Artwork for the episode by Vik Kainth.
Muneeba agrees to let Kamala travel to Karachi to visit her Nani, despite "what you did to your brother's wedding".Tropes:
- Actor Allusion: During their fight at the train station, Red Dagger asks Kamala if every masked American has superpowers, to which she quips, "Well how do you know I'm not Canadian?" Iman Vellani is indeed Canadian in Real Life.
- Ancient Order of Protectors: The Red Dagger are dedicated to protecting their people from hidden threats like the Clandestine. They even have some Magitek in their hideout that they use to confirm that if the Clandestine get their hands on the bangle, they'll destroy the Earth in their bid to return home.
- And Starring: "With Aramis Knight". Farhan Akhtar also serves as a Special Guest Star in this episode.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Muneeba reconnects with both her mother and her daughter in separate scenes.
- Badass Normal: Kareem and especially Waleed show themselves to be more than capable of holding their own against the superpowered Djinns. Waleed and Kareem each manage to kill one of them.
- Blatant Lies: Kamala repeatedly insists that her winged sloth is "a napping pillow".
- Call-Back: To the first episode, where Kamala failed her driving exam, when she accidentally accelerates a truck after putting it in reverse.
- Car Fu: Kamala drops one of the Djinn with a truck.
- Cardboard Prison: The Clandestine don't last longer than five minutes of screentime in the D.O.D.C.'s Supermax Security Prison, breaking out as easily as they were put in there.
- Cliffhanger: The episode ends with Kamala lost in the train station. In 1947.
- Continuity Nod: The Red Daggers are an Ancient Order of Protectors with knowledge of how the Earth coexists with many other planes of reality, much like the Sorcerers of Kamar-Taj.
- Culture Clash: Kamala started her first whole day in Pakistan by getting herself and her cousins barred from entering a restaurant because she was wearing jeans.
- Discouraging Concealment: The Red Daggers' hideout is hidden in the back of a run-down old kitchen.Kamala: [looking around the kitchen] Are you gonna murder me? Because I don't wanna be the subject of a true-crime doc right now.
- Driving Stick: During the chase through Karachi, Kamala jumps behind the wheel of a van only to find it's right-hand drive and a stick shift, and she's been learning in a left-hand drive automatic. She struggles to work out how the gear change works and briefly goes into reverse. Again.
- Dropping the Bombshell: When Kamala starts to ask Sana about the Djinn, Sana cuts right to the point, saving Kamala some awkward dancing around the topic. "[Are you a] Djinn? Yes. At least that's how my father explained it to me." Leads to a bit of Lampshading on Kamala's part.Kamala: How are you so casual about this?!
- Dwindling Party: Two of the Noori get dropped by knives (though whether they're dead or just injured isn't clear).
- Easily Forgiven: Downplayed. Muneeba isn't exactly happy with Kamala after the events of the previous episodes, but beyond the beginning, it's never alluded to or mentioned again.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The other Clandestine members are noticeably shocked by Najma's decision to abandon Kamran.
- Evolving Credits: The series' trademark Creative Closing Credits has Karachi as the subject of scenery in place of Jersey City, to reflect the change in setting.
- Flat-Earth Atheist: A downplayed example with Muneeba, who left Pakistan because she was tired of being the girl with the weird mother who believed she was descended from Djinn. Thor and the others have only started showing up recently, and clearly people like Muneeba haven't made the connection with Sufficiently Advanced Aliens to accept that maybe her mother was telling the truth. Lampshaded by Waleed, who flatly says that if Thor had come to Earth in the Himalayas instead of the Nordic countries, he would have been considered a Djinn.
- Foreign Queasine: Kamala has trouble eating authentically spicy Pakistani and Chinese food. She's surprised by how red the hot and sour soup is.Kareem: Why? Did America find a way to whitewash Chinese food, too?
- Foreshadowing: At the beginning of the episode, Sana talks to Kamala about her parents, going into detail about how much of an effect the Partition had on her life growing up. Kamala somehow ends up back in Karachi Station in the 1940s by the episode's end.
- Grounded Forever: Although Muneeba is willing to be more amicable to Kamala on their visit to Sana, she also makes it clear that she's still grounded for a very long time for ruining Aamir's wedding.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: Five beings with superpowers have only two guards assigned to them.
- Heroic Sacrifice: While Waleed is locked in combat with Najma on a balcony, he sees Kareem and Kamala being chased into the alley below by Saleem. He kills Saleem with two of his throwing daggers, leaving himself open to a fatal attack by Najma.
- Highly-Visible Ninja: Kareem wears a red scarf over the lower half of his face and has a Red Dagger emblem on his left arm.
- Hot Blade: The Clandestine weapons are shown to melt right through a lock as if they were superheated, despite not appearing to be so.
- I Always Wanted to Say That: Kareem, shortly after his initial fight with Kamala, just as the police are on their way:Kareem: Come with me if you want to live. Just kidding, I always wanted to say that. But seriously, we should go. There's someone you need to meet.
