I’m hoping to find a showing of Thor: Love and Thunder that I feel safe going to next week, so no review of that one yet. But it works out, because the season finale of Ms. Marvel just dropped this morning. This is the first time I went into an MCU show already familiar with the comics, which made for a very different experience for me.
Kamala Khan, daydreamy Jersey City teenager and Avengers superfan, has her world rocked when she gains superpowers herself. She takes an interest in a bangle her grandmother sends over from Pakistan, and when she puts it on, she develops the ability to create shields, fists, and other objects from “hard light.” When the help of her sciency best friend Bruno, she sets out to be the best superhero she can. Along the way, her attempts to understand herself and her new powers take her into her family’s past.
It was really interesting to watch this show having already followed Ms. Marvel in the comics. The whole time, my brain was going, “Hey, it’s Nakia!” “There’s Tyesha!” “Aw, Sheikh Abdullah!” “Is this how comics fans feel all the time?” And while there were parts of me that nitpicked differences—I’m making my peace with Kamala’s altered power set, even if her polymorphic powers from the comics are perfect for her—I really enjoyed how the miniseries interprets the characters and tells its own story within Kamala’s world.
Some things I love that they kept: Sheikh Abdullah’s guidance for Kamala, the perfect visual of the Circle Q, the collision of anti-superhero sentiment with real-world Islamophobia. Other things I love that they took in a different direction: Kamala discovering her powers during an Avengers fan convention instead of a run-of-the-mill teen party, a much deeper portrait of Kamala’s relationship with her parents (especially her mom,) Kamala’s trip to Pakistan.
The show isn’t afraid to be wildly different from the comics when it comes to storylines, but it always feels like Ms. Marvel, which is the important thing. There are so many great moments on the show. I just love Kamala feeling herself after she executes her first three-point superhero landing. The graphic flourishes of Kamala’s illustrated daydreams are terrific, and I really like when they use real things in the scene (stars, neon lights, etc.) to spell out text messages instead of showing us somebody’s phone. Every moment of Kamala geeking out over superheroes is delightful. There’s a beautiful sequence of unbridled Muslim joy at a wedding.
It's not perfect, even beyond any fangirl desires to see the comics recreated onscreen panel for panel. For my money, the superhero side of the story goes too big too quickly. Like Spider-Man before her, much of Ms. Marvel’s charm is that she’s a street-level teenage superhero. I’d have liked to see her spend more time getting to know her powers and figuring out how she could best help the folks of Jersey City before graduating straight to “prevent the end of the world”-level catastrophes. The lower-key stuff feels fuller and more grounded to me than some of the larger-than-life superheroics, and I wish the miniseries had taken its time more.
Iman Vellani is an absolute star as Kamala. Funny and endearing, flawed and relatable, goofy and strong, she’s everything I could want in a Ms. Marvel, and I’m so happy to have her in the MCU. The other young actors also do a nice job, especially Matt Lintz as Bruno and Yasmeen Fletcher as Nakia, but I want to highlight the performances for Kamala’s parents. Zenobia Shroff is excellent as Muneeba, carefully threading the needle of a woman who loves her daughter and wants to protect her but doesn’t really understand her. And Mohan Kapur is so warm and fun as Yusuf, Kamala’s goofy, loving dad who must be protected at all costs. Both characters pop for me much more than they did in the comics, and I came away from the show loving the Khan family almost as much as I love Kamala herself.
Warnings
Comic-book violence, mild language, a little drinking, and thematic elements (including Islamophobia and scenes depicting Partition.)
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