I’ve been trying to pin down what is sticking with me about Ms. Marvel, the 8 episode superhero debut for Kamala Kahn. It’s a superhero origin series, which makes sense for a new beginning, but the trouble is, the entire season acts as that origin story franchise debut.
This entire 4 hour season basically takes the place of a single 2.5 hour film. It covers the familiar teen hero origin beats, but with ample room for angst thrown in, and not much else.
To stretch over the course of an eight episode season of TV, the pacing slows down, and after so many hours of discovering and figuring out her new power, (spoiler) Kamala Kahn doesn’t even adopt the moniker ‘Ms. Marvel’ until the final minutes of the series. (Although the ongoing gag of Kamala hating the “Nightlight” nickname she’s initially tacked with makes it almost worth it.)
So maybe I was expecting more from eight episodes.
The trouble is that the padding that slows down the fun of a superhero flick, is often the family conflict, and the angst of being a teen whose parents don’t understand your world. Stuff I am usually all about! I hate to say “take out that family drama” because you do want characters to feel grounded, and one of the successes people love about this show is the relatable and authentic Muslim family content. But underlying that family tension is the repeated framing that Kamala doesn’t know herself. That her parents want her to focus on herself, not on her heroes and fandom. I’m not the right person to talk about the specific cultural identities at play within this narrative trope of parents demonstrating a cultural disconnect between what they understand about growing up, and what their children experience. But the link that’s made between Kamala understanding herself as a person, while coming into her identity as a hero, that is worth picking up.
This thread is an interesting undercurrent throughout the season. It situates the property as a TEEN hero in particular, an intersectional identity all its own. At times ignored, and often a little heavy-handed, the origin of Ms. Marvel is tied to Kamala’s identity as she figures out who she is. Not just as a hero, but as a teenager.
This, I think, is what is sticking with me. This metaphor of becoming. On the one hand it’s expected, and makes sense. The teen years is the time when we do a lot of figuring out who we are and what we love. As Kamala figures out who she is, she also has to figure out if she’s a hero. Is she good enough? What kind of person is she, really? What kind of superhero is she, though?
It’s an obvious metaphor, that merges the superhero genre with the teen drama pretty succinctly. But the way it’s set up here bugs me. Because Kamala is told she needs to give up the things she likes, in order to figure out who she is.
I’m sorry, what? You can’t be a whole human being who’s into fandom? You can’t know yourself if you like dressing up as superheroes? Sure, there could be an aspect of avoidance. You can’t avoid real life through fiction forever. You do have to choose something to do, someone to be, you know, after AvengerCon. And as I mentioned above, there is a cultural element of parents whose lived experiences just do not extend to an understanding of fandom or superheroes as worthy, or anything other than a distraction. But the urgency with which Kamala’s parents beg her to reject superheroes and focus on herself (while in secret she is focusing on becoming an actual superhero) (ironic!) is overwrought.
On the one hand, I appreciate the full-on adolescent coming of age stuff in this series. The ultimate showdown in episode 8 takes place in the high school! Iconic! The trouble is that to marry those themes with Ms. Marvel Origin Story is to drag out the “am I a good person” hyper family drama of it all, rather than get to the action and uncovering the mysteries of glowing jewellery. Or even to delve into the fascinating avenue that is, can I, a previously normal teen, handle the overwhelming responsibility of superheroics? The choice to accept that call on this hero’s journey isn’t an obvious one.
The biggest issue is that it slows the story down. It stretches out the time between Kamala montaging herself through lessons on how to use her powers, to actually successfully using her powers to save the day, by like, a lot! I actually started thinking to myself, during said action-packed high-school-situated conflict, finally, we’re getting somewhere in this story, only to realize I was watching the season finale.
So this leaves me cautiously hopeful for a season two. Maybe having gotten past the becoming stage we can actually have the fun teen action hero adventure we (Kamala) deserve(s).
