Ms. Marvel Finale: Has the Show Lost its Identity?

Ms. Marvel is the latest MCU series to hit Disney+ and has been loved by many — but has the series lost its identity along the way? Let’s discuss.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR MS. MARVEL

Over the past six weeks, MCU fans have been treated weekly to a delightful entry into the franchise that explores an underrepresented culture while telling a joyful and delightful coming-of-age story of a young girl struggling to find her identity as she grows up amidst family, religious and cultural expectations. We can all relate to this phase of life when we feel lost and clueless about our future and it feels like the weight of the world is on our shoulders, and yet it is most encouraging to watch young Kamala Khan tread her own path and becoming her own person and her own superhero.

Inspired by real life characters in her world, Kamala is essentially of MCU fans given life through the screen, who throughout a lot of their lives have been inspired by the same superheroes Kamala has, be it through the screen or the comic book pages.

Ms. Marvel has felt like a breath of fresh air amidst the MCU movies and shows and a beam of sunshine after the dark, emotionally heavy Moon Knight, helped immensely by the limitlessly charming Iman Vellani in her debut performance and by the focus on family dynamics, this show has presented a unique style within the MCU that mirrors the jovial direction of John Hughes with the energy of Scott Pilgrim vs The World resulting in a uniquely dynamic and vibrant entry into the franchise that explores Kamala’s formative years in an intimate manner, where its cultural identity is singular to this one show that domestic problems that we can all relate to come to life, even if within a brand new culture so many are unfamiliar with.

This balance of distinct and familiar is what has elevated Ms. Marvel as a show: maybe we’re unfamiliar with some cultural or religious customs illustrated in Kamala’s story, but we have all argued with our parents about going to a convention, or sneaked out of the house, we’ve all felt somewhat lost and like we couldn’t talk to our parents because they’d be angry or sad, we have in fact at some point, made our parents angry our sad with our words or actions.

It’s only natural a story like this within the MCU would grow from there and become bigger as Kamala struggles to balance her family life and her studies with the newfound powers that connect to her family history and the tragedy that has haunted them from generations, revealing a hidden truth about Kamala’s true origins and how she’s not entirely human. The show has found compelling ways week-to-week of converging the two sides of Kamala’s story as she becomes her own hero displaying heroism in truly unique ways to her character, like appealing to the good in Najma, or helping her grandmother as a child to find her way back to her father.

Kamala begins to find who she really is, not only through the truth behind the bangle from her great-grandmother Aisha, a Djinn who hails from this parallel dimension imbuing Kamala’s very DNA with powers that can be harnessed with the bangle but also through Kamala’s love life, as she begins to experience first love in her teen years and incidentally develops a crush for Kamran who, turns out, is the son of Aisha’s enemy, Najma, a fellow Djinn who has been chasing the bangle since partition days to get back home and is the cause for Aisha’s disappearance, an even that has caused great sorrow to Kamala’s grandmother who found herself lost but with the help of the power within her, the bangle and Kamala (as we found out in Episode 5).

Yet, now we find ourselves before episode 6, the grand finale of the series, and many of these questions not only feel unanswered, it’s like the show has completely dropped any interest in developing these ideas and their involvement in the story, doing away with them in an abrupt an rushed fashion in the last fifteen minutes of episode 5.

It’s a jarring change of pace for this story, knowing from the beginning that we only have six episodes to tell a story, and yet a fifth of it is spending recapping how Aisha and her husband came together to give birth to Kamala’s grandmother. It’s a beautiful history lesson with a tender love story that the heart of it, illustrating issues of religious intolerance and racism amongst countrymen amidst the Partition. But it feels the mid-point of a 10-to-12-episode series, not the penultimate episode where it disrupts the pacing of the story so much it’s as if it belongs on a different show.

The most egregious shift however is how the last 15 minutes of episode feel like an entire episode of the show has been crammed into a quarter of one, a crucial one at that, where so many plot threads feel unresolved, so many elements that have come to define the show’s identity as well as its characters, their dynamic and struggles are now simply gone leaving that same show stripped of all its distinct conflicts and emotions, making the road to this finale seem directionless and unsatisfying.

Here are the unanswered questions and threads dropped by Ms. Marvel before its finale:

How is it possible that it has always been Kamala who goes back in time and saves her grandmother from being lost?

