'know how some characters get put through the wringer, but we think, "Well, this is just Act One of their story, at some point they'll get to turn things around?" Yeah, that never quite happened with Mattie. Some people will point to her last appearance in the Clone Conspiracy, but I feel like "getting to heroically shove a door closed" is a pretty poor compensation for getting mindwiped, drugged, turned INTO drugs, and killed twice. She was a member of a super-team for a hot minute, but I feel like most of that revolved around her sleeping with someone and regretting it, which, ew.

You'd think Mattie's issues would have affected Jameson's anti-vigilante stance a little, if only to make him start parroting the real-life argument that superheroes inspire real people to take absurd risks with their lives and end up traumatized, brutalized and/or dead. But most writers seemed to want to forget about Mattie as much as possible--which I kind of get. She really complicates Jonah's narrative, and unless you're invested in her, the resulting story benefits don't outweigh the costs.

Weird as it is to say, this treatment right here is some of the best treatment she got--she might be a victim for almost all of the story, but it's not gratuitous: this is a realistic depiction of trafficking that intersects well with Jess's own narrative. And at least Mattie's central to the story, not a subplot in some other arc, like, "Oh, and Mattie died too." "Maddie? Oh, oh right, MATTIE. Sad."