Anna Daniels
Kamala Khan, or Ms. Marvel, is set to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe soon with her very own Disney+ series. She’ll be a very unique character in the Marvel movies, as not only is she a millennial, but she’s also a Pakistani American Muslim girl from New Jersey.
She’ll bring a whole new perspective to the MCU that no other character has touched on yet. That said, just like her idol, Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel’s story also deals with her own identity.
But, unlike Captain Marvel, Kamala Khan’s story wouldn’t really work if everyone knew who she was off the bat. Here’s why.
Why Kamala Khan’s story is great
As ComicsVerse said, Khan’s story is ultimately a millennial’s story. She, like many millennials, don’t know who they are or what they want to do with their life yet. They’re still exploring the world and themselves, and so, they have a lot of conflicting identities.
While she’s a Pakistani American who was born in New Jersey, her parents and her older brother are immigrants. As a result, ComicsVerse says that her family has very orthodox and conservative views on society, while she does not.
She loves her family of course, but she, like many children of immigrants, can’t help but feel like an outsider to her family. This identity conflict also mirrors the conflict that she has between her regular-self and her superhero alter-ego, Ms. Marvel.
Like ComicsVerse said though, she has even more conflicting identities, but either way, identity is a big theme in her comics.
Secret identities aren’t so secret in the MCU
As Marvel fans on Reddit have said, the MCU doesn’t take secret identities too seriously. Indeed, in one of the last scenes of ‘Iron Man’, Tony Stark literally announces to the world that he is, in fact, Iron Man. Captain America wears a mask, but everybody knows who he is because he’s a national hero.
On top of that, a running joke in the MCU is that any time someone needs a quick disguise, all they need to do is put on a baseball cap and they’re as good as gone. This may just be an inside joke nowadays, but it may also be a joke about how ridiculous superhero disguises are in the first place.
And then there’s Spider-Man, a character whose secret identity also matters as much as his real identity. But even Peter Parker was forced to reveal himself to the public by the end of ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home.” That said, Aunt May also found out about his secret identity by the end of his first movie. Plus, Stark found out who Spider-Man was all the way back in ‘Captain America: Civil War.”
Why that won’t work and what Marvel may do about it
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDDOg5d-UQQ?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]
Khan, unlike many superheroes, has an extremely simple disguise. She has an elaborate and cool-looking costume, but, when it comes to covering her face, she doesn’t really do much. She just wears a domino mask, which is a small mask that covers the area around her eyes.
As Ms. Marvel fans on Reddit said, it wouldn’t really make sense for her character, whose secret identity matters so much to her, to have such a simple disguise. In the comics, she interacts with her friends and family while in her disguise a lot, so it wouldn’t really make sense if they don’t realize who she is early on.
The good news is that when Marvel adapts characters to the movies or TV shows, the designers almost always make up a new design that’s inspired by the old designs. It’s possible then that they will make Ms. Marvel’s costume more secretive. One fan even suggested that Marvel will lean in on her Muslim identity and have her wear a niqab as a disguise.
Written by: Cheat
