Series / Ms. Marvel (2022)

Spoilers for all Marvel Cinematic Universe works preceding this one will be left unmarked.

The future is in her hands.

"It's not really the brown girls from Jersey City who save the world."

— Kamala Khan

Ms. Marvel is a Superhero series developed by Bisha K. Ali (Loki) for Disney+. It is the 35th overall entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the twelfth installment of Phase Four, and the seventh series produced by Marvel Studios. It is the second Disney+ series after Moon Knight not to be based on a previously established MCU character. The series is directed by Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, and Meera Menon.

The series centers on Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), an Ordinary High-School Student and major fangirl of the Avengers… especially Carol Danvers, a.k.a. Captain Marvel. Her life changes forever when she gets strange powers of her own.

Aramis Knight, Matthew Lintz, Saagar Shaikh, Rish Shah, Zenobia Shroff, and Mohan Kapur also star. The series premiered on Disney+ June 8, 2022. Following the season, Kamala joined Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) in The Marvels in 2023.

Previews: Official Trailer 1

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Ms. Marvel provides examples of:

• Accidental Athlete: Kamala does not do well in gym class, but even in the beginning of her superhero training she was showing her potential.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Kamran shows up in episode 2, as Kamala is just learning to use her powers. In the comics, he showed up much later.
• Adaptational Heroism: In the third episode, we see that while Kamran was a villain in the comics, he is on Kamala's side here. He is at least willing to try and persuade her to help the Djinn, but switches sides when they show their true colors.
• Adaptational Origin Connection:
  • Downplayed. While the comics feature Zoe getting saved by Kamala like in the show, it's after she's knocked off of a dock by her drunk boyfriend. In the show, Kamala saves Zoe from falling after getting hit and lifted off the ground by a giant replica of Thor's hammer.
  • Inverted with Kamran, as in the comics he's introduced as Kamala's distant cousin. Here that connection isn't clearly shared, but episode three reveals he, like Kamala, is descended from exiles from the dimension of Noor. Not necessarily family, not necessarily not.
  • In the comics, the Destine family of ClanDestine have no connection to Kamala Khan or the Inhumans; however, the change is that Kamala is now descended from a Djinn, a.k.a. Genie, like the original Destine family, and all the Destines' counterparts here are now full-blooded Djinn.
• Adaptational Superpower Change:
  • In the comics, Kamala only has the power to change the size and shape of her body, along with shapeshifting which she rarely uses. In the show, she has the power to create crystalline constructs, which she's shown using in a manner similar to her elongated limbs from the comics.
  • In the comics, the Destine family have individual powers. Here, the Clandestines all have Super-Strength and some degree of invulnerability.
• Adaptational Villainy: Mildly downplayed. The Destine family were neutral or good in the ClanDestine comics (with one exception), but the inverse seems to be true in this series. Only mildly downplayed because their ultimate goal is sympathetic (though we don't know why they were exiled), and it's hinted they are on a schedule.
• Adaptation Species Change: Ms. Marvel's powers stem from Inhuman genetics in the comic books. Here, it's all but stated that she's actually a Mutant in the sixth episode, with it being confirmed out-of-universe that that was the case.
• Adapted Out: Josh Richardson, Zoe's ex-boyfriend in the comic and another bully/eventual supervillain towards Kamala, isn't present for the origins of the character in the show. His asshole move of tricking Kamala into drinking vodka and orange juice is also given to a random partygoer. Time will tell if he shows up later on, however.
• Affectionate Nickname: Kamala tends to call Nakia "Naks" for short. Nakia calls her KK.
• All Is Well That Ends Well: Like most in the superhero genre, Kamala ends up in multiple near-lethal situations, and just moves on.
• All Muslims Are Arab: Averted, as this series goes out of its way to present the racial diversity of Muslims in the United States more realistically. Not only is the title character and her family of Pakistani heritage, but the series also features a Black American convert (or rather, revert) as a supporting character—Kamala's new sister-in-law—and both Black and White American Muslim reverts as background characters.
