The Short Take:
Episode 4 unfolds yet another layer as Ms. Marvel’s core story of family, cultural identity, and postcolonial history comes to the fore. Outstanding action sequences.
Image Credit: Vulture
[From here on out, expect SPOILERS as far as Kamala’s hard light fist can extend.]
The Long Take:
It’s clear to me now that Ms. Marvel is as much a cultural origin story as it is superhero origin story. The further the series progresses, the more central Kamala Khan’s Pakistani heritage, her family tree, and, more specifically, what happened on the night her nani, Sana, took the last train to Karachi, do not merely constitute flavorful background to help ground the MCU story (though, as I discussed in my Episode 2 review, it also does that in spades). Partition is, without a doubt, an integral part of the series’ plot.
To expound, I must start at the very end of the episode. Kamala fights the members of Clan Destine, and when Kamran’s mother, Najma, strikes Kamala’s bangle, Kamala inadvertently zaps into what appears to be the train station from which her nani, Sana, left her home in India to flee to the part of British India that would become Pakistan. This is the same night when Kamala’s great grandmother, Aisha, mysteriously disappeared. Earlier in the episode, an aging Sana says that the bangle was trying to tell Kamala something by showing both of them a vision of the train. Turns out, Kamala needed to actually go to the Partition-era train, to the time and place her father described in that dinner table conversation in Episode 2.
At first, I was confused about what we were actually seeing at the end of the episode. Is this an extension of the train vision, sort of like a living memory? Can anyone else there see Kamala? Or has Kamala actually traveled through time and space to 1947 India? Is the primary purpose of sending her there to reveal what actually happened that night? To solve the mystery? Or does Kamala have a more active part to play?
I credit the most compelling theory I’ve heard so far comes to my partner — both in life and Disney+ viewing — Jon. He suggested that Kamala (and not Aisha) is actually the one who gets baby Sana back to her father. So think of the time heist shenanigans in Avengers: Endgame. Or, more accurately, how Hodor got his name in Game of Thrones or when Harry Potter saved himself in The Prisoner of Azkaban. (Can anyone think of better examples? Drop them in the comments.) Right before the credits roll, we see Kamala atop a train car looking around, presumably for her own family. If she finds a baby Sana lost or in danger, she’s going to help. Plus, the show has made it very clear that Kamala is the only one who can use her powers to their fullest because she’s connected to and anchored in the matter of our world. In theory, if Aisha is from the Noor Dimension like the other ClanDestines, her powers would be pretty limited. So she may not actually be able to create the trail of stars that will save Sana/Nani. But we know Kamala can.
Thematically, I can find support for this theory in the inscription on Kamala’s bangle: “What you seek is seeking you.” This sounds like a riddle, but becomes a lot less cryptic if we place it in the context of a causal loop or time paradox. That Kamala, by using the bangle to travel back in time, will close the loop, saving Sana’s life and becoming an “unseen” part of the very family legend she grew up hearing about. I’m a sucker for anything related to time travel, so I would be completely fine with this plot twist.
Image Credit: Anime Manga News
Regardless of the circumstances, bearing witness to the historical nightmare that was Partition was emotionally impactful. Seeing how crowded the train station was, with refugees climbing on top of the train cars to ensure escape. The chaos, the confusion. The fear. It was a heartbreaking climax for Kamala’s family narrative, considering the multiple references to the Partition woven into previous episodes.
I admit that I find it difficult to write about the Partition because I am not Pakistani or Indian; nor did I actually learn that much in history classes about the Partition. It seems impossible for me to discuss this series in any meaningful way without engaging with the history behind Partition, though. I have been trying to read as much as I can since the series first mentioned it, but I fear I have only scratched the surface. So please know my writing about it is in good faith, and I am eager to learn whatever anyone else has to teach me.
In past reviews, I’ve alluded to Partition as the lasting damage of British imperialism, but this episode layers on a more specific conflict between an individual’s cultural identity and their national identity. Kamala’s nani conveys this explicitly when she says “My passport is from Pakistan but my roots are in India”; she feels caught between worlds and feels as though her national identity does not adequately reflect the nuances of her cultural identity. In between her Pakistani passport and her Indian roots, she says, is a “border marked with blood and pain,” implying that said border is disruptive and harmful. She points out the absurdity of Indian and Pakistani people “claiming their identity” based on the line some “old Englishman” drew.
That old Englishman was Lord Louis Mountbatten. Fans of Netflix’s The Crown should recognize him as Prince Phillip’s always stately and sometimes sinister uncle, played in later seasons by Tywin Lannister, I mean, Game of Thrones actor Charles Dance. Mountbatten once tried to overthrow the British government and in 1979 the IRA assassinated him by planting a bomb on his fishing boat. I mention this not as a “fun fact,” but to highlight that Mountbatten’s legacy, despite being a beloved royal in England, is embroiled with political, and often international, conflict.
Left: Charles Dance playing Mountbatten in The Crown
Right: The real Lord Mountbatten
Image Credit: Esquire
Many historians, while acknowledging that Hindu and Muslim leaders also contributed to the escalation of political tensions during Partition, argue that Mountbatten’s handling of Britain’s exit directly contributed to the amount and severity of the violence — including mutual genocide — that stained the border with blood and pain, as Sana says. Apparently Mountbatten gave the order to withhold information about where the border would be until two days after the transfer of power, mainly because he didn’t want anyone to argue or protest. This increased fear and anxiety for residents wondering where their homes would fall ultimately incited the widespread panic we see in the Ms. Marvel episode. More broadly, Mountbatten tried to cut ties with British India as quickly as possible because if the Empire wasn’t going to benefit from having India as a colony any longer, it didn’t want to be responsible for managing a civil war there.
