Is Kamala Khan a mutant? Ms. Marvel’s ending, explained

Disney Plus’ Ms. Marvel The series spent six episodes completely reinventing the character’s origin story, and has now refreshed her abilities for Marvel Cinematic Universe. With its final episode it’s lobbed one more big twist into the mix. According to the cast, this was an unexpected addition that completely blew their minds.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for the final episode of Ms. Marvel.]

Image: Marvel Studios

The credits begin to roll for the last episode. Ms. MarvelKamala and Bruno have one last fateful conversation. He tells her that he took another look at her genetic makeup, because her brother Aamir wouldn’t stop pestering him with questions — if Kamala has superpowers because their great-grandmother was a visitor from another dimension, shouldn’t he have them too?

“When I compared you to the rest of your family, something still… seemed off.” He tells her that there’s “something different” in her genes. “Like… like a mutation.” When Bruno says the word, an electric guitar in the sound track flicks through the first seven notes of the infamous theme song from 1992’s X-Men: The Animated Series — this also highlighted the presence of Professor X Doctor Strange, in the Multiverse of Madness.

Matt Lintz, who plays Bruno, says that filming the scene came with some unique difficulties, namely, that Iman Vellani, who plays Kamala, couldn’t stop laughing.

“It was hilarious,” he told Marvel.com, “because she just was like, ‘This is so cool.’ She couldn’t believe that I was saying this to her. Obviously, it’s so big for her character. As we were going through this scene, she laughed a lot. It made me smile. […] I remember… you could just hear in the background [the crew]All the screaming and all of their excitement was quite funny. It’s a very big moment. I was just blessed and lucky enough to be able to share that with Iman and everybody else.”

Kamala, however, shrugs off whatever the crew and cast took. “Whatever it is,” she says, “it’s just gonna be another label.”

A label like… mutant?

Does Ms. Marvel have the ability to become a mutant as depicted in comics?

Image Credit: G. Willow Wilson, Jacob Wyatt/Marvel Comics

No, it’s impossible. That is the reason this Marvel Comics fan-favorite comic book is so amazing. Kamala, in fact is kind of the ContraryOne mutant. She’s a newly-awoken Inhuman, who owes her existence, in part, to a mid-2010s editorial push to minimize the presence of the X-Men in Marvel Comics in favor of pushing the Inhumans to the fore — all to make Marvel Comics look more like the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

With this, you can now Ms. Marvel and Kamala’s new origin story, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is burying the Inhumans and using Kamala to bring the X-Men to the fore. At least Vellani understood how important this was.

“They sent me, and only me, the draft [of the final episode],” she told Marvel.com, “and I immediately freaked out. Kevin Feige was the first person I wrote to. Was this really what you were doing? Are you sure? I’m so honored! I was like yelling at him through an email.”

Based on Ms. Marvel’s cast and crew, the addition of Kamala’s mutant status was not in the cards from the beginning of production, but it did slot right into a puzzle that head writer Bisha K. Ali was trying to solve. “‘If any of [Kamala’s family] put the bangle on, would they have powers?’ The answer was always no, from a character perspective, no.”

The show provided a reason in the last episode.

Aamir was briefly granted superpowers in comics. It’s something he didn’t like.

Image by G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona/Marvel Comics

Nobody else in Kamala’s Marvel Comics family has superpowers — even though they’re all descended from ancient Inhuman DNA mingling with human DNA — because Kamala is the only one of them who was exposed to Terrigen Mist, the substance that awakens an Inhuman’s powers.

Is Ms. Marvel going to become a superhero in comics?

That’s the $64,000 question! At this point, there’s no way of knowing. However, it might be quite interesting given modern X-Men continuity.

“They’re a mutant” used to be a pretty consequence-free way of explaining a character’s inexplicable powers. All mutants can be or have ever been members of the X-Men, but not all. That began to change when the Marvel Cinematic Universe made its meteoric rise and became a legitimate rival to 20th Century Fox’s already established X-Men film franchise. The companies’ licensing agreements meant that mutant-associated characters couldn’t appear in MCU movies, and non-mutant associated characters couldn’t appear in X-Men movies.

Pietro Maximoff and Wanda (aka Scarlet Witches and Quicksilver), and Molly Hayes from the Runaways, were all originally mutant characters. However, their origins were changed for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel Comics began to consider mutant status an editorial planning factor of non-zero importance, since it would directly affect how the character was available for wider use by Marvel Entertainment and Walt Disney Company.

Wanda and Pietro first made significant MCU guest appearances in 2014. It happenedThey discovered that they were not mutants. That same year, one of the publisher’s rising stars, Squirrel Girl, was cheekily retconned out of the mutant status we’d been told she had for years.

Image by Ryan North and Erica Henderson/Marvel Comics

With Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox, the licensing of X-Men characters is no longer a hurdle. Ironically, there are no more penalties for revealing that a character who is not mutant in Marvel Comics is a mutant due to current status quo with the X-Men. Right now, in Marvel Comics, every mutant on Earth has protection under international law a citizen of the living island of Krakoa, access to Krakoa’s global network of teleportation gates, and to mutant resurrection, a kind of defacto immortality. You should also know that mutants can control Mars.

Kamala could be retconned to a mutant by Marvel Comics, rather than being an Inhuman. This would represent a major status shift, even though she has always been proud of her Inhuman heritage.

What is the best way to learn more about mutants within Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)?

We can’t say for certain. But we can say when we’ll see Kamala Khan next: That will be in Marvels — a sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel — which hits theaters on Feb. 17.

Marvel Studios has not yet announced any specific plans for the X-Men character in Marvel Cinematic Universe. There are major opportunities that the company has to make this happen. Next week, Marvel will return to San Diego Comic-Con for a traditional Hall H panel, where the studio has promised that “Kevin Feige and special guests” will “provide an inside look at the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe.” And seven weeks after that, Disney will feature a multiple-hour-long panel at the company’s D23 event, entirely focused on Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm projects.

And with this last-minute reveal of Kamala’s mutant status, Marvel’s announcement of a long-awaited X-Men movie for the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems more closer than it ever has.