• All Part of the Show: When Kamala's powers manifest at AvengerCon, the audience thinks they are part of her cosplay and cheers her on. Even after she accidentally sets off a catastrophe, most of them are still partying.
• Alpha Bitch: Zoe Zimmer, much like in the comics. In the cinematic trailer, she's shown mispronouncing Kamala's name and snidely mocking her Avengers T-shirt. Just to hammer the point home, a pair of neon devil horns is doodled over her head in this scene. Though actually subverted in the series proper. While she's still dismissive of Kamala and not all too friendly with her, she isn't outright antagonistic towards her either. By the end they end up becoming friends.
• Arc Words:
  • "What you seek is seeking you."
  • "Good isn't a thing you are, it's a thing you do."
• Art Shift: The Marvel Studios logo for the first trailer is stylized as though it were a sketchbook drawing. The opening title of the episodes is similarly shown as a montage of sketches.
• Artistic License – History: While the show does do a great job educating viewers about the Partition of India, its lasting impact and the great pain it caused (without getting into the more disturbing details), it lays full blame for it on the British. In reality, the partition itself came at the request of The Muslim Brotherhood. The Hindus simply wanted independence, while the British were tired of colonialism in general and just wanted to go home (hence why everything was so rushed), but the Muslims feared persecution from a Hindu Majority and thus wanted their own nation.
• Ascended Fangirl: Kamala is absolutely bananas over the Avengers: drawing fan art, creating YouTube videos, cosplaying as her idol, Captain Marvel, and daydreaming of becoming a superhero. Then she gets powers and becomes a superhero for real, finding out in the process that it's a lot harder than she imagined.
• Beta Outfit: She spends 5 out of 6 episodes not wearing her comics-accurate costume. She instead either wears her Captain Marvel cosplay or just normal clothes plus the mask Bruno made for her.
• Bigot with a Badge: Referenced by Cleary, who's clearly uncomfortable with his partner's more direct questioning of Zoe, asking specifically about racial characteristics, then follows up by saying that mosques are already under surveillance.
  Cleary: Let's do the tri-state sweep. Search every temple, community center, and ... [sigh] and mosque. Just be respectful. The FBI is already surveilling them, you know that.
• Bland-Name Product: Circle Q resembles Circle K, a grocery store chain, right down to the red-and-white color scheme.
• Bonding Through Shared Earbuds: In the first episode, Kamala has to deal with two girls at school (implied to be a couple) listening to music through wireless ear-bud phones while standing right in front of her locker. In the second episode, a more confident Kamala politely asks them to move aside.
  Kamala: Y'know what I love about airpods is that you don't actually have to stand that close to each other. Love you guys, rooting for you, favorite couple, yeah.
• Bookends:
  • The first episode has Muneeba insisting she doesn't trust Kamala and making her a cheesy Hulk costume. The sixth has Muneeba insisting that she and Yusuf can trust Kamala, and making her her official costume as Ms. Marvel.
  • In the first episode, Kamala says to Bruno, "It's not really the brown girls from Jersey City who save the world." Toward the end of the sixth episode, Yusuf reminds her that she saved Kamran and paraphrasing the Talmud, "If you save one life, well, you've saved the world."
• Bullying a Dragon: When the Clandestines are being escorted to their cells, the guards decide it is a good idea to start using excessive force. Needless to say, the tables are quickly turned.
• Cape Busters: Damage Control reappears as one of the primary antagonists of this series, and they seem to have gotten worse than how they were depicted in No Way Home. In particular, Agent Cleary returns, and still doesn't have any problem with interrogating teenagers. His partner Agent Deever is even worse, casually trying to racially profile "Night Light" (even mockingly asking if she's "supposed to say Latinx now") which Cleary is visibly uncomfortable with. She then waltzes right into the mosque without a search warrant and expects to be given answers. And if that wasn't enough, the Clandestines don't even last longer than five minutes in their (supposedly) max-security prison before they easily escape to Karachi in the fourth episode, also serving as a show of their incompetence.
• Cassandra Truth: Sana has told Muneeba numerous times that they're descendants of magical beings from another dimension, but she didn't believe her and was embarrassed that her mother had her head in the clouds and was :using fantastical tales in an attempt to justify Aisha abandoning her family during Partition, not knowing that Aisha was actually murdered.
