The MCU has always been larger than life, with countless stories that dwarf the previous one in scale and magnitude. With the recent announcement that Phases Four through Six will be known as the Multiverse Saga, things will only get bigger from here. That's a huge contributing factor to why I thoroughly enjoyed Ms. Marvel, for the series was a big departure away from the MCU's usual direction and focused on telling a self-contained story with a lot of heart. Without further ado, let's dive in.
SERIES RETROSPECT AND REVIEW (SPOILER ALERT)
Introduction: While its place in the timeline hasn't been officially confirmed, Ms. Marvel likely takes place in 2025, a couple years after the events of Avengers: Endgame. We follow the story of Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), a Pakistani-American high schooler struggling to formulate her own identity. Our young protagonist idolises Carol Danvers, the superheroine known as Captain Marvel, but her constant fantasies about her idol are often much to the chagrin of her relatively strict immigrant mother. Kamala's life seems pretty mundane but one fateful night changes everything when she wears a mystical bangle sent to her by her grandmother, a bangle that gives her the ability to manipulate hard light constructs and functionally turning her into a superhero. Kamala must now learn more about her newfound powers and navigate through the strange new world that she's just been thrown into, uncovering dark secrets from her family's past.
Series vs comics: As you would expect, Ms. Marvel is the first outing of the titular protagonist in the MCU and so this segment will focus on her the most. A fairly new character in the comics (officially debuting in 2014), Kamala is the daughter of strict Pakistani immigrants Yusuf and Muneeba Khan, and although she grew up as a devout Muslim proud of her heritage, she was always a little different from others because of her love for geeky things like video games, fanfiction and especially anything superhero-related, with her favourite hero being Carol Danvers, who had recently changed her superhero persona from Ms. Marvel to Captain Marvel. The young girl's life was about to be turned upside down though, as a devastating battle between Thanos and Black Bolt would cause the Terrigen Bomb to detonate and cover the Earth with the Terrigen Mists.
After sneaking out to a party with her best friend Bruno Carrelli, Kamala would be exposed to the Mists and underwent the process known as Terrigenesis, with her latent Inhuman lineage activating her morphogenetic powers. As a Nuhuman polymorph, she could now alter her appearance, size and shape in all manner of ways, and also gained an accelerated healing factor. Interestingly, whenever our heroine uses her powers, she's actually sharing her mass through time with different versions of herself, meaning that she time travels on a molecular level. When she first started her superhero activities, Kamala would shapeshift into the spitting image of her idol Carol Danvers in her Ms. Marvel outfit but would later don her own costume and take on the mantle of Ms. Marvel for herself. Over the years, Kamala has been part of many teams including the Avengers and the Agents of Atlas, and as of now, she's also the leader of the young superhero team known as the Champions.
Though Kamala remains the daughter of Pakistani immigrants and a huge fan of all things superhero, especially Captain Marvel, in the series, there've been quite a few drastic changes to her origin story. While sneaking out to AvengerCon with Bruno (Matt Lintz), Kamala would wear a bangle gifted by her grandmother as part of her Captain Marvel cosplay outfit and somehow gained the ability to manipulate the extradimensional energies of the Noor Dimension. Adapting to her powers, she would most commonly create crystalline structures like shields to protect herself and others, as well as platforms that she runs on to get around swiftly. On top of this, the series has somewhat adapted our heroine's "stretchy" powers from the comics by having Kamala coat her arms and legs with hard light "armour", and altering their shape and size. For most of the series, we're under the impression that our titular heroine possesses a hybrid physiology as her great-grandmother Aisha hailed from the Noor Dimension but in the last episode, we find out that she's actually the mainstream MCU's first official mutant (see The future of the MCU). While she spends most of the series under nicknames like "Night Light" or "Light Girl", she adopts her superhero moniker of Ms. Marvel after gaining inspiration from her father.
Pros: Ms. Marvel is a huge breath of fresh air from the rest of Phase Four, crafting a new story about a heroine who much like us viewers, is someone who idolises these amazing superheroes. The tone is markedly differently from the rest of the series, with the series having a much lighter atmosphere overall. We get a bright and engaging new protagonist in Kamala, who feels like a believable teenager in today's world. Iman Vellani is outstanding in her MCU debut and coupled with the fact that she's a fan just like us, her portrayal of Kamala is just fantastic and a joy to watch on screen. I think that many viewers who come from strict Asian families (and especially those from Pakistani ones), will relate to many of Kamala's struggles, giving us a character that we can get invested in.
Personally, I also think that the showrunners handled Kamala's power changes fairly well. The alterations to her origins and powers generated some controversy in the past but personally I don't think it's a bad thing. Some have theorised that Marvel Studios made this change to distance our heroine from Mister Fantastic, yet another character with "stretchy" powers but whatever it is, I think the change was done well and it made sense with relevance to the story. Moreover, they were still able to incorporate aspects of her shapeshifting powers from the comics into the series, having Kamala create giant hands out of hard light or increase her overall size by "growing" her armour. We even got her saying her comics catchphrase "embiggen" so I thought that was pretty cool.
Finally, much like fellow Disney+ series Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel tells a fairly self-contained story. While there're definitely plot points that build upon past events in the MCU such as Carol Danvers' presence as well as the events of Avengers: Endgame, and although there's still worldbuilding going on, the series was very character-driven and gave us a good introduction to the MCU's newest heroine, Kamala Khan.
