PORTLAND, Ore. — An official trailer for Ms. Marvel dropped and I am emotional.
First thing’s first: Ms. Marvel will be a six-episode series dropping on Disney+ June 8.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s dish. I am so excited for Ms. Marvel to hit the reasonably-sized screen for a million reasons and the latest trailer really cements a lot of that. If you’re not on the up and up, Kamala Khan is a 16-year-old Muslim Pakistani-American high school student who is superhero obsessed.
In the comics, unbeknownst to her, Kamala has Inhuman lineage (a line of superheroes we have yet to meet in the MCU, a different flavor of Eternals, I guess). Her superpowers are triggered by being exposed to this mist from a bomb made of crystals from the planet where Inhumans are from.
However, it seems from the trailer that the Marvel Cinematic Universe may be switching up how she gets her powers. But it’s Marvel, so everything I speculate could be for naught.
But what hasn’t changed is Kamala’s charm. She is every high school nerd girl. She is obsessed with Captain America, Iron Man and especially Captain Marvel (who carried the name Ms. Marvel for some time in the comics). Kamala, obviously, becomes the latest holder of that title.
But it would be remiss of me not to mention the thing that makes Kamala important in the real world: representation. While Kamala resonates with every nerd girl who was awkward and comics-obsessed in high school, she is a person of color with an immigrant family.
She’s Marvel’s first Muslim superhero and that is obviously an important part of her identity. From the trailer, it seems like all of those parts of her identity are still intact and will play a role in shaping her into the superhero she becomes.
Solely speaking as a woman (who was once a high school student), the actress cast to play Kamala, Iman Vellani, looks appropriately aged for her role. She is not hypersexualized, she looks like an average teen, which is important to note as Marvel begins to create content to appeal to a more diverse and younger audience.
I am not sure how many times is too many times to watch a trailer but join me in viewing it several more times.
What do you think about this? Are you excited? You can find me on Twitter @Hello_Destiny, I'd love to chat with you about it.
