Ms. Marvel injects relatable youthfulness into the MCU.
The series premiere gives all the Peter Parker vibes, yet reflects a fresh, new teen experience.
The Short Take:
Ms. Marvel is exactly the breath of fresh air the MCU needs right now. Youthful, energetic, and relatable, this series premiere introduces not only a new hero but a new perspective not previously represented in the MCU. If you’re a fan of The Mitchells vs. The Machines, you’ll likely be on board.
[Today’s Long Take is mostly spoiler free, until a few paragraphs at the end. At that point I’ll give fair warning.]
The Long Take:
So much of Phase 4 has been about dealing with the fallout or trauma from the Infinity Saga and Avengers: Endgame (2019) specifically. Wanda grieves Vision in WandaVision. Hawkeye and Yelena grieve Natasha in Hawkeye. Peter Parker grieves Tony Stark in Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). Sam and Bucky have to figure out life without Steve in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. A variant Loki reflects on his villainous mistakes in Loki. Our heroes and, to a certain extent, we as fans have been stuck in the past. Some rich and rewarding stories have come out of that, but we’re approaching a saturation point.
A new series introducing a new hero, Ms. Marvel, may signal a mood change and a way to move forward because a.) Kamala Khan wasn’t directly involved in the events of The Infinity Saga and b.) Kamala Khan is a normal teenager when the show begins. She’s a Captain Marvel super fan, which gives her enough distance from the MCU’s history to date that not everything she does has to be as emotionally tied to past films. And that’s in keeping with the next generation mantle-passing we’ve seen in previous series. Unlike old and new Hawkeye or old and new Black Widow, however, Captain Marvel has no idea Ms. Marvel even exists.
The effervescent tone this series premiere sets almost immediately signals that this is how Kevin Feige and the creators behind Ms. Marvel view the project as well. As the opening Marvel Studios montage rolls, we hear a contemporary needle drop: “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd. No jukebox tunes from the 70s and 80s here (I, personally, have enjoyed those very much, but I can see how they might not appeal to younger generations of fans). And then, before we see any actors, we get an animated paper cut-outs of the Avengers, with Kamala Khan’s voice narrating the “Battle of Earth” for what we soon learn is a YouTube video extolling the virtues of Captain Marvel.
The art style, music, and charmingly hyperactive verve remind me of Netflix’s The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021) A LOT. The animated science fiction family comedy also features a young woman who aspires to be a content creator, with the Internet as her canvas. I saw some Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) in here as well. And I only just remembered while typing that both Mitchells and Spider-Verse are Lord and Miller productions, so I feel safe speculating that the comedy duo may have inspired the style of Ms. Marvel. All three works are full of color, movement, and an understanding of how people express themselves and interact with the world within digital communities. We even see text messages appear as objects in the scene, like a neon sign in the shape of an emoji one characters ends to another. I thought this vibe was really fun, but I can see how it might be overstimulating for some viewers, especially considering how the episode sustains high levels of energy from start to finish.
[Note the text message on the pavement in the image above.]
In addition to being a digital native and online content creator, Kamala Khan is a Muslim Pakistani American girl who just wants to get her driver’s license so she can go to the very first AvengerCon with her best friend and tech prodigy, Bruno. Her parents, however, don’t understand her interests at all and classify her fandom for Captain Marvel and the other Avengers as pure fantasy that only distracts her from reality: her school work, helping her family prepare for her older brother’s wedding, and planning for her own future.
Kamala is extremely relatable in the way that Tom Holland’s Peter Parker is. Sure, he’s an Avenger, but he’s also a high school kid just trying to ask the girl he has a crush on out on a date. He has “regular people” problems and recent Spider-Man films have been so successful in part because they never lose sight of those kinds of problems; in fact, they treat them as if they were as important to Peter as saving the universe.
The added bonus here, though, is that Kamala Khan offers a very different version of the teenage experience than Peter Parker. Since my own identity (as a non-white woman) is closer to Khan than Parker, there were countless little details throughout the episode that resonated with me and, in some cases, made me recall my own adolescence. Kamala experiences female body consciousness, when her mother says that a skin-tight costume is “not her” or when her mother and the tailor tell her that she’s “too short” for the dress she’s trying on. This prompts her to look at herself in the mirror, viewing her own body as a source of anxiety. She has loving yet overprotective parents who won’t let her go out at night unchaperoned. They say they “trust her”; the problem is they don’t trust the rest of the world, full of creeps and strangers. As someone who is still salty that my family wouldn’t let me go on that school trip to Washington D.C., I can relate to this one 100%.