This first big question isn’t necessarily something that immediately affects the series, but it fundamentally affects her presence in the MCU, as this reveal completely contradicts the time travel rules of the MCU established in Endgame, where going back in time does NOT change the past, it become a new timeline, but now Ms. Marvel is using the time-travel logic that at one point the show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. used, therefore confirming that show did not take place in the MCU.

It’s a massive oversight in the connective tissue that ties this show to the broad scope of the cinematic universe it takes place in. But frustratingly so, this is not the only big question raised by Episode 5.

How did the veil open?

This is probably the biggest question in regards to the whole writing of the Clandestines as the series antagonists and their mission to get back home. We are one episode away from the series (or at least the season) ending and yet we know next to nothing about the Noor Dimension or its inhabitants.

These key plot threads for a functional narrative feel barely developed, we know the veil is a doorway to a parallel dimension, we also understand since Episode 4 that opening it can tear the fabric of reality making the Noor dimension bleed into ours, but we have no understanding of how it works, why or how it opened. All this information is delivered thanks to the Red Daggers who right now feel absolutely pointless in the show apart from serving to deliver this one key scene of exposition.

Neither of these issues are helped by the fact that the bangle is barely developed itself, remaining for the most part a mystery with no clear power set, proper name, or origin story. We understand it as a conduit for Kamala’s power, but beyond that it’s barely been explored in terms of functionality, it’s emotionally effective within the narrative of the show to represent the family connection and Kamala’s ties to the Noor, but it doesn’t function with a purpose beyond that.

How clueless are Clandestines about the Veil and the Noor?

The Clandestines have been on Earth for decades at this point, and they seem very dead-set on getting the bangle to open the veil, seemingly knowing that’s the only instrument that can get them back home. That being so, how come they also don’t know it could kill them? We as an audience are thrust into a situation where we do not understand the rules or logic of this evil parallels dimension, so what should’ve been a moment of shock ends up just being one of confusion, because the show failed to establish a narrative lie to shock the audience with once the truth ended up being revealed.

Furthermore, how does Najma suddenly know how to close it one second after being shocked after her friends perishes?

There was no change, nothing new was learned between her friend’s death and her own, and it leads to a baffling character change from Najma where she suddenly and without reason turns to good after decades of relentlessly dedicating herself to hunt down the key to making her way home, killing an innocent man and even her best friend in the process.

It’s even more baffling how moments before her demise, Najma also seems to suddenly know that whispering her son’s name will transfer her powers onto him, or at least that’s what it looks like. Kamran has powers in the comics, visually similar to the translucent glow on him once his mother’s powers are transferred to him, but surely there could and should be a better way to get him his powers. The big problem with this however is that… the antagonists, or at least what the show has setup as the antagonists are now gone, leaving the story feeling unfinished.

The only threat left is Damage Control, who are more of a background presence throughout the show and feeling rather out of their depth when it comes to posing a real threat to Kamala, Besides, we have not even seen them since episode 3, apart from the one shot where they blow up Bruno’s house. Bear in mind, this is supposedly a lawful government agency that just blew up a civilian’s home because one inmate was inside.

It’s come to the point where it feels like a story that had great pieces in place to converge and pay-off, narratively and thematically tying together the personal and superhero life of a young girl as she learns the ropes of being a hero, but also being a daughter, being a friend and being young. Yet now, one episode away from the end, all those pieces were thrown away, leaving this story utterly lost and directionless, and its characters and themes along with it.

For all we know the finale can somehow, miraculously, save the series, but it’s got a massively steep hill to climb, given all the good work done throughout four episodes has just been thrown away, leaving the future of Ms. Marvel’s origin up in the air, lost without a purpose.

Ms. Marvel started as an intimate coming-of-age tale about a young girl learning about her past, her family, about her place in the world and coming into her own but suddenly has shockingly lost the plot, making its audience confused and with no understanding of what is happening or why its pieces are falling into place the way they are, leaving us as lost as Kamala herself in her formative years.

Next: Here’s Why The Future Of The MCU Is Bright

About Ms. Marvel

Marvel Studios’ “Ms. Marvel” is a new, original series that introduces Kamala Khan, a Muslim American teenager growing up in Jersey City. An avid gamer and a voracious fan-fiction scribe, Kamala is a Super Hero megafan with an oversized imagination—particularly when it comes to Captain Marvel. Yet Kamala feels like she doesn’t fit in at school and sometimes even at home—that is, until she gets superpowers like the heroes she’s always looked up to. Life gets better with superpowers, right?

MS. MARVEL is streaming now on Disney+.