Review: Ms. Marvel, "Generation Why" | Season 1, Episode 1
A lively and inventive premiere balances the high school and superhero of it all...for now
Broadly speaking, the live-action MCU series released on Disney+ have been sorted into two categories. The first was “sequels,” effectively taking characters we’re familiar with—Wanda, Sam and Bucky, Loki—and playing out the next chapter in their stories as told within the feature films. The second is “origin stories,” introducing new characters—Kate Bishop, Marc/Steven, now Kamala Khan—that will eventually have a role to play within the MCU.
This second category has never quite been “clean,” though. Hawkeye straddled the two categories by playing out Clint’s post-Endgame existence, while Moon Knight showed no interest in the MCU whatsoever. For this reason, Ms. Marvel is really the first example of an MCU series that is solely focused on introducing us to a new character that we know has a clear role to play in the broader narrative of Phase Four, given the launch of The Marvels next July.
I would argue there is a certain lens through which we evaluate those types of origin stories. Our attention is naturally split between our understanding that this is all leading toward a project of integration and our understanding that it still has to work as a narrative in its own right. A good origin story isn’t just a prologue that lacks resolution, waiting for the next big team-up—it’s a journey that has a clear beginning, middle, and end, but which serves as a launching pad for the next stage of their evolution. The last MCU origin story, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, is to me the platonic ideal of the genre—it wasn’t brilliant, to be clear, but it told a clear story without working too hard to make it about the MCU, and then used its post-credits scene to suggest the importance of the Ten Rings to whatever journeys the Avengers will face moving forward. The tie to the MCU doesn’t define the film, or undermine the story that was told: it’s just a tease of the next chapter.
Ms. Marvel, though, breaks out of this lens almost immediately by bringing a meta dimension to the superhero origin story. Kamala Khan isn’t the first MCU hero to find herself and her powers within the context of the Avengers—Kate Bishop was certainly a fan of Hawkeye, for instance, and Peter Parker was clearly in awe of Tony Stark upon joining the Avengers. However, Kamala is the first hero whose identity is defined by her fandom, the show opening with an elaborately constructed analysis of Captain Marvel’s role in the Battle of Earth and building its first episode around a cosplay competition at the first “Avengercon.” It positions superheroism within the context of the liminal moment of Junior year of high school, when the world is demanding to know who you are but you’re still trapped between the adult you’ll become and the child you were. Does Kamala Khan want to be the good girl she was raised to be? Or does she want to be cosmic?
The risk telling such a meta story is that the MCU of it all will swallow the actual “origin” being worked through, but at least in this premiere Ms. Marvel avoids this through a combination of visual style and cultural specificity. As directed by Adil and Bilall, the pilot has an emphatic energy: the comparisons to Into the Spider-Verse are apt, as the show uses mixed media to bring Kamala’s imagination and artwork to life. The use of animation to capture Kamala’s thought process is lively and striking, but the show is also always looking for different ways to capture the energy of the characters in their surroundings. Just look at how Kamala and Bruno’s text conversation weaves its way through their environment after her parents refuse to allow her to go to Avengercon: her text to him is projected in the star lamp by her bed, while their subsequent conversation weaves its way (practically, in a great big of production design) through the neon lights of the store he lives above, fitting for a master tinkerer.
It would be fair to say that any amount of visual inventiveness would stand out amidst the same-y style the MCU adopts across most of its projects, but I still think that even with that low bar there’s a real sense of discovery to how Ms. Marvel expresses itself, which matches wonderfully with Iman Vellani’s infectious performance. For this visual style to really pop, it needs to feel like it is exuding out of Kamala herself, and Vellani’s a tremendous find in this regard, capturing both the highs of fandom and the more nuanced struggles with identity that define the teen genre. The people around her think her interest in superheroes is childish, and that her daydreaming is a distraction, but the visual representation of those parts of her are so full of life and purpose that we know this isn’t true. Even before she literally gets super powers, her relationship to Captain Marvel is a meaningful vessel for her feelings about who she is and who she wants to be, in the same way that Bruno’s tinkering is his way of getting into Caltech and making his mark on the world.
Well, except for the other critical part of Ms. Marvel’s success, which is that Kamala’s search for identity is heavily framed through her Pakistani family. There’s elements of Kamala’s story that are definitely “universal” to this genre: her rivalry with Zoe, for instance, is a classic “former close friend who evolved into a popular girl and thus became a bully” story, and the show uses that to subtly explore some issues of body image as well. But the show always frames these experiences through the lens of her Pakistani heritage, with the bangle that gives her her powers only entering the story because she’s searching for a way to bring “herself” to her cosplay. The show’s integration of Pakistani culture reminded me of Pixar’s Turning Red, which similarly immersed its characters and the story around them within the range of Chinese culture—the story still rests on some universal values and principles, but there is never a moment where the show erases the specificity to achieve this. The casualness of the show’s engagement with these details—Bruno’s smart home device speaking Urdu, the food at the dinner table, the names they call one another—are never overexplained to an imagined white audience, and are allowed to simply be a part of this story that cannot be separated from the origin of a new superhero.
