A History of Confusion

Last night's new Ms. Marvel bit off way more than it could chew, essentially trying to be Doctor Zhivago in the space of about thirty-five minutes. The resulting blend of political drama, romance, and bildungsroman ended up feeling more like an outline or trailer than a proper story in itself, an all too common problem with Disney+ shows.

The previous episode ended with Kamala, having travelled to the past, finding herself stranded amid a sea of refugees amid the British partition of India and Pakistan in the 1940s. Last night's episode backed up to give us a narration to explain how terrible the British were yet never actually managed to do so. The reality is much too complicated as the British departure occurred during a period of intense turmoil and tensions between Hindu and Muslim groups. We get some hint of this when we see Aisha (Mehwish Hayat) pleading with Hasan (Fawad Khan) to flee anti-Muslim bigots in India for the safety of Pakistan. So it was a choice, not a matter of the British forcing everyone onto trains?

The show starts to really stumble over itself, as though it doesn't quite know what it's passionate about, only knowing that it should be passionate, so we get a moment where Aisha is being chased by a British soldier for reasons that are never made clear. This is especially a problem because she kills him. When one of your heroines kills someone, you need to make it clear why. The moment feels like propaganda with its head cut off.

Then there's a meet-cute between Aisha and Hasan that accelerates quickly into their marriage. Both actors are attractive but come off as way too smarmy. There are too many close-ups and hardly any shots of the actors performing together in frame.

Hasan was also introduced trying to convince people that Gandhi wanted them to fight someone somehow, an especially unfortunate choice since the one thing everyone watching is likely to know about Gandhi is that he advocated methods of passive resistance. If this episode knew what it wanted to say, it would have felt really manipulative.

Finally, like a student cramming the night before the test, our star, Kamala, shows up and Iman Vellani once again seems bored and disengaged. The fairy tale at the train station is rushed through--somehow Kamala immediately identifies Aisha and knows where and when she is. Then she's inexplicably shot back to the present where she can speed through a resolution with her mother (Zenobia Shroff) who has no time to remember how she was afraid of her daughter getting involved in magic and fantasy.

What started as a charming series about a teenager getting superpowers seems to have been hijacked by too many big ideas competing for space. It's a shame because when this show was focused on Iman Vellani's earnest performance it was pretty good.

Ms. Marvel is available on Disney+.