Ms Marvel (2022)

 

Kamala Khan is a 16-year-old Pakistani-American high school student from Jersey City. Kamals's an aspiring artist, avid gamer, and devout Avengers fan - particularly Captain Marvel. She's also living with the challenges of being brown and Muslim in the modern day United States.

While Kamala does have a circle of friends - Muslim and non-Muslim alike - she's very much on the fringes of mainstream society, a situation she dreams of changing by nailing it with the best Captain Marvel cosplay anyone's ever seen.

What she actually gets instead is unexpected super-powers, which seem to stem (or perhaps, have been triggered) by a golden bangle that used to belong to her grandmother.

As Kamala struggles to adjust to her new abilities, and use them for good, her accidents and fledging efforts to be a hero attract attention from multiple parties, including the US Department of Damage Control, and inter-dimensional beings known as the Clandestine.  Who of these are friends and who are enemies?  Kamala might lose her freedom or her life if she gets the answer wrong.

Ms. Marvel is a thoroughly enjoyable superhero coming-of-age, outsider to champion style tale.  It's anchored by an excellent cast; Iman Vellani brings real charm and pathos to the central role of Kamala, and she's ably supported by the talented group of actors who play her friends and family.  I hope we get to see them feature in the upcoming film The Marvels as I think there's a lot of fun possibilities in seeing these characters interact with the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I also liked that the show draws a lot of its back-story and development from the 1947 Partition of India.  It's good to see a Disney show draw on an event from non-US/European history.  It was a traumatic and dangerous time - up to 2 million people may have died - that's largely unknown or forgotten in the west, but which continues to have profound implications in Asian politics.  It was also good to see the characters spend time in Pakistan (at least, in the fiction; in the real world, these scenes appear to have actually been filled in Thailand and in Atlanta).

If I was forced to find fault with the show, I would probably call out that it tries to pack an awful lot of story into only six episodes.  The Clandestine plotline moves very fast as a result, and feels a bit rushed at times.  Some secondary characters also end up not being given as much time as I would have liked to see spent with them.  Another couple of episodes would, I think, have given the show more time to breathe.  

I certainly wouldn't have objected to spending more time with Kamala and Co., and if the worst thing I can say about a program is that I wanted more, it's safe to say that it's one I enjoyed!