- I Have No Son!: Najma leaves Kamran behind when the Clandestine break out of prison, coldly saying that he made his choice.
- In the Back: How Najma kills Waleed. Kareem also kills Aadam this way.
- Insistent Terminology: Kamala's plushy winged sloth is not a stuffed animal! It's a napping pillow!
- Layered World: How Waleed describes the Noor dimension, separated by a veil of Noor energy, coexisting with a lot of other planes along with Earth that are not visible to each other. They have diagrams to overlay a map of Noor with Earth, as well as a presentation on how breaking the veil of Noor that separates the planes would destroy the Earth.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Happens during Kamala and Kareem's initial confrontation.Kareem: Do all masked Americans have superpowers?
Kamala: [sarcastically] Well, how do you know I'm not Canadian? note - Let's You and Him Fight: Kamala and Kareem, both of them superheroes, mistake each other for the enemy because of the Bangle and its Noor energy, and this leads to a brief skirmish before they realize they are on the same side.
- Mama Bear: Zig-zagged; Najima is outraged when a DODC agent tasers Kamran and initiates their breakout, but she also coldly tells the Clandestine to leave him behind for betraying them after they escape, then she stops for one last anguished look before leaving him for good.
- Meaningful Background Event: One of Sana's paintings is of a purple landscape with dark figures, like the realm Kamala briefly visited in "Generation Why". The Red Daggers' diagram of the Noor dimension also depicts the same thing.
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: What Waleed's role in the episode amounted to. He explains to Kamala the purpose of the Red Dagger mantle and goes into more detail about the Noor dimension being her main source of power, among other things. Too bad for him that he gets killed in the latter half of the episode.
- Nice Guy: Waleed and Kareem are both very friendly toward Kamala. Waleed is quick to take her under his wing and educate her about the nature of Noor and the Clandestine. While Kareem is much more of a Deadpan Snarker, he and Kamala get on well and he even invites her to come hang out with him and his friends.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Kamala may have saved everyone from the Clandestine last episode, but due to everyone being unaware of them, she ends up being grounded for pulling the fire alarm and "ruining her brother's wedding".
- Oh, Crap!: Kamala is clearly seconds away from a complete freakout at the end when she realizes she's time-traveled to the Partition.
- Pop-Cultured Badass: Kareem turns out to be this, making references to both Terminator and Donkey Kong during his duel with Kamala.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Kareem rather quickly realizes that Kamala isn't a Djinn, but one of their descendants, and he and Waleed welcome her into their hideout and educate her about the Clandestine and the Noor.
- Scenery Porn: The episode is basically a visual tour of the city of Karachi, from the old immediately post-Partition district, to the modern area near Jinnah International Airport. Special note goes to the beautiful, peaceful view from Sanu's balcony, of buildings festooned with native greenery and dozens of kites floating in the air.
- Shout-Out:
- Kareem convinces Kamala to come with him by saying "Come with me if you want to live", and then sheepishly admits he just always wanted to say that.
- Kamala and Kareem's Snark-to-Snark Combat culminates in Kamala asking if Kareem copied his jumping technique from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Kareem shooting back that Kamala got hers from Donkey Kong.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: Kamala and Kareem get into it immediately and don't ever really let up.
- Stranger in a Familiar Land: As much as she feels like an outsider in Jersey City because she's the child of Pakistani immigrants, Kamala feels just as foreign back in Karachi, dressing too Jersey and not getting the money, language, or spicy food.
- Totally Not a Werewolf: Waleed assures Kamala that the people of the Noor Dimension aren't actually the Djinn of pre-Islamic and Islamic folklore, but were mistaken for them by the first humans they encountered and the name stuck. He points out that if an Asgardian like Thor had shown up in the Himalayas he also would've been mistaken for a Djinn.
- Travelling at the Speed of Plot: The Clandestine break out of prison at night, then get to Karachi by the next afternoon. Technically, they did have enough time (flight time from New Jersey to Karachi is around 15 to 16 hours), but Karachi is nine hours ahead of New Jersey, so even if they'd left as soon as they could after escaping, the timing is a tad wonky unless they had some other means of making the trip.
- Wham Episode: As is tradition for the fourth episode of Marvel Studios' shows on Disney+, there are a few bombshells to be had.
- The Clandestines' real goal is to tear down the Veil that separates the Noor dimension from Earth, as without it, Kamala would have an X-5 Level catastrophe to deal with.
- The episode ends with Kamala somehow being sent back in time to the Partition, the very event that was alluded to throughout the series and serves as a source of Generational Trauma for the Khan family.
- Written-In Absence: Bruno and Nakia, while seen in the Previously on… segment in the show, are absent in this episode, due to them both being in America and the episode taking place in Pakistan. Nakia is also shown to be ignoring Kamala's texts.
- You Are Grounded!: It is mentioned by Muneeba that Kamala is grounded indefinitely after pulling the fire alarm at her brother's wedding in the previous episode.
