‘Ms. Marvel’ Head Writer Knew Kamala Khan Would Get to This Point for ‘The Marvels’
Marvel’s Disney+ series Ms. Marvel introduced Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They have confirmed that Khan will appear in the movie The Marvels, and if you were worried, the post-credits scene in the show all but confirms it. Head Writer Bisha K. Ali had the job of getting Kamala ready for The Marvels.
[Warning: This article contains spoilers for Ms. Marvel.]
Ali was a guest on The Hollywood Reporter’s TV’s Top Five podcast on July 15 after the season finale aired. She discussed how the series prepared Kamala for her role in the upcoming film The Marvels.
Kamala Khan was set for ‘The Marvels’ before ‘Ms. Marvel’
Marvel chief Kevin Feige plots the interconnected MCU carefully. By the time Ali began work on Ms. Marvel, she already knew where Kamala had to end up. The rest was up to her.
“The thing that I knew going into this was always that she was going to go off and be in The Marvels, whatever The Marvels may be,” Ali said on TV’s Top Five. “What I took away from that from a character perspective was she has to be ready to be able to run alongside whoever she’s going to be running alongside in that movie. We all know the answer to that is Captain Marvel but I knew that piece going in.”
‘The Marvels’ need Kamala Khan with more than just powers
In the beginning of Ms. Marvel, Kamala is a big Avengers fan. She cosplays as Captain Marvel but never imagined she’d be a Marvel herself. Then she gets a bangle inherited from her grandmother. The bangle gave her powers to “embiggen” and create shields or platforms. Those will come in handy in the MCU, but Kamala also had to resolve a lot of family issues.
“So in terms of character development from where I knew I was starting, or certainly where I wanted to start with this show was that I knew she was going to be a teenage girl sans powers,” Ali said. “She’s not powered up at all, with this obsession with Captain Marvel. Right from the start she gets powers and that’s the journey from getting her there, no powers at all, and the beginning of this emotional maturity that we want this journey to express.”
Becoming a mature superhero
The post-credit scene showed Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) materialize in Kamala’s bedroom. That wasn’t the important part, Ali said. That was just a fun cameo. What was really important is to see how far Kamala had come since episode 1. She’s a movie hero now.
“To the point where episode 6 by the end of it, we have to believably buy that she can be running alongside Captain Marvel,” Ali said. “That piece was really clear to me, that arc of where she’s starting and where she’s headed.”
