Things are getting busy on my end. Going to post this here now. Hopefully I'll be able to start watching tomorrow.

MS. MARVEL

Episode One:

Things I Liked:
+Pakistani representation in front of and behind the camera
+fantastic camera technique and animation work
+excellent character development

Things I Didn't Like:
-Haha I want to get to superhero-ing faster

I'm gonna preface this section by saying I know little about Ms. Marvel beyond the broad overview. I read G. Willow Wilson's first volume and thought it was very smart, but never read further. Read a couple of Champions comics and that was it. That's to say that I'm not looking for anything in particualr from the show other than for it to be good and for me to have a good time. So far? Mission accomplished.

Holy crap, was that fun. Hell of a pilot, it did a fantastic job of establishing all the characters, the central conflicts in their drama and in Kamala's identity crisis. It's incredibly robust, depicting Kamala as a fangirl torn between her family's traditionalism and modernity while also measuring herself up against her peers and her idol- Captain Marvel. Pointedly in the subtext, Kamala is bullied by, intimidated by, and judges herself worth against her White peers. That was a massive deal for her in her first comic arc, and it's a challenge lots of POC girls face in America. Powerful, topical stuff.

The show also did the kind of crazy camera tricks that made me fall in love with the likes of SNATCH, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, and DETROIT ROCK CITY. It's a frenetic joy to watch that feels like being a creative teenager whose mind goes a mile a minute. The camera is acrobatic, and paired with prop sleights of hand, it's dizzying, playful, and darn near a character in its own right. That's crazy fun.

It's funny, I didn't get this reaction when I read the first volume of the comics, but I found myself getting misty over Kamala's cosplay and her hero worship at Avengers-con. Her fandom, need to be validated, sincerity, and even partial insecurity about her passion felt very relatable and authentic to my experience. It felt really good.

It's such a minor note, but I'm excited to get to Kamala's classic attire and to see some superheroing. The series reviews have been VERY positive, so I expect the show to maintain its high bar of quality.

Episode Two

Things I Liked:
+Eid Celebration
+Praying in Mosque
+Casual Tampon
+Intersection of Tradition & Modernity
+the same stuff I liked last week

Things I Didn’t Like:
-There’s some kiddiness at play here in the script structure

Yet another strong MS. MARVEL episode, and I love how down to Earth and normalizing so much of it is. The Eid celebration and mosque culture felt so welcoming, authentic, and sympathetic that it made me want to attend. The Eid celebration felt a bit like church festivals I used to attend in my hometown, and speaking as a White Catholic viewer, it demystified Islam a bit for me, and if it did that for me, I can’t imagine how good it must feel to be a person of that ethnicity seeing themselves so elegantly represented onscreen, not as stereotypes, but as fully fledged individuals with a range of personal expression. It’s beautiful stuff.

Likewise, I also enjoyed the casual offering of the tampon in the bathroom. It may seem small, but women’s periods are still commonly stigmatized in the west when they should be accepted as a normal, well-understood biological function. This is helpful in normalizing that, and I’m all about it.

Otherwise, the show continues to be excellent and smartly structured with Kamala discovering her powers in a combined coming of age and generational trauma story. In it, she continues to be the biggest impediment to her own progress and success, which is the awkwardness we all had as teenagers. Good stuff. I also appreciated that Damage Control was treated as yet another government agency serving the hegemony. The racial profiling and remark about watching mosques was a nod at that. Probably not a mistake they went after Kamala with drones first.

It’s very minor, but for as smart as the character development and drama are, there are instances of kiddiness in the script structure -where characters are let off too easily or some characters are played too broadly. Escaping in the car past the Damage Control blockade so simply and the counselor’s behavior are the biggest examples that come to mind.

Meanwhile, any theories who Kamala’s great grandmother is? Evidently it’s hinting a character to be ethnically reclaimed like Scarlet Scarab had been, but I can’t think of who it might be. Kamala’s power set most resembles Quasar’s so far, but I don’t know much about his or her (Phyla-Vell, represent!) to guess adversaries. I’m tentatively prone to doubt an Inhuman connection, unless the bangle is covered in terrigen crystals or something.

Also, the references to Kingo’s multiple generations of Bollywood movies was unexpected and hilarious.

Episode Three

Things I Liked:
+Muslim Wedding & dance number
+Talk with the Iman
+Nakia's entire dynamic
+Seeing who the villains are

Things I Didn't Like:
-the superhero stuff always feels like an afterthought.
-This is skewing younger than I'd prefer.

So another strong, fun, feel-good episode in the dramedy of Kamala Khan's life. I enjoyed the Muslim wedding and how fun & profound the service at the mosque looked with the I Dos. I also loved the wedding reception and how much choreography went into the dances and how much tradition was displayed. Again, I feel like audiences who've barely seen themselves positively depicted in media must be happy, and I'm thrilled to have a primer into a culture I know little about.

Nakia is starting to become my favorite character, someone who confidently and elegantly straddles the worlds of tradition and modernity, and who in some ways feels like the platonic ideal that Kamala chases. Nakia's caginess and duty are a joy to behold, as is how simple and authentic her relationship with Kamala is.

