I am a huge Ms. Marvel fan, so of course I’m tackling this one an episode at a time. Kamala has been one of my favorites for awhile. My partner has been looking forward to the series as well, and after the first episode he said he felt it was written for a younger audience than us. Well, yeah, it was. But I’ve always connected with it because Kamala was coming from a generation where super heroes definitely, very visibly existed and affected the world. In the 90s audiences got burned out on origin stories of the characters we grew up on. Personally I’ve also grown tired of “Oh no, I have super powers, how could this happen to me?”
Because I, too, grew up in a generation that was very familiar with super heroes and super powers and was ready to move away from the idea of supes as cast offs from humanity. Maybe it’s also because I came of age in a time where actually societal cast offs, such as those who were Neuroatypical, disabled, GLBTQ, or of a minority, were stepping up and normalizing their places in the world.
So Kamala, and her fan girl squee-filled team up with Wolverine and Loki and Lockjaw were right up my alley. I mean, who wouldn’t want to hunt gators in the sewers with Wolverine?
Episode one comes directly from a place of fandom. I think the cool kids call it stanning. That it opens with Kamala’s artistic animated youtube video about the Avengers is complete genius. In episode one Kamala just wants to go to the first Avengerscon (a very cool even, but also pretty far removed from the Comic Cons we hold today. This even is more of a throw back to how cons started, which is pretty neat.) She wants to win the Captain Marvel cosplay contest. But her parents don’t approve of her daydreaming and are putting a lot of pressure on her to grow up and get serious.
I’m over 40 now, but, honestly I still very much remember the pressure from high school to, as Kamala says to the school counsellor “Do I have to decide my whole future before lunch, or…” That pressure never completely goes away. And as a parent of a kid who just finished high school I’ve been trying to help her not feel like she needs to do the same. I really want to reach in to the tv and tell Kamala that no adult has their stuff figured out. We change plans all the time!
The pressure that Kamala’s mom puts on her, to fit in her mom’s idea of a good and respectful box, is hard to watch.
But along the way Kamala finds an old bracelet sent to her by her grandma, adds it to her costume and gets powers.
So let’s talk about that. I have a lot of mixed feelings about them changing Kamala’s power set. Stretchy powers are rough to portray in tv or movies. They always just seem ridiculous and cartoony. But in the comics Kamala’s powers came because she was an Inhuman and Black Bolt (the Inhuman King) released a bomb of Terrigen Mist on Earth. The Marvel screen universe did something similar in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I have wondered if they want to set Ms. Marvel away from the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Inhumans sections of the franchise which were…somewhat less successful. I do think this threatens to remove some of the themes that were going around in that time of the comics, themes that were common in the X-men franchise, like being different than other people and ostracized because of it.
However…honestly I grew up on dozens of “person finds an old charm in a closet or thrift store that gives them magic powers” stories (ahem. Teen Witch) so much so, that I regularly looked for weird thrift stuff myself. So, I mean, the magic bracelet sent to Kamala from her grandma is okay. I guess.
Kamala uses her new powers to save class queen Zoe Zimmer (who is the popular, blonde beauty antithesis to Kamala’s brown girl from Jersey City) and rushes home only to be caught by her mom and get another lecture about being good and normal. My heart aches. But Kamala is ready to change the world with her new powers as only a young kid can be.
This episode was lots of fun and a great way to kick off the new series.