• The Chooser of the One: After she first gains powers, Kamala wonders if the bracelet is this or if it was some sort of Sentient Phlebotinum that could have chosen anyone else.
• Citywide Evacuation: During the Partition of India, we see the masses fleeing.
• Civvie Spandex: Kamala's first costume is a Captain Marvel helmet and branded jacket. Promotional material shows that her "official" costume includes regular sneakers.
• Composite Character: The season finale stinger seems to set Kamala up as one to Rick Jones, who for a time was bonded to Mar-Vell, with one being trapped in the Negative Zone while the other was not. The two were able to switch places with the Nega-Bands, which implies that Kamala's bangle is one of those bands.
• Continuity Nod: Damage Control's Wave Motion Guns look like downsized models of Coulson's Destroyer gun from The Avengers.
• Cool Car: Kamran's car is tricked out, sleek on the outside, decked out with running lights on the inside.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: Early in the show, Kamala's physical awkwardness as a teen girl with an overactive imagination is emphasized. She gets hit in the head with a ball in gym (multiple times), crashes her car during a driving exam because she had it in reverse, falls over while getting dressed in a hurry, bumps into people at school, and sets off Disaster Dominoes at AvengerCon. None of it is intentional, and part of it is that her head is so full of daydreams that she dramatically overestimates her capabilities in reality. Her plan to acrobatically leap out of her bedroom window and vault from a tree branch is slightly less magnificent when she actually tries it.
• Dark and Troubled Past: The Partition of India after World War II is first brought up during the dinner with Tyesha in the second episode and is a major event in the Kahn family's past. It was a horrible time, with hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions, dying to religious and ethnic violence as refugees tried to cross the new borders in both directions. In keeping with the lighter and fluffier tone this series is trying to set, the violence is only hinted at, but Aamir lampshades it. Muneeba in particular is hit hard by this because her grandmother Aisha did something so infamous and unacceptable during the Partition that the Illumin-Aunties gossip about her and she refuses to talk about her.
  Aamir: Every Pakistani family has a Partition Story, and none of them are good.
• Double-Meaning Title: Ms. Marvel talks about the fan girl who worships Captain Marvel, and the fact that this story is about her as her name in Urdu means "Marvel" as Kamala is a marvel after her parents lost nearly all hope of birthing a daughter.
• Easter Egg: Just like Moon Knight, some episodes contain a hidden QR code that will take you to a full, free-to-read Ms. Marvel comic on the Marvel website.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Kamala and Nakia shamelessly devour Kamran during his Shirtless Scene.
  Both: Mash'Allah.
  Miguel: What does that mean?
  Nakia: DAMN.
  Bruno: God has willed it.^note It's Arabic, and it means a general appreciation for a person or event, basically "this is the sort of thing Allah would like". And Allah would definitely like a nice Shirtless Scene.
• Epic Fail: Kamala's driving test begins and ends with her speeding in reverse into the instructor's car behind her.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Sure, Zoe is pretty insensitive and a bit of a bully at times, however that doesn't mean she's willing to out the identity of her rescuer to two clearly skeevy government agents. In the final episode, she ends up helping Kamala as a thanks for saving her from the fall in AvengerCon and uploads a video to get the community out to protect Kamala from Damage Control.
  • Agent Cleary, who has previously been shown to have no qualms about using dirty tactics to elicit confessions from suspects, grows silently disturbed when his partner, Agent Deever, uses racial profiling to try and evoke a confession. Later, when he finds out that she's attacking a school to get at a pair of suspects, he firmly orders her to stand down. When she ignores him and doubles down on the raid, which also deals a massive blow to Damage Control's PR, he tells her in no uncertain terms that she is out of a job.
• Evil Brit: Played for Drama. Kamala's family was terrorized by British Imperialists during and before the Partition, with their local Indian partisans assisting them.
• Fanfic: Kamala writes superhero fan-fiction and is introduced as doing so. However, in a change from the comic, she's also shown editing, drawing, and voice-acting for videos she publishes online.
