What are Ms. Marvel’s powers and abilities? Why can’t Kamala stretch?

Marvel Studios’ Ms. MarvelWith Iman Vellani playing Kamala Khan, Kamala Khan made her debut on Disney Plus. Kamala has been one of the brightest rising stars in Marvel Comics since her debut in 2014*, but though she’s been featured in animation and even some pretty high-profile video games, she’s been invisible to the moviegoing audience until now.

In the first episode of her Disney Plus series, Kamala is just beginning to get in touch with her superpowers, but you might be wondering what they’ll look like when she masters them. Or maybe you’ve heard that her powers are really different in the show than in the comics. Here’s the lowdown on Ms. Marvel’s strange superpowers and abilities.

*Yes, we know Kamala’s first appearance was technically in 2013, but it was an unnamed cameo. This was her first comic series. Ms. MarvelThe newest addition to the family was a.

Ms. Marvel can be described as a flexible hero

Image: Jamie McKelvie, Matt Wilson/Marvel Comics

Kamala found her abilities in Marvel Comics. They were similar to those of Elastigirl or Michael Jordan. She was able to stretch her legs up to an noodle-y size. Kamala’s abilities placed her among the stretchy character class, which is known for their bodies acting more like chewing gum and not as flesh and bones. She could also shrink and enlarge her body, either all at once or one body part at a time, as in her signature move: shouting “Embiggen!” and punching things with a giant fist.

The first time her powers manifested she shape-shifted into a completely different human form — but that seems to have been a one-time only effect of being exposed to the strange mists that triggered her transformation. Was there a mist that caused her transformation? Well, it’s a long story and you don’t really need to know it, because…

Ms. Marvel’s powers are very different in the show

Image: Marvel Studios

In the television series, Kamala’s powers are still developing, but based on what we’ve seen in the first episode, trailers, and promotional images, it appears that a mysterious family heirloom has given her the ability to conjure and project different shapes in the air. In trailers, she can be seen jumping from one platform to another while the first episode shows her conjuring a huge stretchy fist in order to rescue a classmate. The new bangles are emulating the best moves of stretchy heroes, but without the horrible stretching flesh.

How to answer the question “How” Ms. Marvel would bring stretching powers to live action and how it would keep them from being unavoidably weird to watch has been an open one during the show’s production. “She’s got very comic booky powers,” Ms. MarvelG. Willow Wilson, comic writer and co-creator of Kamala, spoke to Polygon shortly after it was revealed in 2019. “God bless them trying to bring that to live action; I don’t know how that’s going to work out in a way that doesn’t look really creepy.”

Polygon talked to Kamala Khan’s co-creator, this week the Marvel Comics editor. Ms. Marvel TV series producer Sana Amanat, about the changes to Ms. Marvel’s powers.

“We want to make sure that we still retain the essence [of the character],” Amanat said, “but still evolve, and make it relevant to the stories that we’re telling in the MCU at that moment in time. […] It’s also something that we feel is able to look interesting visually as well. Because not only can she create embiggened fists, she can also jump on platforms, and it feels very Spider-Man-esque in the sense that she can kind of throw a platform, jump over it, punch her fist — it feels a bit more fluid in a fun way. And it also still has the essence of how her fight choreography was in the comics too.”

At this point in the series, the audience is learning just as much about Kamala’s powers as she is. Maybe by the end of the show she’ll be slinging giant fists around just like her comic book counterpart — or maybe she’ll be making more complicated shapes, like Green Lantern. We’ll have to wait and find out what the Marvel Cinematic Universe has in store for its Ms. Marvel.