Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Ms. Marvel finale.
Going into the Ms. Marvel finale, fans had a couple of big expectations. A) that Brie Larson would show up as Carol Danvers to set up Iman Vellani’s role in The Marvels. And B) that Kamala Khan would finally be confirmed as an Inhuman, as per her comic book origins. As it turns out, only one of those came true as the last episode decided to throw a major curveball at the teen heroine’s storyline.
Spoilers incoming!
Yes, while Larson did drop by as Captain Marvel, we didn’t get an Inhumans reference. Instead it was confirmed that Kamala is actually a mutant, thereby blowing the Marvel fandom’s collective mind in the process. Seeing as this is both a big change to the status quo and also the first time mutants have been alluded to in the Earth-616 universe, this twist has franchise-changing ramifications.
So it’s hardly shocking that head writer Bisha K. Ali was ecstatic over being able to pull off this twist. Once episode six was out, Marvel.com spoke to the cast and crew to unpack the mutant reveal. “Oh my god, best day of my life! Ali said, about when she first learned the show had permission to tee up the X-Men in this way. But this wasn’t always set in stone. The EP continued:
“It wasn’t from the beginning [of the show]. With Marvel, something’s always a moving piece, and we’re trying to solve this question of, ‘If any of [Kamala’s family] put the bangle on, would they have powers?’ The answer was always no, from a character perspective, no.” So, right from the get-go, making Kamala different from the rest of the Khans made sense.”
Having wracked their brains to come up with an acceptable explanation for this potential plot hole, the Ms. Marvel writers room decided upon the concept of Kamala being a mutant as it was deemed to “fit into the logic of the wider MCU.” And we’re glad they did, as it gave us one of the show’s coolest moments, complete with a sampling of the iconic ’90s X-Men theme tune. Unsurprisingly, Marvel superfan Iman Vellani thinks so, too.
