We Go On The Road in Ms. Marvel Episode 4

Bye bye New Jersey, hello Karachi! Kamala and her mother travel to the other side of the world to find out more about Kamala’s roots, and the true source of her power. Once she gets there, though, Kamala finds that the mystery goes even deeper than she suspected — and just who are the Red Daggers anyway?

Armaan Babu: Phase 4 of the MCU has had a lot of fun taking us around the world — a visit to Karachi was perhaps inevitable. So who’s joining me on the trip to Pakistan, to follow Kamala around and find out out, one way or another, where she’s really from?

Mark Turetsky: Karachi? You told me this was a Silver Coin review! I didn’t even pack my passport. 

Armaan: Happy to have you, Mark, to see the sights with. Let’s dive in and take a close look at what this episode has to offer. 

Welcome to Karachi!

Armaan: You’re not the only one who’s wasn’t expecting this trip — Kamala’s mother, Muneeba, is coming with her to Karachi as well, though no one’s told poor Muneeba why. Muneeba’s none too happy about the sudden move, especially with Kamala still in trouble for having disrupted her brother’s wedding. I really loved the exchange these two had on the airplane, it’s a delightful mother-daugther thing. Kamala’s getting an international trip, which is a privilege, but Muneeba has to make sure Kamala knows she’s technically still punished. 

As sad as I am that we’ve left New Jersey behind, and its supporting cast, I’m glad Muneeba gets a spotlight on this trip. It’s been hinted that she’s had problems with her mother, and this trip looks to be an important step towards reconciliation. 

Mark:Just a quibble I have: why exactly is Kamala being punished? The wedding was attacked by superpowered bad guys, and a bunch of feds came and arrested them. I know that we the audience know that Kamala pulled that alarm, but it seemed like the only witness to it was a half-blind relation nobody quite believed.

Armaan: Look, it’s an elder who said it, and it’s gossip that went around. Plus, if I remember right, when Kamala was directly confronted about it, she didn’t deny pulling the fire alarm that sent everyone running, so it’s all but confirmed that Kamala sent things off — her family just doesn’t know why.

Mark: Still, though, I have no problem setting that aside. It’s a quibble, as I said. Like you, I really appreciated the focus on Muneeba’s relationship with Kamala, and how it plays with her relationship to her own mother, Sana, as well as Sana’s relationship with Kamala. And it’s really nice that Kamala has a family member that she can be totally honest with. The closest she’s had has been Bruno, but that’s not the same. Bruno, though a dear friend, doesn’t have the same experience of being a part-Djinn with quasi-magical extradimensional powers. 

Armaan: In the second volume of Ms. Marvel, Kamala’s mom knew about her secret identity, and it added so much to the comic. It might not be the same case for all heroes, but Kamala’s family has always been such a big part of her identity, being able to talk to someone about the secret just feels so right.

Mark: As I recall, her mother in the comic had figured out her secret identity long before Kamala got up the courage to tell her. Maybe we’ll see something similar here?

Armaan: I hope so! All the clues are in place, and Muneeba’s a smart lady. 

I just want to say, this was just…such an overwhelmingly fun episode for me in terms of general ambience. Karachi isn’t the same as India, obviously, but there is so much overlap this felt like home. The chaos of the airport, meeting your cousins, going to the local club (I laughed out loud that it was a Boat Club. My hometown has a nice Boat Club that you bring tourists in town to) only not being allowed to certain sections of it ‘cause you haven’t gotten the formal attire. 

It’s hard to put into words for me, (which is a pain considering that’s what we’re here for) but seeing an entire cast of just brown people on screen for a superhero show is just…overwhelmingly nice for me. 

At the same time, though…things feel a little off. It’s the Americanness of it all. There’s a certain cadence to the scripting, a certain simplification and overexplanation of things for Western audiences, a style of dialogue that doesn’t entirely fit. If you think of storytelling as a language, we’re seeing Karachi with a Disney accent. It’s a little awkward.

