It probably says a lot about the overall quality of the MCU’s Phase Four that even one of its most well-reviewed projects is still considered to be something of a disappointment to the fandom. It might be sitting at a near-perfect 98 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, but Ms. Marvel received a lot of flak from certain quarters for, some would say, dropping the ball on the enormous promise it displayed in its first couple of episodes by the end of its six-part run.
10 months after its Disney Plus premiere date last year, Ms. Marvel has re-entered the conversation thanks to one tweeter pinpointing what needed to be fixed about the show that could’ve allowed it to dethrone even WandaVision as Marvel’s greatest streaming series to date.
Twitter user @The_GM_is_God went viral for suggesting that the Iman Vellani vehicle should’ve “just gotten rid of the whole clandestine storyline and kept all the creative choices from the first 2 episodes going throughout the entire show.”
While the first two episodes of Ms. Marvel offered a fresh yet familiar spin on the “coming-of-age teen superhero” story, as Kamala Khan discovered her powers while juggling high school problems and a new crush, the second two thirds of the season switched the focus to the much more cosmic Clandestine arc as Kamala learned the origins of her heritage.
While the trip to Pakistan and exploration of Partition in episode 4 was powerfully done, the Clandestine material was largely viewed as much more generic MCU fare and a real step-down from what we were promised from the show originally. Not that it was the only problem folks had, as others never gelled with Kamala’s revamped powers.
Maybe Ms. Marvel should’ve been a movie instead?
Whatever you think about the quality of series, at least Ms. Marvel gave us Vellani’s title character, who we’ll thankfully see again before too long in The Marvels, coming this Nov. 10.