Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel)

*Kamala-related spoilers.*

As I said with my post on Peter Parker, to some extent this characterization could just be chalked up to the portrayal of a teenage superhero trying to juggle everything they have to deal with; it’s tough having to make life-or-death decisions when your brain isn’t fully developed yet. And that’s fair. But on the other hand, Kamala Khan just radiates ADHD.

At the start of her series, Kamala is such a “daydreamer” that she’s sent to the school counselor for a let’s-get-serious-about-your-future talk. It’s hard for her to focus on her schoolwork, or on what she’s supposed to do at home, or on her driving test, because she’s wildly imaginative. When it comes to something she really loves—namely, superheroes—she can hyperfocus almost indefinitely. Captain Marvel is her biggest love, and she’ll run out of wall space long before her well of fanart runs dry. But she also maintains a YouTube channel, consumes whatever Avengers-related news she can find, and obsesses over finding the perfect finishing touch for her Captain Marvel cosplay. I love how the show makes her thoughts visible at times, drawing her flights of fancy in the air around her.

When it comes to neurodivergent coding, there’s an important distinction between Kamala and MCU Peter: we meet her before she becomes a superhero, and these traits are already firmly in place. She doesn’t seem easily distracted and flaky because she’s hiding a double life. Rather, she’s already having a hard time regulating her focus and easily gets lost in her imagination, and when the superpowers kick in, that just makes it even harder.

(Side note: Not that I don’t think Peter is ADHD, of course. I’m just pointing out how their introductions play out differently.)

Naturally, Kamala is thrilled when the bangle activates her powers—to quote Rebecca Bunch, I think it’s fair to say she feels “like glitter is exploding inside [her].” But being a superhero is a lot of work, and it takes her a while to find her footing. She bungles one of her earliest saves, rescuing a boy from falling out the window of the mosque but accidentally dropping him before they reach the ground. Her attempts to stay on top of both superheroics and her home life are tricky, and she gets in trouble more than once because she doesn’t turn up when she says she will.

Kamala frequently thinks she can handle everything and then scrambles when that doesn’t turn out to be the case. A great early example of this is her ambitious, multi-pronged plan to sneak out to AvengerCon. She has details galore and has worked out how everything is supposed to go, timing each phase down to the minute (which is important, since they have a bus to catch.) But she underestimates how long basically everything will take—hello, ADHD time blindness!—she overlooks important factors, and she and Bruno’s trip to the con is far more touch-and-go than she anticipates.

All that said, Kamala’s creativity remains a force to be reckoned with, especially as she learns to pair it with her work as a hero. She makes mistakes and is hard on herself for them, but she’s also pretty indomitable and keeps popping back up, figuring out new ways to make it work. She has an incredibly caring heart, loves to explore, and wants nothing more than to do well and help people.