But as an Indian with a strange hybrid accent myself…that feels like a special kind of relatable as well. 

Mark: I was wondering what you thought about Karachi as a location. I looked it up, and evidently it was filmed in Bangkok. I personally wouldn’t be able to tell any kind of difference, and as you said, Karachi isn’t the same as India, which isn’t the same as Thailand. So I was wondering what your take would be on how “right” they got it. 

Look, having lived in New York for most of my adult life, I get it: New Yorkers wouldn’t hang around Times Square like they seem to in movies. Their apartments wouldn’t be so spacious if they’re twentysomethings scraping by. And that’s New York, which is in literally everything. But sometimes you’ll catch something authentic. It doesn’t even have to be something that’s shot in New York, it could be shot in Toronto, but there’s something in the direction, or the writing, that tips you off that someone, somewhere, knows something about the place.

But here I am putting things in Western terms, just like you were bemoaning above. I’m glad that, despite the Disney accent, as you call it, that they got a certain amount of the right flavor in there.

Armaan: I’ve said this before, but I would be legitimately interested in a longer series with the same cast that’s not even superhero related — just Kamala and her family and friends figuring out her cultural heritage and how she navigates the two. It really feels like everything we’ve got here could use some space to breathe. You know, I’d like to take this moment to recommend Ramy, which is a non-superhero show about someone navigating the space between their Islamic and American identities, although I’ll warn readers that it’s a lot more adult and the protagonist is a lot more of a jerk.

However, this is a superhero show, so we gotta get some action in, so in comes the Red Dagger! 

Knife to Meet You

Armaan: I was pretty sure they’d be bringing the Red Dagger in as soon as I heard the show was going into Karacahi. 

You know, it’s interesting — Ms. Marvel has fewer comics than most other MCU adaptations, and this show seems to be pulling in from a lot more of the source material than most other MCU stuff does. We’ve got the first two volumes of Ms. Marvel crammed into a six-episode season. It’s feeling a bit rushed, but we’re getting a lot of great highlights. 

Kamala, while exploring the train station that might have clues to her origin, is attacked by a guy masked by a red handkerchief calling himself the Red Dagger, apparently targeting Kamala for her connection to the Noor. 

This initial action scene — the banter, the turn-based action, it almost-but-not-quite worked for me. What did you think?

Mark: She’s still at a point where, even with superpowers, she’s an even match for someone with training and experience. I always find these fights to be a bit silly, to be honest. And I don’t mean about this one in particular: most fights in cape comics or shows exist because there needs to be a fight in each issue/episode. But it was capably done. Not as thrilling as, say, the cliffside car chase in Moon Knight, but a fun way to introduce Red Dagger as a character.

He’s also now the third attractive boy to be vying for Kamala’s attention! 

Armaan: I am very happy for Kamala, especially as at least one of those boys is a lot less of a jerk than he was in the comics. Kamran appears to still be on Kamala’s side — so much so, that when the ClanDestine escape the Department of Damage Control (the new, jerkier SHIELD), they leave the poor boy behind. 

Before they show up, though, we learn a little more about the Red Daggers — an ancient organization who’ve been opposed to the Noor for as long as they’ve been around. The current leader (of a team of…two Red Daggers, as far as we can tell) Waleed, also has a lot of answers for Ms. Marvel. 

I gotta say. I really liked this discussion, because they almost immediately sort of retconned my biggest problem with the djinn — that it was a sci-fi concept that was taking a magical, cultural story and leaving the magic out. Waleed immediately cops to the idea that these aliens just co-opted a local legend by pointing out if Thor showed up in South Asia, he might have been called a djinn, too. 

Mark: It’s a good walk-back, I agree. Or maybe clarification is a better way to describe it. You mention Waleed, who’s played by Indian actor and filmmaker Farhan Akhtar. Is this guy a big deal over there?

