‘MS. Marvel’ focuses on family in a new way

In the first three episodes of Mrs MiracleKamala Khan’s life began to change rapidly. The 16-year-old from Jersey City began the series as an ordinary high schooler in an extraordinary world where superhumans, gods and aliens have become part of everyday life. But thanks to a mysterious bracelet passed down generations in Kamala’s family, she instantly went from a mere Avengers fan cosplaying as Captain Marvel to a superhero. With each part of Kamala’s origin story, the teenage girl receives answers to the growing mystery that has become her new life — along with perplexing new questions. The latest episode, Seeing Red, traces Kamala’s family roots as she travels to Pakistan to seek more information about her mystical bracelet and whoever discovered it years ago: her great-grandmother Aisha.

After Kamala’s bracelet-induced vision at the end of last week’s episode, Kamala and her mother Muneeba fly to Karachi to visit Kamala’s grandmother Sana and the house Kamala’s parents left behind decades earlier. The fourth installment advances in story development as Kamala forms an alliance with the Red Daggers, a group of local protectors who will teach her more about the Noor Dimension and the looming threat the world faces. As the Red Daggers explain to her, the Clandestines are attempting to tear down the veil that separates Earth from the unseen alternate dimension that gives Kamala her powers. But the episode also takes the time to explore the relationships between Kamala, Muneeba and Sana as Mrs Miracle continues to focus on family as one of the key elements of its story.

In many MCU origin stories, and those within the superhero genre in general, family is a common theme in one way or another. Often it is the tragic loss of a protagonist’s parents or another family member that sets them on their hero’s journey. They become brooding loners like Batman –especially Robert Pattinson’s emo Batman – or Moon Knight, or they might find family in similar outcasts like Peter Quill with his Guardians of the Galaxy. Family was a recurring theme, particularly in Phase 4: eternal and Black widow Clint Barton focuses on makeshift superfamilies and tries to get back to his family and the farm hawk eyeWanda Maximoff mourns the loss of her family WandaVisionthe newest peter parker loses the newest aunt may in Spider-Man: No Way Homeand Shang-Chi and his sister Xialing team up to face their father Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. One of the ways that Mrs Miracle However, has split from other MCU projects, so the series focused on Kamala’s family as such an influential part of her identity and a constant presence in her life – even without her having any powers or, I don’t know, in front of her eyes brutally murdered in a dark alley.

So much from Mrs Miracle has focused on the relationship between Kamala and her Jersey City family, whether in the form of the classic teenage struggle for independence from strict parents or in the wedding reception of Kamala’s brother and sister-in-law as the central event of the third episode. “Seeing Red” introduces and explores another layer of the series’ family dynamics as we meet Sana in earnest and witness the distance – both literal and figurative – that has grown between her and the family moving to America has gone.

From clothing choices to struggling to adapt to the spices in the food, it’s amazing even to Kamala how much of a foreigner she feels in Pakistan — which, of course, she’s spent her entire life in New Jersey (as her Pakistani cousins and new friends remind her of this by toasting her for all her attributes of being an American). Muneeba and Sana still have a strained relationship strained by Muneeba’s departure from Pakistan for the United States, and the tension that remains between them is palpable. But for all their differences, Seeing Red reveals the similarities that exist between them. Kamala learns of her mother’s rebellious streak growing up, and how Sana – even at her wise age – is still trying to make sense of her fractured identity, just as young Kamala is doing now. “My passport is Pakistani and my roots are in India. And there is a border between all of that,” Sana tells Kamala, referring to the partition of India and Pakistan during partition. “There is a line marked with blood and pain. People claim their identity based on an idea an old Englishman had while fleeing the country.”

The split was first mentioned in the second episode during a dinner conversation at the Khans’ household, and the traumatic historical event continues to figure prominently in Mrs Miracle as the series continues to explore Kamala’s family history. At first, the story of how an infancy Sana followed a “trail of the stars” to find her father after being separated from her parents the night they left India sounded like fiction – a path beauty amidst of loss and loss to find tragedy. But after hearing the story from Sana herself, Kamala reconsiders it in light of recent events (and her newfound powers that look a lot like a “trail of stars”), and she realizes there’s a lot more to the story . Sana knows all about the powers the bracelet possesses, as well as the fact that she and Kamala, like Aisha, are jinn, but no one seemed to believe her until now. As revealed in an emotional scene with Sana and Muneeba (starring actress Zenobia Shroff, who continues to excel in her performance), it was offbeat stories like this that contributed to Muneeba’s decision to go to the United States. “Even after baby left you, you continued to hold on to those fantastic theories,” Muneeba tells her mother.

“I just thought I’d share them with you,” Sana replies.

“I didn’t need your stories, mommy. I needed my mother.”

The fourth installment in particular develops Muneeba and Sana as three-dimensional characters and makes it easy for them to empathize as we begin to see how their losses and conflicting history seeped into Muneeba and Kamala’s own relationship and why Sana always has was dismissed as a little crazy by other family members. “Seeing Red” also takes inspiration from a Mrs Miracle Comic where Kamala also travels to Pakistan with her relatives for a month and experiences an unexpected collaboration with Kareem the Red Dagger:

But the Disney+ series continues to differentiate itself from its source material by weaving Kamala’s family history and legacy into the origins of her superpowers and the story of how she became Ms. Marvel. Anything involving Aisha the Djinn and the Noor dimension is one big digression on how Kamala the Inhuman became a superhero in the comics. Chief Author Bisha K. Ali and the rest of the Mrs Miracle Instead, Team made storytelling choices that fit the character more naturally as she joins the MCU, and the Phase 4 stories continue to build on this multiverse concept.

Mrs Miracle began the season loading MCU references to establish Kamala as a teenager growing up in the age of superheroes, and by the season finale the show will almost certainly help set the events of The wonders— or at least establish a connection between Kamala and her idol, Captain Marvel. However, the in-between episodes have rightly focused on Kamala and her family so far, and with Kamala being sent back into the division herself at the end of Seeing Red, that trend looks set to continue next week.