Welcome to our coverage of part four of Disney+’s Ms. Marvel:
“Seeing Red”
Written by Sabir Pirzada and A.C. Bradley & Matthew Chauncey
Directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
Kamala and Muneeba fly to Karachi to meet Sana, who makes it clear she gave her granddaughter Aisha’s bangle for a reason. While wandering the city, Kamala encounters Kareem (Aramis Knight), a member of the Red Daggers, a vigilante group keeping tabs on the Clandestines. Meanwhile in America, the supervillain group escapes captivity…
1. ABCD (American-Born Confused Desi)
I loved how this episode echoed Kamala’s confusion over being a superhero and a “djinn” with feeling out-of-place in her ancestral homeland: the running gag of her finding the local cuisine too spicy was great, and incredibly relatable as an (East and West) Asian person who also has bland, westernized taste in food. Similarly, the scene on the rooftop where Sana tells her granddaughter how the partition of India and Pakistan means she will always feel — even at her age — conflicted over where she truly belongs, spoke greatly to me as someone whose mother is from Hong Kong (another place colonized by the British), and who doesn’t feel Chinese sometimes. But at the end of the day, I’m Chinese, British, and more, just as Kamala is Pakistani, American, and a Clandestine — to paraphrase Sana, there is beauty in the different pieces.
2. The Irony of Living in a Superhero Universe
Muneeba also gets a heartfelt one-on-one scene with her mother, where we learn the reason they became estranged is because she was embarrassed by her wild stories about Aisha, which led their neighbors to brand her a crazy person. It must’ve been such a shock to Muneeba all those years later, when aliens and Asgardians came pouring out of the sky over New York, and she realized all those stories about an otherworldly grandmother weren’t so far-fetched after all. It makes you wonder: if the MCU resembled its early comics counterpart, and had Thor, Spider-Man et al. emerge in the 1960s, would Muneeba have become a teenage superhero? Anyway, it’s a touching scene, which left me fully invested in Muneeba’s own arc on this show.
3. So Much for Supermax
Disney+ shows have big budgets, but they’re still TV shows, and there was a clear instance of a cut corner with the depiction of the Clandestines escaping from the DODC’s supermax prison: why did they film the scene in a narrow, greasy pipe corridor, and only have a couple of (albeit heavily armored and armed) guards escort them? The sight of them being forced to move while suspended from their arm cuffs was a striking visual, but this was a sequence that needed a much larger scale, because frankly, this supermax prison was unworthy of the name — oh well, at least Kamran should have no problem escaping after getting left behind for betraying his mother.
4. R.I.P. Waleed, We Hardly Knew Ye
Aramis Knight is pretty charming as Kareem — he’s got jokes! Moves! Terminator references! — but I really wanted more from his mentor Waleed (Farhan Akhtar), who seemed like a really affable and charismatic leader. He survives the Clandestines’ initial attack on his hideout, but eventually sacrifices himself to protect Kamala and Kareem: unfortunately, his death is undermined by both his lack of screentime, and invisible blood loss (darn age ratings), causing his exit to feel strangely rushed. I get they couldn’t spread out his appearance to another episode, but the character would’ve really benefited from an extra scene where he’s not giving exposition, and instead talks about his past, and mentoring Kareem. Hopefully when Kamala finally becomes Ms. Marvel, there’ll be at least an acknowledgment that he gave her her signature red-and-blue color scheme here.
5. Definitely Not in Jersey Anymore
Najma strikes Kamala’s bangle with her dagger, causing an apparent rupture in space-time that deposits our young heroine at Karachi Station in 1947. Now, if you’d asked me what I was expecting from this show before it aired, a partition time travel story would’ve been far from the top of my list, but perhaps I should’ve realized it: after all, unlike Kamala’s two ongoing comics, which were respectively written by G. Willow Wilson (a white Muslim) and Saladin Ahmed (an Arab American), this show has South Asian writers and directors (including head writer Bisha K. Ali), for whom the subject is much more personal. So really, it’s only natural, when given a huge opportunity like this show, that you would choose to truly, truly educate viewers this way — can’t wait to see how next week unfolds.
Continued belowBonus Thoughts:
– Similarly, the way it’s acknowledged Kamala isn’t a common name in Pakistan is both a smart way of critiquing the source material, and weaving that in to make the world feel more real.
– Kamala and Kareem’s fight is a real Easter egg carton, from her co-creator Adrian Alphona being credited on the Ant-Man mural, to the in-joke about Iman Vellani being Canadian, but for me, the funniest part was how Kamala still can’t fight without her powers.
– I absolutely adore the way phone messages are incorporated into this show’s visuals, but I have to admit I got confused when the kites formed Kareem’s text.
– And the Award for Most Sympathetic MCU Character goes to… the poor guy stuck between Kamala and Muneeba during their argument on the plane.
– Seriously, how old is that toffee Muneeba gave Kamala? I know Sana said she’d eat most of them, but still!
See you all next week for episode 5, and until then, remember: Sloth Baby is not a toy, he’s a sleeping pillow!
