Spoiler Warning: This interview contains major spoilers for Season 1 of Ms. Marvel
After more than 15 years with the MCU, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has gotten pretty good at keeping information compartmentalized. So when it came time for Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah to film the now-famous moment in which Kamala Khan appears to be revealed as a mutant — complete with the familiar jingle from the classic X-Men cartoon — they had to do it with the context-free next.
“Yeah, when we read the scene, the script, we had a bunch of unanswered questions,” says El Arby. “You were just tasked with filming this and putting music over it, and that’s it. That’s basically the only information we have.
In other words, series director Bilal Fala says that they will discover the true consequences of Kamala Khan’s unique genetics along with everyone else.
“We only know the scene that is now in the finale. Obviously, it’s a great honor to have that and to have that iconic song on there, that little piece of the soundtrack, but that’s it. We’re going to have to find it,” Fala says.
It was a familiar gambit for the MCU; not as heavy as Loki, perhaps, who had to give away what amounted to his entire finale to introduce a major new villain, but no less notable. It works too. The day the Ms. Marvel finale landed on Disney Plus, social media lit up with reactions to the carefully placed musical cue and subsequent cameo from Brie Larson, who suddenly appeared in Kamala’s bedroom in a scene shot by the director of The Marvels Nia DaCosta.
“That scene was actually directed by Nia DaCosta because she did Marvels with Brie and [Iman Vellani], obviously. Same thing, she really didn’t know that scene was supposed to be for our show and we didn’t know that scene was going to be done, so we discovered that when we were calibrating the episodes,” Fala says. “[Feige] didn’t give any information to Nia and didn’t give any information to us. He just said, “Shoot this.” But I guess those are the places and who knows where Kamala is now, somewhere in this universe.
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Ms. Marvel’s episode count was ‘deluxe’
Revelations ended with Ms. Marvel Season 1, which occasionally wobbled under the weight of its many threads, but was otherwise a stylish and energizing take on the typical Marvel origin story, underpinned by family drama and story sweep. Our review praised it for its “bold palette and striking visuals,” saying it “never loses its sense of wonder.”
His charming coming-of-age story held special meaning for many Indian and Pakistani viewers, who praised small moments such as Kamala’s best friend Nakia losing her shoes at the local mosque, to which a bystander remarked: “The shoe thief from the mosque hit again.’
Calling it “cultural representation wrapped in bubblegum and pathos”, Imran Khan of Fanbyte wrote, “Not only is Ms. Marvel a more personal story with lower stakes, it’s not just a coincidence that I share a name and a culture with the main character Kamala Khan, it’s that someone looked at what it would mean to be a Muslim superhero in the modern age and tried to represent that culture well on a major television show.
It was quite a challenge to suddenly stop the plot of New Jersey, let’s say, go to Pakistan and then come back.
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It ends by covering a huge swath of the Muslim experience within a superhero origin story: not just the fear of the FBI showing up at a mosque, but also more joyous events like Kamala’s brother’s wedding, as well as the bloody history of the partition of India and Pakistan . The sheer scope of Ms. Marvel led to criticism that Marvel’s six-episode structure was stifling, despite being more than three times as long as past origin stories.
“Usually we mostly watch movies, and the movies are only two hours long. In this case, we had the luxury of six hours, and obviously if you give us eight, we’ll do more. Give us 12, we’ll do more,” El Arby says.
“But I think what’s great about it is that there were obviously a lot of threads, a lot of storylines that you want to put into it, but it makes sure that there’s a high energy level, and that’s what we always try to do when we have a fast-paced a show with a lot going on. Here and there we sometimes take time to focus more on the character and let them breathe a little. But I think overall the show is pretty energetic, and I think that’s because we put everything together in these six episodes.”
As for the most difficult story thread to wrap up, El Arbi says it’s “obviously” the trip to Pakistan in the show’s fourth and fifth episodes, which moves the action from New Jersey to Karachi with a time-travel location for good measure .“In a way, it’s already a season in itself, you might say. You can make six episodes of this. It was quite a challenge to suddenly stop the plot of New Jersey, let’s say, go to Pakistan and then come back. But I think the writers and producers managed to do this very well.
The emotional finale of Ms. Marvel and the future
In the end, though, Ms. Marvel pulls it all together with an exciting, emotional finale in which Kamala finds both her name and her costume thanks to her family. The scene in which Kamala’s father Yusuf points out that her name means “miracle” or “miracle” in Urdu was singled out for special praise, with Fallah calling it “one of the strongest scenes in the entire show”.
“Even though it’s a very simple scene — you have, of course, all the big action sequences, which are really fun to do — you have this very intimate father-daughter moment that reminds me so much of my relationship with my parents,” Falla says.
Looking ahead, Kamala should return to The Marvels, which was well set up with the sudden appearance of Captain Marvel at the end of Ms. Marvel (and the disappearance of Kamala). Fallah admits that he would like to make a Ms. Marvel movie himself. “It would also be super cool to see her family and friends because we believe her real superpower is all her friends, family and her community.” If we can explore more of this world, it will be a great honor.”
There’s also plenty of material to mine from the comics, because at the end of the day, Ms. Marvel is still an MCU show. Fala says “there’s a lot more we can do with Kamala Khan,” including exploring her powers.
“She has this big dog,” El Ardi says, referring to Lockhow, the huge bulldog with the power of interdimensional teleportation. “If there’s another season or movie, the big dog will have to be a big character in it.”
Looking back at how the first season turned out, El Ardi and Fala can be pleased with successfully establishing Ms. Marvel as a rising heroine in the MCU while potentially making Iman Velani a star. Moreover, they told a a compelling story rarely seen on American television – and in a superhero show to boot.
“It’s just such a beautiful experience to be able to tell this story, to have Marvel create this story, and to see a lot of people get inspired, a lot of Muslim women get inspired,” says El Arbi. “Hopefully it will open a lot of doors and hopefully more and more of these kinds of stories will be told on screen.” That’s my hope, and I’m just proud that we were able to do that in the Marvel universe.”
Kat Bailey is a senior news editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Any advice? DM her at @the_katbot.
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