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Ms. Marvel (Initial Thoughts)


Don't look away now because the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has just released their latest Phase Four Disney+ outing with Ms. Marvel. A coming-of-age story that many youngsters can relate to, this series follows Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), a Pakistani-American teenager who deals with the struggles of reality as a high school student while juggling her fantasies of and love for the superheroine Captain Marvel. Taking place sometime after Avengers: Endgame, our titular heroine does her best to forge her own path, a task made all the more difficult by the added curveball of gaining superpowers. Without further ado, let's dive in.

INITIAL THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS (SPOILER ALERT)

Kamala Khan is a total fangirl of Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel, making YouTube videos about her and just all-around idolising her. She constantly daydreams about being like her favourite superheroine, much to the chagrin of her strict immigrant parents, who thinks she spends too much time with her head in the clouds. Most of the first episode is spent laying the foundation for our main characters, showcasing Kamala alongside her best friend Bruno Carrelli (Matt Lintz), as they plan to attend AvengerCon (basically an in-universe Comic-Con). However, our young heroine has to figure out a way to sneak out of her house in a costume her parents banned her from wearing while also staying under their radar.

While cosplaying as her idol, Kamala comes across a magical bangle sent to her family by her grandmother and brings it along as part of her costume, unaware that there's more to it than meets the eye. At AvengerCon, she dons it and is instantly imbued with some strange cosmic energy, which she later showcases in front of countless eyes. Kamala now possesses the ability to manipulate this energy to form crystalline hard light constructs, with which she accidentally causes chaos at the convention. Although she escapes without much issues, her actions are caught on video and come to the attention of the Department of Damage Control, with agent P. Cleary (Arian Moayed reprising his role from Spider-Man: No Way Home) placing this new superpowered individual on his radar. 

So far, I'm actually really excited for this series. The first episode feels really fresh and new, a definite departure from what we've normally gotten from the MCU. Vellani's portrayal really does feel like Kamala Khan and I can't wait to see more of her performance. I also think a lot of the themes and ideas that they're going to touch on will be very relatable to many viewers, what with Kamala being a teenager from an immigrant family. Initially, I was somewhat apprehensive of the changes to her powerset, since the comics iteration of the character has shapeshifting "stretchy" powers and the series showcases her as creating constructs using a magical bangle, but I'm not too worried about it now. I think they've managed to showcase her powers very creatively thus far and even has some similarities to her powers from the comics, with Kamala "stretching out" a hard light hand to catch a falling person. Overall, this series is off to a great start and I'm curious to see how it develops our first live-action iteration of Ms. Marvel.

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