Of course, the challenge of sustaining all of this across six episodes remains ahead for Ms. Marvel. Her actual powers remain very much unexplored: she has the ability to shoot out bolts of energy, which she can use as projectiles, platforms for movement, or as extensions of her body to save Zoe from her fall. And while we don’t yet have a glimpse of a proper antagonist, we do have the authorities making note of her viral moment at Avengercon, provided that anyone actually recognized her (Zoe certainly didn’t seem to). But as she digs deeper into those powers, and as an antagonist no doubt appears to seek (or reclaim) the bangle that provided Kamala with her abilities, it will become more challenging for the show to balance these different elements.
As it stands, Ms. Marvel is a fun high school coming-of-age story using superpowers as a tool to tell a story about identity and belonging within a Pakistani family; whether it remains that when it concludes its story five episodes from now to transition into The Marvels is far from certain. But the visual style and Vellani’s performance offers a lot of hope that showrunner—sorry, “creator,” Marvel shows aren’t allowed to have showrunners because that implies Kevin Feige isn’t actually in control—Bisha K. Ali and all involved are up to facing that challenge head on, which makes me cautiously optimistic about the endeavor.
Stray observations
First and foremost, note that I have not read any Ms. Marvel comics, so if that’s your frame of reference I definitely probably missed some things.
I’m glad that they realized the use of “Blinding Lights” in the series’ trailer was too powerful for them not to use it here, although I did miss the remixing of it that happens in the trailer.
Did I miss an earlier indication that Groot is known as “Mr. Tree” by the general public? There’s a lot that flies by in the Avengercon sequence, and it made me think a lot about how much people actually know about someone like Drax, so it makes sense that maybe there hasn’t been a full breakdown of the Guardians compared to some of the others.
On a related noted, I am furious that we didn’t get a simultaneous launch of the Scott Lang podcast that served as Kamala’s source for the information about the Battle of Earth, because I’m dying to know how he’s entered it into the historical record. It answers some questions about how anyone knows about what happened, but I need more specifics. (That said, if it’s a podcast, how do people know what Drax looks like? Or what Captain Marvel’s new hair looked like?)
It’s not a requirement for every post-Endgame project to talk about the snap, but I do find it weird to be telling a high school story without addressing it after it was such a huge part of Far From Home, the first post-Endgame project.
“Who is that girl I see, staring straight back at me?”—the use of Mulan lyrics is hard to separate from the corporate synergy of it all, but I think it’s also important we acknowledge the corporate synergy of Touchstone-owned Felicity, which Kamala is watching for some reason.
So it’s hardly shocking that we get a moment of frisson with Bruno and Kamala on the rooftop, but it was interesting how Kamala’s run-in with Zoe on the stairs at school had a similar tension, no? (Yes, I googled Zoe to figure out how she spelled her name, so I know that the comics have some perspective on this).
“Not a lot of salaam here”—in some ways the older brother character feels extraneous here, so I’m curious what role he’ll play. I get that it provides a contrast to how Kamala feels she is being treated by her parents, but so far he’s not really serving a lot of other function.
I know it’s a tiny little shot in the grand scheme of things, but I really loved the canted angle on the rooftop conversation between Kamala and Bruno (below), and the way the camera adjusted as she went inside. Just a lovely set of images.
I was just saying in my thoughts on Our Flag Means Death that I always welcome seeing Orange Is The New Black alum pop up, so Alysia Reiner popping up as the cop who finds the video of the convention was most welcome.
Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of Ms. Marvel—although I wrote about the finale of Moon Knight, this is the first MCU series I’ll be covering in full here at the site. If you’re new, this first review is free, but subsequent reviews are reserved for paid subscribers. You can find out more and join the conversation by checking out our About page.
I think that might have been the best ever depiction of on-screen texting. The idea to literally make it part of the fabric of the characters' lives the way that texting has become part of real life was gobsmackingly smart and was just as well executed. There aren't any little bubbles that pop up around our heads when we text, it's just something that kind of happens as we're going about our day.
That sequence summed up everything great about this episode. It was clever, it was unique, and it was rooted in a specific viewpoint, but one that was not so specific as to cut it off from universality, as Myles rightfully pointed out. Kamala is going through things that anybody who has been a teenager could recognize, but she's going through it in a way that makes sense to this specific character. And I suppose it's a sign of the fact that I'm not a teenager anymore that I could absolutely see her parents' point of view (and think that her dad going to the convention in Hulk cosplay was a perfectly acceptable and non-embarrassing compromise). Just solid, relatable family dynamics all the way around.
Very nice review, Myles, thanks for all the insights! I particularly like when you pick some specific shots, discussing angles or stuff like that. I was a huge fan of the Polite Fight videos on AV Club for that reason...
I had very strong vibes of Ramy meets Scott Pilgrim watching this, which is a very positive thing in my opinion!
Both the visual style and the tone of the story felt very organic and I really hope they manage to keep that the whole season. I especially liked the sequence when they are biking and their ideas of costumes appear as street art on the various buildings. And showing Kamala doodling all the time made it feel totally earned.