Armaan: Big enough that his appearance was definitely a thrill to see, this caught me by complete surprise, but damn if it wasn’t fun.

We get a cool holographic show-off of how the ClanDestine’s plan to open a portal home might destroy our dimension, so it’s clear that no matter what Kamala does, she can’t open a portal home.

We also get an extremely cryptic clue from Kamala’s bangle. On it, inscribed in Urdu, is the phrase, “What you seek is seeking you.” 

What do you think that could be? Because I have no clue.

Mark: I think it’ll be her great-grandmother, Aisha. She’s got all the answers, and Kamala will meet her somehow, in some capacity. Presumably she’s as long-lived as the other exiles from the Noor dimension. It’s a superhero show: if there’s no body, they’re not dead (and even that’s seldom more than an inconvenience).

Between Two Worlds

Armaan: If you’re a being whose true form is pure light, I imagine that not having a body isn’t all that much of a problem.

Kamala, however, does have a body. One that’s tied to this world. I want to skip ahead a bit — when Waleed explains how Kamala’s powers work. It’s her genetics, her human heritage, her ties to this world, that allows her to shape the Noor in unique ways that the Clandestine aren’t able to do. Aisha might have been pure Noor who only looked South Asian, but three generations down, and Kamala is as Pakistani as she is Noor, and I finally am all the way on board for the changes we’ve gotten to her powers.

At first I just thought it was a cheap answer to the difficulties of animating stretchy powers. Maybe it was that, but the writing of the show has tied Kamala’s powers to her own cultural confusion. I know I was complaining about this very thing last episode, but this episode has sold me on it. Kamala’s a child of two worlds, isn’t quite sure where she fits between them — as a Pakistani Jersey Girl, she’s had to live with that all her life, and now she’s got the Noor dimension world as part of it as well. This episode sold the concept to me. 

Mark: I know the common thinking about Kamala is that, had she not been introduced during the Inhumans push, she would have been a mutant, and I think that’s true for the most part. But I also think that Wilson used the Attilan/rest of Earth mixed heritage to comment on Kamala’s Pakistani-American heritage in a way that wouldn’t have been possible had she been a mutant (at least not until the establishment of the Krakoan nation). It wasn’t always super-effective, since the Inhumans as a segment of Marvel comics were undergoing a serious identity crisis and it’s never been quite clear what they want to be about. And it’s somewhat unclear how the Noor dimension/Djinn parts will factor into MCU Kamala’s identity (we know next to nothing about the culture of the Noor dimension, except that it seems like most of the Noor exiles are jerks). 

Armaan: I feel like the comics explored Kamala’s Inhuman side on a pretty superficial level. Fun was had, but no one felt the need to make it feel like Kamala had any real ties to the Inhumans, which is what makes it so easy to throw that whole part of her origin right out that window.

ClanDestine, though, they’re jerks, yes. More on that later.

We have a scene with Kamala’s grandmother that was especially powerful. I want to put this quote down here, “Even at my age, I’m still trying to figure out who I am. My passport is Pakistani, my roots are in India, and in between all of this is a border. A border marked with blood and pain.” 

This was pretty powerful to me, in a way that feels very specific to me that may not hit as hard with other people. My own family history is wild — I’m part Muslim, Parsi, Brahmin and Christian. My passport? American. That line from Sana hit me so hard. 

It makes me think that this show isn’t just about SWANA representation — this is a Disney show, one set in the MCU. It’s still, at the end of the day, an American show. It feels like the show might have fewer Pakistani viewers than it will Pakistani-American viewers, and this story is one that’s highly relatable, and though it’s rushed…it’s told powerfully. 

It’s the rush that bothers me. I love the story being told here, but it keeps being hijacked by superhero hijinks that don’t quite fit, and a very limited episode count that’s typical MCU blockbuster TV. This is a great show, that’s being well written…but it being under the Disney banner is holding it back.