Hence, an old Englishman that Kamala and her family have never met determined their identity for them and created what postcolonial theorist and Harvard professor Homi K. Bhabha would call “cultural hybridity.” Bhabha is a bit of a controversial, or maybe just passé figure within postcolonial studies today because many critics have accused him of downplaying the culpability of the colonizer in postcolonial issues, as his theory that all cultures (both colonizer and colonized) influence each other can be interpreted as naively utopian.
Bhabha’s concept of hybridity may be helpful in thinking about the role Partition plays in Ms. Marvel, though, because it highlights how the show challenges national labels for families affected by the Partition. In The Location of Culture, Bhabha famously uses a linguistic metaphor, saying that the “enunciation” of culture creates a “split-space” or “Third Space” that represents the real-life practical “articulation of culture’s hybridity.” So we might in theory place different people in different buckets of race, ethnicity, or nationality, but the expression of individual people and their own culture makes those labels or buckets pretty meaningless or, at least, reductive. Kamala’s nani struggles with who she is because she feels like she needs a Third Space to accurately reflect her own life experience.
And, as I mentioned in my Episode 1 review, Kamala might also exist in a liminal space, not quite American enough but, as we see in this episode, clearly not fitting in her “mother” country either. I was quite amused, in fact, by how much everyone else pegged her for a tourist. The only time I’ve been to Thailand was when I was thirteen, and I definitely remember a traumatic trip to a local mall to buy clothes that would be deemed appropriate by restaurants and hotels. I found this especially traumatic as a taller and wider than average teen because none of the clothes in the Thai stores fit me. And everyone asked me if I played basketball. But I digress.
A more apt comparison for Sana’s identity strife are the ClanDestines, or “djinn” from another dimension, as Najma and company clearly just want to be able to go home, feeling as though they cannot fit into the world to which they have been exiled. And as we learn from Waleed and the Red Daggers, the border between our world and the Noor Dimension holds the fate of our world in the balance. The ClanDestines, in wanting to get back to the Noor Dimension, threaten to pull down the “Veil” dividing the two, and if they succeed they will, supposedly, destroy our world in the process.
I find it fascinating that establishing a border for Partition is horrifically bloody but dissolving the Noor Dimension/Earth border is literally world-ending. I’m not sure what to make of that allegorically or metaphorically, but there has to be something there. Either way, the resolution with the Partition storyline has to spill over into and inform the other Noor Dimension/Earth Veil storyline. I also find it interesting that one is a partition and one is a veil…the latter implies disguising something that is hidden rather than physically blockading or dividing. Perhaps we’ll learn that Waleed’s intel is incorrect and that there is a way for the two dimensions to coexist?
The most crucial missing puzzle piece —the ClanDestines’ motivations — may fill in some of the blanks I have about the thematic ties between the Partition and the Veil. I’m seeing a lot of reactions online complaining about their mediocrity as villains. I think they have been no more or less interesting than the average MCU villain so far. I think the issue is more that we haven’t had a chance to get to know them yet, and that may be for plot/spoiler reasons. They’re menacing (I am legitimately terrified of Najma), but since we don’t yet know why exactly they are so hellbent on getting back to the Noor Dimension or what their beef with Aisha is, it’s hard to really see them as fully formed like all the other characters in the show. So I get the criticism, but I also think that if I’m patient enough I will get what’s lacking.
If I had to predict, I’d say we will get a reveal in the next episode about why Najma feels betrayed by Aisha. We’ll likely find out that Aisha determined that collapsing the border would destroy our world and went against the other ClanDestines, keeping the bangle from them. It makes sense that like Sana, who feels pulled in different border-defying directions, Aisha also cannot completely claim allegiance with one realm or another. Like so many cosmic beings before her, she has planted roots on Earth, developing a soft spot for humans. Could she have founded the Red Daggers, in direct opposition to her fellow djinn?
Aisha may even still be alive, in hiding, with another bangle. We do, after all, need to account for that second bangle at some point. And if they are a pair, that inscription makes even more sense because it means the bangles are a pair and want to be together; “what you are seeking is also seeking you” might mean the bangles are seeking each other.
While I’m less confident on these detailed predictions, I am more confident that more broadly Ms. Marvel will keep with the pattern set by other six-episode MCU Disney+ series. Most recently, Moon Knight used its Episode 5 to delve into Marc and Steven’s past to help resolve the ongoing conflict. So it stands to reason that Episode 5 of Ms. Marvel will focus mainly on the Partition train station scene. We’ll finally get to see what really happened that night. We’ll see Kamala learn about the past and put together all the pieces of the present puzzle. Then the final episode will take us back to Jersey City to resolve some of the teenager subplots (poor Bruno is just waiting there) and set Kamala up as a local hero on the regular.
Image Credit: GameSpot
Even though Partition and the border narrative dominated my thoughts this week, we still got plenty of fun superhero action in this episode. I was especially dazzled by Kamala’s powers. The train station fight with Kareem showed us how hard light can create a dynamic, multilevel battle. Kareem would fall through dissolving light, or Kamala would step up, up, and up, with Kareem trailing behind her. I got a big kick out of the self-referential Ninja Turtle and Donkey Kong jokes as well.
We start to get more classic superhero material when Kamala protects a “family with a baby” during the big street chase and when she and Kareem ready themselves, putting up their arms. Between this and Kamala slowly collecting pieces of what I assume will be her superhero costume, I’m excited to see her final presentation as Ms. Marvel in two weeks. I’m confident that, as Sana suggests, she will find “the beauty in the pieces.”