• Foreshadowing: The show drops multiple hints about Kamala's hidden family history that the show's creator promised would be the focus of the series.
  • In the first episode, it's the box of bangles that Muneeba's mother sends to Kamala, one of which clearly upsets Muneeba, and which turns out to be Kamala's power-unlocking bracelet.
  • Also in the first episode, the falafel cart guy mentions that corporate guys are buying up the whole neighborhood, which could be a simple Mythology Gag to the HYDRA arc in the comics or a set-up for the second season.
  • In the second, it's the fact that her grandmother made it back onto the train, despite her injured father being unable to keep up with her, having "followed a trail of stars".
  • Also in the second, Kamran's mother says she's wanted to meet Kamala for a long time, despite her powers only having awakened a few days previous, suggesting he really is a distant cousin, like in the comics.
  • In the first episode, Aamir and Yusuf both make offhand references to the Djinn, which at first glance looks like a reference to Islamic mythology. In the third episode, we learn that Kamala is a Djinn-human hybrid through her mother's side of the family, and her great-grandmother was one of the Clandestine, a group of exiled Djinn seeking a way to return home.
  • Agent Deever's egregious racism when tracking down the "enhanced individual", while sadly Truth in Television for a law enforcement officer when dealing with a case involving a person of color, is very similar to the government's racism in the comics towards mutants. Bruno reveals after looking at Kamala's genes that she has "a mutation".
• Gadgeteer Genius: Bruno has a laboratory atop the Circle Q shop where he works. In this lab, he builds voice-activated devices, including an Amazon Echo knock-off that he calls "Zuzu". He also makes Kamala a pair of LED gloves for her cosplay.
• The Generation Gap: One the central themes in the show. Kamala rebels against Muneeba's overprotection, with Muneeba not trusting Kamala to be on her own. Muneeba herself has issues with her mother, Sana, as Muneeba rebelled against Sana's parenting and ran away to America for a better life. Add in Sana's mom, Aisha mysteriously vanishing during Sana's youth, and you get 8 continuous decades of Mother/Daughter relationship problems!
• Generational Saga: The series centers on Kamala obtaining powers from a bangle that belonged to her grandmother and seeking knowledge about her ancestors that was hidden by her mother.
• Generational Trauma: Back during the Partition of India, Aisha became separated from her family in the chaos of thousands of future Pakistani citizens scrambling to find space on the trains. Her daughter Sana almost became lost as well, but was led back to her father by a mysterious "trail of stars". Sana spent the next seven decades obsessively trying to prove that the trail of stars actually existed, and consequently alienated her own daughter, Muneeba, who viewed her as a flighty and unreliable parent. Eventually, Muneeba and her husband Yusuf, seeking a better life for themselves and their newborn son Aamir, left for America, where they eventually had a second child, Kamala. In the present, Muneeba's disdain for the supernatural puts her at odds with the now-teenage Kamala, who has grown up in a world of superheroes, but her guilt about abandoning her mother has filled her with a fear that Kamala will eventually abandon her, causing her to try and stop Kamala from becoming more independent.
• Good Is Not Nice: The Red Daggers protect Pakistan from supernatural threats but if Kareem is any indication, they also have several outstanding warrants.
• Grounded Forever: Kamala is grounded by her parents for ruining Aamir's wedding by pulling the fire alarm. Naturally, Kamala can't explain that she did this to save all the guests from the ClanDestine. Though since her family is much warmer to her after learning that she's "Night Light", it's implied they've figured out why she did it, have forgiven her for it, and removed this punishment.
  Muneeba: You'll be serving out your sentence for years.
• Hard Light: Kamala has the power to conjure up glowing constructs that behave like solid matter. She even refers to her constructs as "hard-light". Uncommonly, it is a plot point that these constructs have mass because Kamala has to consider related problems like weight, balance and anchoring when making them.
• Heroic Lineage: Muneeba's reaction to the bangle that gives Kamala her powers and her constant references to dreamers in her family during the first episode strongly imply someone in the family was gifted. The second episode tells us that it was Kamala's great-grandmother, Aisha, who disappeared during the Partition, having saved her daughter with a "trail of stars" and left her family with an invoked Old Shame that Muneeba refuses to talk about.
