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Previously on Ms. Marvel, Kamala was an unsure nerd and a huge Carol Danvers fangirl without powers. The season finale is called ‘No Normal’ and it ties in well to a message that Kamala repeats to Kamran and one that’s been well built up over the course of the season. Many of my issues with the show, like the Clandestines being an uninteresting set of antagonists, the sometimes fragmented nature of the storytelling, and the abbreviated nature of some bits are probably due to the unnecessary ‘six episode’ requirement most Disney+ Marvel shows have been doing.
With the exception of the Djinn though, our cast of characters have been uniformly well acted and handled — especially our Jersey City friends and family of Kamala. Even Agent Deever was good in her ‘racist without saying it out loud’ government official role, and a more compelling sort of villain, grounded in reality, than any of the weird Djinn stuff.
Perhaps something with the Veil and that other realm will come up in the Marvel movie because it’s definitely a plot thread that hasn’t been wrapped up. The only truly ‘wait, huh?’ moments in the finale I noticed was the abrupt way Zoe showed up out of nowhere after barely being in the show so far, which was another failure of pacing (and perhaps a victim of the six episode requirement) and Kamran fleeing into the hole Kamala smashed into the ground. Which I guess … just leads to the harbor eventually? Although that’s not really a major problem, just a little bit of an annoyance.
Thankfully we get the return of what’s worked in this show so far, which is the characters supporting and bouncing off each other. After all the drama with Kamala’s mom thus far, we get a really nice moment where Muneeba out loud insists that they trust her, in contrast to how she absolutely did not in the first episode. Her brother and his new wife continue to be great supporting players, even if Tyesha has been in general underserved by a lack of screentime.
The throughline here is Kamran and his out-of-control powers while the Damage Control agents are actively trying to track him and Kamala down. Our love triangle stuff gets resolved in a way that Kamala ends up almost kissing Kamran, then has to prevent him from killing people or getting killed by the DODC. Bruno is off to Caltech and her Red Dagger pal is in Karachi so both are quite a ways away.
The Home Alone styled little adventure in the high school was a fun little thing, if paced in a way that didn’t really make sense (how did they get all that ready so quickly?) but it really only served as a place for Kamala to self-actualize. After a build up over many episodes of Kamala getting the piecemeal bits of her costume, the finale shows us her mom being the one to actually make it for her in a touching scene — and it does look great.
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Kamala references her comic book powers more explicitly here by calling out ‘Embiggen’ (which The Simpsons didn’t technically invent but they did popularize it) and growing her magic arms to smash the big stun gun and protect the crowd from a flying vehicle. It’s a pretty effective contrast of her protecting people versus Kamran outright attacking and hurting people with his new powers.
After he worries about his fate and never being considered normal, Kamala drops the great underlying thematic point: ‘There is no normal, just us and what we do with what we’ve been given.’ It’s connective tissue to Kamala herself but also the normalizing nature of the show’s portrayal of the Muslim-American community — it’s all people and nobody’s really normal, and who would want to be anyway?
Now yes, the more evil Agent Deever is called back from her racist murder attempts by the (I guess) less evil Agent Cleary, but the dude’s still not a great guy — so that’s a mixed message that also feel another victim of that that rushed pace. Still, we also get the only ‘Marvel character name drop’ that actually felt earned, as Kamala’s father explains that they called her that because ‘Kamal’ means perfect in Arabic, but in Urdu it’s closer to … Marvel. I don’t think that was intentional by the comics creators but it really fits here.
And we get our post-credits moments of things to come — the big twist here is that Kamala is actually a mutant (there’s a bit of the X-Men animated series theme playing for a few seconds to drive it home) and that’s a fun little choice. The final setup is Carol Danvers herself showing up, switching places with Kamala and freaking out about it (glad they gave Brie Larson a more silly thing to do here after having to mostly give her flatter writing).
Ultimately the show worked pretty well and the finale was a good wrap up for the more important threads — the show definitely would’ve been better served as longer, and who wouldn’t have enjoyed Iman Vellani being delightful longer? I know I’m looking forward to her next adventure, even if maybe she could’ve had a little more this time around.
All episodes of Ms. Marvel are streaming on Disney Plus.
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