Right from its very first episode Ms Marvel's TV series was giving off Spider-man vibes in line with Spider-man Homecoming.
It shares many of the same parallels. Ms Marvel, Kamala Khanis (Iman Vellani) is in high school. She's not one of the cool kids but she's not completely off the deep end nerd either. She has a really good friend willing to do anything for her and a too cool for school, kind of rival who doesn't really acknowledge her.
She has a major crush on Captain Marvel, in the sense that Carol Danvers is her all time favorite superhero, to the point where her room is covered in Captain Marvel posters and she even cos-plays as Captain Marvel for an upcoming Avenger's Convention.
Things really start to take a turn when her grandmother sends her a bangle with no real explanation but her mother seems to think it needs to be stored away pretty quickly. Naturally it doesn't stay in storage for long.
Ms Marvel the series made a really strong start with its first three episodes. It has a real focus on family that was all the more interesting for Kamala's family being American Pakistani immigrants. Not only did we get some great insight into family dynamics, we also got a refresher on, what is very possibly a mainstream forgotten history in this day and age, of how Pakistan came to be.
I also appreciated all the animated art and the unique solutions the show found for unique ways to display phone text conversations.
Where it all started to fall apart for me was in the show's main villain, Najma (Nimra Bucha), who makes some really ridiculous decisions simply because she's impatient - which is weird given that she literally says she's been waiting a long time to find Kamala.
We also get the worst version of Damage Control ever presented with an equally incompetent lead agent who may as well be a Lemming for law enforcement given how ineffective she is.
All in all this show had a lot more potential. It has strong ideas and a great family story at the center that really carries through to the end, saving the less well executed superhero story points.
All of the acting was great. Everyone was well cast. Even the superhero action was really good with Ms Marvel's reimagined powers for the series (that I understand differ from the comics).
It was just he motivations of the villains and the fairly incompetent actions of Damage Control that could've used a little more work to tie in with the great family story we got here.
Definitely a fun series that's worth watching for both the family story and all the cool wider MCU Easter eggs. Initially it feels a little too targeted at a teen audience but really is no different from Spider-man Homecoming in that regard - which starts out much the same. By the second episode it starts to even out and feels more like family viewing.
It's not the best MCU series but Ms Marvel definitely has potential and I am looking forward to seeing where she shows up next.
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