• Holding Hands: Kamran takes Kamala's hand while they're hiding from Aamir at the restaurant and again in the school while hiding from DCOD agents.
• Honorary Uncle: Not the True Companions, this instead reflects the common practice in many cultures of referring to older people as "uncle" or "aunt", or if they're older, as "grandfather" or "grandmother", as a sign of respect. Hence everyone at the mosque are uncles and aunties. Even the Illumin-Aunties.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Kamala's Training Montage starts with a lot of Epic Fail before she starts to get the hang of her powers. Even so, at the end of the episode, where she saves a boy from falling to his death, she still doesn't know how her powers work so it almost goes horribly wrong.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every episode is named after a collected edition of Kamala Khan comics, with the exception of "Seeing Red", which comes from a Marvel's Voices issue featuring Kamala.
• Imagine Spot: When explaining her plan to sneak out to AvengerCon to Bruno, Kamala imagines herself in a more impressive Captain Marvel costume, has her and Bruno pull off dangerous bike stunts with ease and has it end with winning the costume contest. Another fantasy sequence briefly seen in the trailer has her Kamran "seductively" biting on a large rose while looking at her.
• Improbable Falling Save: Double Subverted in "Crushed". When a young boy falls out of a tower, Kamala uses her powers to hold him up until she can get in position underneath him. He slips, and she tries to catch him, only for his weight and momentum to make her fall too. She manages to catch them both with her powers before they hit the ground.
• Insult Backfire:
  • Parental admonishment backfire.
    Muneeba: Do you want to be good, like we raised you to be? Or do you want to be this cosmic head in the clouds person?
    Kamala: [after Muneeba leaves and she looks at her glowing bracelet, smirking] ... Cosmic.
  • Muneeba has another instance, by saying that the mother of "Night Light" should be ashamed of herself. Little does Muneeba know that she is that Mother!
• Joisey: As Kamala says, she's a "brown girl from Jersey City." The region's significant South Asian and Muslim populations are shown through Kamala, her family, and friends, including a scene of her praying among a large group in the mosque.
• Jumped at the Call: While initially freaked out, Kamala is excited at the prospect of having powers like her hero, Captain Marvel.
• Lighter and Softer: Than most MCU fare, being aimed at teen girls. This is doubly true coming as it does on the heels of Darker and Edgier horror film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the Psychological Horror series Moon Knight.
• Logo Joke:
  • The Marvel Studios logo sequence for the first episode ends with the logo performing an Art Shift to match the hand-drawn art style Kamala uses for her Fanfic at the beginning of the series.
  • While not a company logo itself, the Ms. Marvel logo and accompanying background(s) in the show's title sequence change every episode. Given how there are a lot of these variations (approximately around 12 per episode), the title sequence effectively takes the trope up to eleven.
  • The Marvel Studios logo for Episode 5 suddenly shifts to something resembling an old newsreel, befitting the fact that most of the episode takes place during the Partition.
• Medium Blending: The first trailer includes comic-book-style doodles and speech bubbles over the live-action scenes up until Kamala gains her powers.
• Mind Screw: When Kamala first dons the bracelet, she takes a brief trip to Another Dimension (apparently only in her mind, as neither Bruno nor anyone else notices) full of glowing purple light and lots and lots of dark figures with glowing eyes. It's never mentioned again in the episode and no explanation is offered, fueling tons of fan speculation.
• Mood Whiplash: Invoked by Cleary during his interrogation of Zoe, getting her to warm up to him by pretending to be a fan, bonding with her, and then accusing Kamala of trying to kill her, then swerving into accusing her and Kamala of faking it.
• Musical Nod: In the season 1 finale, when Bruno tells Kamala she's a mutant, a riff from the iconic theme of X-Men: The Animated Series is heard.
• My Beloved Smother:
  • Muneeba is this to Kamala, forbidding her from attending AvengerCon and demanding she focus on her studies instead. Downplayed in the first episode when she attempts to reach a compromise with Kamala to go with her father, but plays the trope straight after Kamala unintentionally insults them.
