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After episode 5 the ‘Back to the Future’ references in ‘Ms. Marvel’ suddenly make a lot more sense

Great Scott!

Ms. Marvel
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This article contains spoilers for Ms. Marvel episode five

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At the end of last week’s Ms. Marvel we saw Kamala mysteriously thrown back in time to 1947 at the height of the Partition of India. This historic event has been referenced from episode one, with it changing the course of the Khan family’s lives and creating a multigenerational trauma.

Now Kamala has experienced it first hand and interacted with her great-grandmother Aisha and her grandmother as a child. And, along the way, she really Marty McFly’d the hell out of the situation. At this point, viewers had probably figured out that the mysterious “trail of stars” that led the young Ammi to her father was Noor energy from the bangle, but when it was first explained few would have predicted Kamala herself would generate them.

All this makes the at-the-time bizarre Back to the Future reference in episode two make a lot more sense. There we saw Matt Lintz’s Bruno wearing the exact costume that Marty McFly wore in Back to the Future, a film in which a teenager travels back in time and turns out to play a key role in their family history. We can now see this wasn’t just a costume designer having a little fun, but a sneaky hint as to the season’s plot.

So, given that last week Ms. Marvel dropped a Terminator reference, should we expect next week’s finale to feature a time-traveling villain from the past hunting down our heroes? Perhaps this isn’t as odd as it might seem — after all the present Clandestines are dead, so maybe their past selves are going to turn up to wreak havoc?

Ms. Marvel‘s finale will air on Disney Plus next Wednesday.