Ms. Marvel’s finale has a reveal that’s reverberating around the Marvel fandom

Disney Plus’ Ms. Marvel collection has already spent its six-episode run fully reinventing her origin story and refreshing her powers for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With its closing episode it’s lobbed yet one more massive twist into the combine. And in response to the forged, it was a last-minute addition to the script that blew all of their minds.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for the final episode of Ms. Marvel.]

Image: Marvel Studios

Just earlier than the credit roll on the closing episode of Ms. Marvel, Kamala has yet one more fateful chat with Bruno. He tells her that he took one other have a look at her genetic make-up, as a result of her brother Aamir wouldn’t cease pestering him with questions — if Kamala has superpowers as a result of their great-grandmother was a customer from one other dimension, shouldn’t he have them too?

“When I compared you to the rest of your family, something still… seemed off.” He tells her that there’s “something different” in her genes. “Like… like a mutation.” When Bruno says the phrase, an electrical guitar in the soundtrack flicks by way of the first seven notes of the notorious theme music from 1992’s X-Men: The Animated Series — which additionally underscored the look of Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Matt Lintz, who performs Bruno, says that filming the scene got here with some distinctive difficulties, particularly that Iman Vellani, who performs Kamala, couldn’t cease laughing.

“It was hilarious,” he advised Marvel.com, “because she just was like, ‘This is so cool.’ She couldn’t believe that I was saying this to her. Obviously, it’s so big for her character. We were going through the scene and she kept laughing. It was making me laugh. […] I remember… you could just hear in the background [the crew] all screaming and the excitement and joy that they had was really, really funny. It’s a very big moment. I was just blessed and lucky enough to be able to share that with Iman and everybody else.”

But nevertheless the forged and crew took it, in the present, Kamala shrugs it off. “Whatever it is,” she says, “it’s just gonna be another label.”

A label like… mutant?

Is Ms. Marvel a mutant in the comics?

Image: G. Willow Wilson, Jacob Wyatt/Marvel Comics

Absolutely not, which is what makes this mind-blowing for followers of Marvel Comics. In truth, Kamala is type of the reverse of a mutant. She’s a newly awoken Inhuman who owes her existence, partly, to a mid-2010s editorial push to reduce the presence of the X-Men in Marvel Comics in favor of pushing the Inhumans to the fore — all to make Marvel Comics look extra like the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Now, with Ms. Marvel and Kamala’s new origin story, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is burying the Inhumans and utilizing Kamala to carry the X-Men to the fore. And Vellani, at the least, knew how consequential this was.

“They sent me, and only me, the draft [of the final episode],” she advised Marvel.com, “and I immediately freaked out. I emailed Kevin Feige in all caps. I was like, are you doing this like for real? Are you sure? I’m so honored! I was like yelling at him through an email.”

According to Ms. Marvel’s forged and crew, the addition of Kamala’s mutant standing was not in the playing cards from the starting of manufacturing, nevertheless it did slot proper into a puzzle that head author Bisha Ok. Ali was making an attempt to resolve. “‘If any of [Kamala’s family] put the bangle on, would they have powers?’ The answer was always no, from a character perspective, no.”

And with the closing episode, the present was capable of present a cause.

In the comics, Aamir did as soon as briefly get superpowers, and he type of hated it.

Image: G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona/Marvel Comics

Nobody else in Kamala’s Marvel Comics household has superpowers — despite the fact that they’re all descended from historic Inhuman DNA mingling with human DNA — as a result of Kamala is the solely one among them who was uncovered to Terrigen Mist, the substance that awakens an Inhuman’s powers.

Will Ms. Marvel turn into a mutant in the comics?

That’s the $64,000 query! At this level, there’s no manner of figuring out. But it could be fairly fascinating, given the nature of recent X-Men continuity.

“They’re a mutant” was once a fairly consequence-free manner of explaining a character’s inexplicable powers. Not all mutants are a member of the X-Men or ever must be, in spite of everything. That started to vary when the Marvel Cinematic Universe made its meteoric rise and have become a reputable rival to twentieth Century Fox’s already established X-Men movie franchise. The firms’ licensing agreements meant that mutant-associated characters couldn’t seem in MCU films, and non-mutant related characters couldn’t seem in X-Men films.

Characters like Wanda and Pietro Maximoff (aka the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver) and Molly Hayes of the Runaways had been initially mutant characters whose origins had been revamped for the Marvel Cinematic Universe debuts. And at Marvel Comics, mutant standing began to be an editorial planning level of nonzero significance, because it might very instantly decide how out there the character can be for broader use by the remainder of Marvel Entertainment and the Walt Disney Company.

Wanda and Pietro made their first important MCU appearances in 2014, and in 2015, the Wanda and Pietro of the comics simply occurred to find that that they had by no means been mutants in any respect. That identical 12 months, one among the writer’s rising stars, Squirrel Girl, was cheekily retconned out of the mutant standing we’d been advised she had for years.

Image: Ryan North, Erica Henderson/Marvel Comics

With Disney’s acquisition of twentieth Century Fox, the licensing of X-Men characters is not a hurdle. But satirically there have by no means been extra penalties to revealing that a non-mutant character is a mutant in Marvel Comics, as a consequence of the present established order of the X-Men. Right now, in Marvel Comics, each mutant on Earth has safety below worldwide legislation as a citizen of the residing island of Krakoa, entry to Krakoa’s world community of teleportation gates, and to mutant resurrection, a type of de facto immortality. Oh, and likewise mutants management Mars.

If Kamala does get retconned into a mutant in Marvel Comics moderately than an Inhuman, it might symbolize a massive standing shift for her, despite the fact that her Inhuman heritage has by no means actually been a large deal in her tales.

When will we discover out extra about mutants in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

We can’t say for sure. But we are able to say after we’ll see Kamala Khan subsequent: That will probably be in The Marvels — a sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel — which hits theaters on Feb. 17, 2023.

Marvel Studios has but to announce any concrete plans for the X-Men in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But some main alternatives for the firm to take action are swiftly approaching. Next week, Marvel will return to San Diego Comic-Con for a conventional Hall H panel, the place the studio has promised that “Kevin Feige and special guests” will “provide an inside look at the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe.” And seven weeks after that, Disney will characteristic a multiple-hour-long panel at the firm’s D23 occasion, solely centered on Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm initiatives.

And with this last-minute reveal of Kamala’s mutant standing, Marvel’s announcement of a long-awaited X-Men film for the Marvel Cinematic Universe appears nearer than it ever has.