  • Later on, she's happy to let Kamala go to Zoe's party, but on the condition that she returns before nine and that she'll use the door this time instead of sneaking in through the window.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Kamala is visibly distraught at herself after erupting at her parents for wanting to supervise her with matching costumes at AvengerCon.
  Kamala: I think I made my dad cry.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The teaser poster for the series of Kamala looking out towards Manhattan is based on Issue #5 of the original run.
  • There are nods to the Inventor, Kamala's first big villain that she faced in the comics.
    • When Kamala recaps the events of the Battle of Earth in the beginning of the first episode, a cockatiel is briefly seen on a wall as Kamala introduces Captain Marvel in her Fanfic.
    • Another reference to the Inventor can be found in the scene in the first episode where Kamala and Bruno are sitting on a rooftop: a sign behind them reads "Edison Electronics". The Inventor was a clone of Thomas Edison who ended up as a bird monstrosity due to a cockatiel contaminating the experiment (Yes, really).
  • Also during the recap, when Carol repeatedly shakes her head until she reaches her Avengers: Endgame hair-do, she cycles through her classic hairstyles from the comics.
  • The sign on the school guidance counselor's desk reads "GWW", referencing Kamala's co-creator and original writer, G. Willow Wilson. Wilson is also listed by name on the dedication plaque of Kamala's school.
  • Zoe's inaccurate Captain Marvel cosplay heavily resembles Carol Danvers' Ms. Marvel leotard. It also serves as Self-Deprecation on Marvel's part, as Bruno and Kamala deride the costume for being inaccurate and impractical.
  • Episode 6's opening has a Freeze-Frame Bonus with "est 2014" directly under the Ms. Marvel logo; a nod to when Kamala Khan made her solo debut in the comics.
  • The Creative Closing Credits are full of artwork taken directly from the original comic.
  • Kamala's maternal grandmother is named Sana, after Sana Amanat, one of Kamala's co-creators.
  • The final episode finally gives us the line, "If you've saved one life, you've saved the world." from the comics; Kamala's true inspiration to be a hero.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The scene in the official trailer where Kamala discusses someone who finds her weird is after a scene of her and Zoe, implying she's talking about her school bully. In the series, she's in fact talking about Muneeba's dislike for her love of superheroes.
• Nice Guy: Kamala's friend Bruno is deeply supportive of her dreams, plans with her to go to AvengerCon, helps her build her Captain Marvel costume, encourages her to ask permission of her parents (who love him), and tells her that she can save the world. It is strongly implied that he has a crush on her.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: By taking such a hard approach against the new enhanced individual, Agent Deever drove the community together to support Kamala even when they initially had mixed reactions to her. Agent Cleary had been trying to avoid this from the very beginning.
• No Budget: In-Universe, Kamala's story of the Avengers defeating Thanos is made using only the sorts of materials available to a high school girl on an allowance, but it's still incredibly good (because it's actually made by a Hollywood team with a budget).
• Painting the Medium:
  • In the first episode, Kamala's daydreams are given form in the real world as animated graffiti on the walls around her.
  • Also in the first episode, the text messages that Kamala and Bruno exchange are not shown as text bubbles, but are instead integrated into the scenery, such as the pattern of stars from her nightlight, road markings, and neon signs in the windows of the Circle Q shop. Many of these are practical effects.
• Parents as People: Kamala's relationship with her parents are as fraught as any teenager's, with the added complication of being Muslim immigrants in New Jersey. They're clearly struggling and doing their best and love their daughter, but not quite connecting with her.
• Poster-Gallery Bedroom: Kamala's room is filled with posters and art regarding her nerdy interests, especially Captain Marvel.
• Production Foreshadowing: In the first episode, Muneeba and Yusuf get the idea that he and Kamala should both dress up as Hulks for Avenger-Con. The next Disney+ Marvel series really will have male and female Hulks.