Cons: Although the lighter tone of Ms. Marvel is a definite plus point and Kamala is still a very likeable protagonist, there were many times where the dialogue came off as mildly cringy. This problem likely stemmed from Marvel Studios trying to play up the "teenage" aspect of their new heroine as well as the "there's no such thing as normal" idea, and combined with some less-than-stellar writing, the script didn't turn out so well at times. On top of that, I felt that the series had some issues with its pacing. Considering that Ms. Marvel only has 6 episodes, the showrunners have to fit in her origin story, some worldbuilding and a good amount of plot elements into those short few episodes, which will certainly create problems in the long run.
While the series' first 3 episodes chugged along just fine, things got weird around episode 4 when Kamala got thrown back in time, which not only generated a strange time paradox plotline but also slowed the series down tremendously. Our heroine then goes back to the present in episode 5 and things wrap up so quickly that you think everything's good but in episode 6 they throw in some more plot points. This causes the final episode to be super rushed because the showrunners have to wrap up the series while also handle some new elements. Pacing issues are something that almost all, if not all, the MCU Disney+ series suffer from and I worry that if nothing's done to rectify it, this problem will only become worse.
Miscellaneous/little touches: Compared to other MCU products, it would seem that Ms. Marvel actually doesn't have that many Easter eggs and references but let's try and cover some anyway. As we know, this series takes place a couple years after the events of Avengers: Endgame and based on what we've seen from other series like Hawkeye, we can tell that the general public in the MCU have good knowledge of what the Avengers went through. While we initially don't know how they know all this, Ms. Marvel has revealed to us that the source of all this information is none other than Scott Lang aka Ant-Man, who has started his own podcast titled "Big Me Little Me: A Scott Lang Interview". Assumedly through this podcast, the shrinking superhero has shared all kinds of experiences with the public and has become somewhat of a big star. This also ties in nicely to the leaked trailer from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which showed that Scott has become rich and famous after publishing a bestselling book.
There're a lot of new plot elements introduced in this series, with one of the most important being Kamala's bangle, the supposed source of her powers. Interestingly, the origins of this bangle are actually very poorly explained in the series itself and even now, we don't know much about it. From flashback sequences, we know that there're actually two of these bangles that supposedly need to be together in order for them to work properly. Also, when the Clandestines from the Noor Dimension find the bangle, it's in a chamber with the Ten Rings logo carved into the ground. Not only that, the bangle is also taken from the wrist of a blue-skinned humanoid, who's more than likely a Kree. From Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings' mid-credits scene, we know that the Ten Rings are likely of alien origin and coupled with the supposed Kree hand, there is strong evidence that Kamala's bangle is from outer space as well. We'll cover this in greater detail later on (see The future of the MCU).
Finally, there's a pretty funny reference to Eternals when Kamala's friend Kamran (Rish Shah) shares with her that his mother is a big fan of the former Bollywood actor Kingo Sr., while they themselves discuss the younger Kingo. Little do they know that the ageless Eternal has just been masquerading as an entire generation of actors but of course, the audience is privy to this information. It was quite a hilarious moment that made me chuckle.
The future of the MCU: Don't look away now, because Ms. Marvel might actually be one of the most important series for the MCU's future. Let's talk about the elephant in the room, the revelation that Kamala is a mutant. That's right folks, our titular heroine is the first official mutant in the mainstream MCU, with the X-Men '97 theme song playing when the big reveal happens. Now we've seen mutants before in the MCU, albeit in an alternate universe with Earth-838's Professor X (Patrick Stewart) in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but this is still exciting news. We've known for a while that mutants and by extension the X-Men are coming to the MCU but it's awesome that we've finally gotten proper confirmation of the existence of mutants in the mainstream MCU. This is just the beginning though and we're definitely going to see the X-gene popping up more often.
Something else that's really important is the post-credits scene in the final episode. After presumably returning from some superhero shenanigans, Kamala's bangle starts to glow before randomly creating a strange surge of energy that causes our young heroine and none other than her idol, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), to swap places. Now in her fan's room, a confused Carol realises that something is very wrong and runs off, probably to find a way to save Kamala from whatever location she's been sent to. I am 100% certain that this is a set-up for 2023's The Marvels, which will see Kamala, Carol and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) working together, and I'm also certain that this scene is also something that'll be reused in the film itself. This whole ordeal of swapping places also brings to mind the Nega-Bands from the comics, ancient Kree relics that allowed the wielders to swap places when clanged together. Combine that with the fact that we know there're two of such bangles, I'm very confident that they're adapting the Nega-Bands in some form into the MCU. Only time will tell.
Final thoughts: Phase 4 has been filled with ups and downs for the MCU, with some hits but possibly more misses. I may have really enjoyed Ms. Marvel but the series performed quite poorly on Disney+ and has received a ton of hate from viewers. Is the series really as bad as people say? Definitely not. It has it's flaws but I certainly feel like the good outweighs the bad. The series has given us a really interesting character in Kamala Khan and I can't wait to see more of her in future MCU products. Ms. Marvel may have left some plot points hanging but I'm sure they'll all be covered soon so let's stay tuned for more. Thanks for reading.
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