The most subtle and yet most powerful moments in this episode that I relate to, though, reflect an inability to fit in any one culture — what it’s like to not quite fit in with your own family or ethnicity and not quite fit in amongst more Westernized peers. Kamala is of Pakistani descent while I am half-Chinese Thai American (it’s complicated), so clearly I can’t conflate her experience with my own. But I still recognized moments in this episode that I have also experienced and attribute to being a part of an “ethnic” American family. The DMV employer running Kamala’s driving test says “bless you” because he thinks she sneezed when in fact she’s saying “Bismallah” or “in the name of Allah” before she begins. One of the teachers calls her Kamilia instead of Kamala when he greets her in the hall. I don’t think the show necessarily passes judgment on these characters; it’s merely trying to capture a specific experience that we have yet to see in the MCU.
What may be the most relatable to all Marvel fans is Kamala’s own fandom. The opening scene and the way Kamala and Bruno talk about AvengerCon creates a guaranteed entry point for he audience because they are presumably also interested in the Avengers and the MCU history that Kamala reverently reviews. Again, I found this incredibly relatable; I mean, I just came back from a four-day Star Wars convention, at which I wore a costume that likened me to a character who has, so far, only appeared in Marvel Comics. I write reviews about my favorite fandoms and occasionally appear as a guest on podcasts about them. (I really want to hear an in-universe recording of that Antman pod, by the way.) And I don’t expect many people to really “get” it.
Some fans will likely also relate to wanting, in dark times, to escape into fantasy. Perhaps they will even relate to Kamala’s resentment of anyone who says her fandom is a waste of time or thinks it’s weird. In many ways Ms. Marvel seems like it might be a love letter to the MCU fan experience, reminding us why we love the franchise so much. It’s the most meta the MCU has ever been in its storytelling. And I’m here for it.
[SPOILERS for what happens in the episode ahead. If you haven’t seen the show yet and want to experience it fresh, I’ve hopefully given you enough to go on. It seems like it’s going to be really fun, so I’d encourage you to check it out!]
One of the dangers with a more meta show is that there’s more meta-narrative than actual narrative, but what we’ve seen so far is promising on that front because the show seems interested in integrating Kamala’s identity, her fandom, and her superhero origin story into one compelling story.
Image Credit: Newsweek
In this episode, at least, I can’t separate one from the other two. Her heritage is actively a part of her superhero persona, as her powers seem to come from a Pakistani bangle her grandmother sent. Her family hilariously said was junk, but still kept it in the attic. (I too have learned that you NEVER throw away a gift from a family member, regardless of how you feel about it.) I’ve heard that some fans of the Ms. Marvel comics are not happy about a change the show has made to her powers, but as someone who hasn’t yet read them, I didn’t mind them at all. So if you’ve read the comics and can shed some light on the changes, please educate me in the comments.
Image Credit: Slash Film
Meanwhile, the discovery of the bangle and its powers precipitates from her fandom. The whole episode Kamala can’t quite figure out what that last touch, the final “flourish” for her Captain Marvel costume will be. And it’s only when her supportive friend Bruno says that she needs to put some of herself into the costume. She doesn’t need to be exactly like Carol Danvers; she can be Captain Marvel while still being herself.
Bruno, incidentally, seems too perfect to me? But am I complaining about that? Not yet. My guess is that the he’s right there and she doesn’t notice him “"in that way,” and that’s going to be his tragic deal. They did go to an awkward moment of tension very soon in this first episode; I have mixed feelings about that, especially since we’re still pretty short on female-led films and shows. But am willing to withhold judgment until we see how it pans out. And it wouldn’t be a teen comedy without angsty and/or awkward romantic feelings, so I should probably just relax.
In general, I’m crossing my fingers that the series can continue to gracefully weave all these narrative threads together rather than abandon them when the plot get more superhero-y. Agent Cleary, who hassles Peter Parker in the Spider-man films, says he wants to “bring her in” during a post-credits scene; so, it looks as though we’re getting real superhero-y soon.
I’m excited to see where Ms. Marvel goes regardless.