• Pronouncing My Name for You: Kamala explains that her name is pronounced "kuh-MAH-luh" rather than the more well-known "KAH-muh-luh." G. Willow Wilson went into detail about the pronunciation in a twitter thread, explaining that they're technically two different names: KAH-muh-luh is a Tamil name, while kuh-MAH-luh is a feminized form of the Urdu name Kamal, hence the different pronunciations. They just happen to be written the same.
• Properly Paranoid: Despite their conversations being friendly, Aisha suspected Najma would turn against her, and in the end was proven correct.
• Psycho Party Member: In Kamala's group, Kamran briefly becomes this when he loses control of his anger shortly after gaining his powers.
• Refuge in the West: As in real life, the Partition drove most of India's Muslim population towards Pakistan, the westernmost part of what had been British India, in order to escape growing persecution from India's Hindu majority. Kamala's great-grandmother, Aisha, died during the mad scramble for one of the westward trains. This would become the start of the Khan family's Generational Trauma, as Aisha's young daughter Sana spent the next seven decades obsessed with learning what became of her mother, causing her to neglect her own daughter, Muneeba, who in turn grew up to be overly protective of her daughter Kamala.
• Repurposed Pop Song: The first official trailer is set to a cinematic remix of The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights".
• Sequel Hook: The Stinger in "No Normal" has Kamala's bracelet glowing before she's suddenly teleported who knows where and Carol Danvers ends up in her bedroom to set up the The Marvels film.
• Series Continuity Error: "No Normal" shows the Statue of Liberty as it appears in the real world (with the green patina) despite the fact that the series is confirmed to take place after Spiderman No Way Home where it was partially restored.
• Shipper on Deck: Kamala is evidently one for the two (implied lesbian) girls who hang out in front of her locker with shared wireless earbuds.
  Kamala: Love you guys, rooting for you, favorite couple.
• Shirtless Scene: Kamran, the boy Kamala has a crush on, exits a pool shirtless. Cue the smitten stare from Kamala and Eating the Eye Candy from both her and Nakia.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Kamala's parents have this dynamic. Her father is sweeter and closer to her, and shares her penchant for being a dreamer. Her mother is harsher and more judgmental, doing her best to keep Kamala grounded.
• Soapbox Sadie: Nakia has shades of this, on the idealism end of the scale, running for the Mosque Board in order to demand they fix up the women's side of the mosque, which is falling apart, and complaining about their history class spending six weeks on the Greeks and Romans, and six minutes on the Persians and Byzantines.
  Nakia: [shaking her head] Politics is dirty.
• Spoiler Cover: Kamala is briefly seen wearing her official Ms. Marvel outfit during Marvel's opening title card for Thor: Love and Thunder. However, as of Episode 5, her outfit wasn't finished yet.
• The Stinger: Kamala's bangle somehow makes her switch places with Carol Danvers.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Generally how everyone reacts to Kamala's more outlandish plans. Unfortunately, when there are no other alternatives, those plans go through.
• Training Montage: Kamala gets one in the second episode, where she starts getting the hang of her new powers.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: Most of the elements of Islam and Pakistani culture and language are left unexplained, assuming the viewers will either be able to pick it up from context (ammi, abbu, beta) or will be willing to google it (Zamzam, Eid).
• Villainous Valour: Even after Kamran turns against them, when prison guards electrocute Kamran the Clandestines are furious and tries to help him. Downplayed in that once his mother orders him to be left behind, they reluctantly obey their leader.
• Wham Line:
  • Bruno gives one in the final episode that leaves the door open to what will come in the broader MCU.
    Bruno: [in regards to Kamala's powers] It's more like... a mutation.
  • This line is then accompanied by a wham sound: the first few notes of the 1992 X-Men theme!
• Wham Shot: The Stinger has Kamala somehow teleported out of her bedroom and someone else taking her place. Said someone being Carol Danvers!
• White-and-Grey Morality: Kamala is traditionally heroic and uses her powers for good. Najma and the Clan Destines just want to go home, but are willing to go to extreme lengths in order to do so. Agent Sadie Deever is closest thing to a truly villainous character, due to her being a racist and a Rabid Cop.

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"You sure are, and always have been, our own little Ms. Marvel."

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