The first episode of Ms. Marvel is now live on Disney+. With it, we see the MCU origins of Kamala Khan, including the changes to her powers. While the episodes themselves haven’t yet gone into where these powers come from, I wanted to break down where I think they’re going to come from and why. Spoilers ahead!
Clan Destine
The Clan Destine is an obscure group from Marvel comics that debuted in 1994 with an 8-issue run and another 5 issues in 2008. It tells the story of a super-powered family who acquired their powers when their father encountered a Djinn nearly 800 years ago rendering him immortal.
The Inhumans
In the books, Kamala gets her powers after being exposed to Terrigen Mist which unlocks an Inhuman Gene in Kamala, resulting in her powers. We learn that, long ago, the Kree genetically altered some humans on earth creating the subspecies Inhumans and that many humans on earth carry an Inhuman Gene. Unlike Mutants, who get their powers at the time of puberty, the Inhuman Gene doesn’t result in powers until exposed to the Terrigen Mist. For Kamala, her Inhuman powers manifest in the form of being able to “embiggen” her limbs, or shrink them, as well as morph her appearance into other people and objects.
Kamala’s Bangle in the Comics
In the comics, Kamala’s Bangles are passed down to the women in her family. Her great grandmother Aisha hid money inside of them as they escaped Partition. The Bangles are a symbol of the strength and resilience the women of the Khan family have overcome, and Kamala incorporates them into her costume as a remembrance and as a sort of armor.
How this all comes together in ‘Ms Marvel’
In the show, Kamala gets the bangles from an old box of her grandmother’s things. When she first puts the bangle on at Avengercon, her powers start to manifest. After some researching from Bruno, he discovers that the bangle only unlocked power that was already inside of her, that the power is NOT coming from the bangle itself.
My theory is that Kamala’s great grandmother Aisha encountered a Djinn, which altered her genes. This gave her and the Khan family a dormant power that is unlocked by the bangles. Djinn are usually depicted as evil spirits but, in Islam, they can be both good and bad. They are accountable for their deeds just like humans and do not inherently ascribe to either side of the spectrum. In Episode 1, Kamala’s family tells us how her great-grandmother went missing during her family’s escape from Partition and found her way back by “looking at the stars”. We also get a mention from Kamala’s mother that her grandmother, her Nani, was just like Kamala: always daydreaming with her head in the stars.
I believe that, when Aisha disappeared, she was wearing the bangle and encountered a Djinn who altered her DNA in some way making the bangle a kind of key that unlocks this power. So, instead of hiding money in the bangles like in the books, she hid the key to unlocking the Khan’s family powers. I think this is also why Kamala’s mother says Aisha brought shame to the family.
While Djinn can be both good and bad, they are more often depicted as evil. If Aisha came back to her family with a story of having met a Djinn, it could be what caused the family to shun her. We even get a shout-out of an evil Djinn from Kamala’s brother Aamir when he asks Kamala if she is “still scared of the evil Djinn”.
If this is the route they are going, I personally think this is a very smart change and is not entirely one from her comic counterpart. This change allows her powers to be closer linked to her faith and to the Khans as a family as opposed to another alien race, one that we have yet to meet in the MCU. Just like in the books, her power is something that is already within her but, instead of Inhuman origin, it comes from a source that connects with her family and faith. Furthermore, the “Djinn” that Aisha encountered could have even been a Kree soldier who Aisha, not knowing what a Kree is, would assume is a creature or, because of her faith and age at the time that the story takes place, a Djinn. This could explain why her powers take the form of blue cosmic energy, or “hard light” as Kamala calls it, and link her more closely to Captain Marvel and her powers.
If this is the route, they are taking it, the only real change is the exclusion of the Inhumans. We don’t know yet if they will call it “Embiggen” but the way she uses her powers are the same, just visually different. The core aspect of her powers and what that means for her character are still very much intact. I would even argue that this change makes her powers even more meaningful to Kamala as it relates to her heritage and the women in her family that have come before her. While I love her origin in the comics, I think making her powers more linked to her faith and her family is a great way to adapt the character and stay true to her comic origin while updating it to fit into the MCU.
What did you think about the first episode of Ms Marvel? Episode 1 is now streaming on Disney+. Episodes of Ms Marvel launch weekly on Disney+. check out the trailer for Ms Marvel below.