Mark: I agree: the best stuff in this show has nothing to do with superpowers. It wants to be a coming of age family dramedy, but it’s also a superhero origin. But that’s the Marvel way, isn’t it? At least as a TV show, they can devote quite a bit more time to the family side of things, much more than if this were a Ms. Marvel movie. Even if it’s not quite enough.

Armaan: It’s not hard to imagine that all of the family stuff in here was fought for, and I appreciate that. In addition to Kamala getting to know her grandmother, we also get two beautiful mother-daughter scenes; one between Sana and Muneeba, where we learn a little bit about what caused the rift between the two. Kamala’s grandmother, Sana, made her theories of aliens and the Noors pretty public, which would have made her a bit of an outcast in a conservative society — life couldn’t have been easy for a young Muneeba. I get the feeling that if Muneeba finds out that her alien heritage is real, it will be a real important step towards healing her relationship with her mother…but in the meantime, an open-hearted conversation goes a long way, too.

The other scene is a beautiful, quiet moment between Kamala and her mother, sharing milk toffees over a dinner table. Multi-generational milk toffee treats. It was incredibly sweet. 

Buuut we’ve got an action quota to get to, and that Red Dagger-Ms. Marvel scene was just an appetizer: we’ve got the ClanDestine come to town!

I’m gonna be honest: the ClanDestine are incredibly boring villains. There’s no nuance to their villainy, and all they’re bringing to an action scene is generic action stuff you’d get from a semi-competent henchman. If Kamala had even a slightly better handle on her powers, there’s nothing to indicate that they’d be a problem for her to handle. Am I wrong here?

Mark: Not to mention the problematic concept behind them: they’re evil refugees who’ve refused to assimilate for hundreds of years. But yes, there are five of them (plus Kamran) and I couldn’t tell you a single thing about them as individuals, except that they each have different weapons (okay, one of them is heavily into modern pop culture, which was established once and has never come up again). And the fact that they’re so badass that they were able to escape from Damage Control’s supermax prison doesn’t make ClanDestine seem tougher, it makes Damage Control seem incompetent. And that’s not how you want the big baddies of your superhero show to read.

Armaan: And when they look incompetent, Ms. Marvel looks incompetent, and you want that even less! There were a few fun bits here and there — and oh, poor Waleed! Gone before we ever really got to know him. 

What really grabbed me, though, was that ending. The Partition looms big in this series, and I so far have really been appreciating how this show handles it. That last shot, with Kamala either in a vision or somehow thrown back in time, showing us the merest glimpse at the chaotic, awful scale of people being forced to leave their home…this was beautifully shot, and a powerful way to end the episode.

With only two episodes left, I’ve given up on the villains ever being compelling, but this story, this one here? I hope they nail it — though from what I’ve seen of the writing so far, I have pretty high hopes they will.

Mark: I’ll bet you Rs. 1500 that she’ll be the one who makes the “stars” that lead young Sana back to her family!

Armaan: I am still fuming about that price mark-up.

Marvel-ous Ms.-cellany

• Fawad Khan’s appearance here as the younger Red Dagger was a delight. As a fun aside? One of the shows that he has starred in is, well…Armaan. 
• Ant-Man is apparently more popular amongst civilians in the MCU than I would have thought. He gets inserted into the musical, we have a giant Ant-Man head at Avengercon, we get Ant-Man graffiti in Karachi train stations…who would have guessed?
• Are you kidding? It’s Paul Rudd! That guy is charm on wheels! [MT]
• Eating biryani out of a bag, soup being more red…these are the cultural equivalents of Marvel Easter Eggs in terms of how much fun it is to see them referenced.
• The wildly inaccurate, highly subjective directions being given was also hilarious and deeply relatable.
• Rs. 1500 for a polaroid is OUTRAGEOUS…also definitely the price you’re going to be charged as an obvious tourist.
• It is amusingly disappointing to see how bad Kamala’s spice tolerance is!