I'm also happy to learn who the apparent villains of the series are: Damage Control and Clan Destine. I read a handful of classic Damage Control comics and have enjoyed how they've become an odious government agency in the MCU. I know next to nothing about Clan Destine, save that they exist, are apparently family, and that's about it. It seems like this show will be changing them significantly, as has been the MCU way for awhile now.

As others have noted, MS. MARVEL feels like a bigger budgeted Disney Channel show, and if I'm honest, I'm starting to get frustrated with how kiddie it can sometimes feel and how slow the show's pace is. The dramedy is fine, but there were no superheroics until the last act of the show, and it was scarcely more impressive than CW fare. One of Clan Destine is a belt dude? Another has a staff? That's it? Will they get more impressive later? I realize Kamala is still learning the ropes, but I want to see a stronger balance of her trying to be a superhero while trying to live her life. Right now, the superheroing stuff feels like a once-a-week after school elective.

I think this is a bigger problem with serial formatted, hour long superhero shows, but it's harder to have the same balance of action and drama that you get in animated shows or in comics. A given superhero cartoon tends to have 3 or more action scenes, all while keeping the dramatic tension high. You can get away with that in 30 minute animated shows where that strains the budget of hour-long, live action fare. I'll never say that the MCU live action shows are bad --well, maybe LOKI and FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER-- but I feel like all these shows have a pacing tradeoff that's hard to reconcile.

Episode Four

Things I Liked:
+Thematic connection of rebelliousness between Kamala, her mother, and her grandmother.
+Kamala as always being a bit of an outsider, no matter where she goes.
+More discussion about the Partition.

Things I Didn't Like:
-Traveling to Pakistan
-How boring Clan Destine and, to a lesser extent, the Red Daggers are
-Marvel's narrative trends, especially when telling stories of POC.

Episode 4 was a step down for me, as the journey to India deprived the show of a good chunk of its recurring cast, abandoned the consequences of the wedding disaster, and reset the stakes to essentially a new pilot episode. Why hasn't Kamala been punished for basically anything since the pilot? How insanely wealthy are the Khans that Kamala and her mother can fly to Pakistan on a whim? And if that's the case, how does Kamala's brother have nothing in his checking account?

My impression from professional reviewers, especially those with desi heritage was that the episode was very moving and that they felt seen by the authentic depiction of Pakistan and the casting of Bollywood actors in the major roles of the Red Daggers.

I liked all the conversations between Kamala, her mother, and her grandmother, discussing the Partition, their personalities, and their backstories. To me, the real triumph of MS. MARVEL is in being a Disney Channel-tone dramedy within multiple generations of a Pakistani-American family...

...because the superhero stuff continues to flatline for me. Clan Destine are just folks who specialize in a single weapon? Thrilling. Red Daggers are just folks who throw knives? Amazing. The low-stakes fight scenes that continue to feel low-stakes and small? Yay. It all just feels like the CW, but better-written and with a vaguely higher budget.

It doesn't help that I'm noticing trends in Marvel's shows and movies about People of Color. Marvel Studios has been leaning into different ethnicities in its casting, and that's fantastic. Characters are being reclaimed by the people they've depicted for sometimes decades. It's odd, though, that so many of them have had to take trips to their ancestral homelands to discover their true selves and that they're often genetically predisposed to power. You see this in BLACK PANTHER, SHANG-CHI, MOON KNIGHT, and now MS. MARVEL and there begins to be a vibe that their ethnicity is their superpower. Something about that feels like another kind of stereotyping.

I can't blame any non-White creatives for leaning into the kind of easy I-am-the-true-king stories that Whites have done for centuries, but at the same time, there's something oddly nativist about it and potentially regressive. There's an authoritarian, eugenics-friendly bent to this that makes me a little uncomfortable, jusy as it does when I see it in stories about White 'true heirs to the throne' or whatnot. It doesn't feel as progressive to be the inheritor of power and glory so much as it is to be the perpetual underdog railing against the system.

I still think that MS. MARVEL is a good, smart show, but I have concerns about this trend in Marvel Studios' productions. We'll have to see what happens in their future projects.

Episode Five

Things I Liked:
+Partition-era romantic drama
+Three generations of healing

Things I Didn’t Like:
-The superhero stuff
-Clan Destine being just kinda there

Episode Five was a well-acted, romantic, tragic, and heartwarming bit of backstory for the Khan family, showing the history of Aisha, Hasan, and Sona, and the expected historical loop role that Kamala plays in it. It’s well-crafted and touching and is used both to show the generational divide between her, her mother, and her grandmother, but also to heal those generation wounds and knit them closer together. It’s good stuff.

The superheroics immediately afterward kind of felt like they came out of nowhere and were anticlimactic, with Najme not really being a threat and basically offing herself and the rest of Clan Destine doing the same. Weird not to have them last into the finale and embody the worst aspects of the Partition or India’s ongoing extremism along religious lines… but I can’t blame the show for rightly making Damage Control the real villains.

…but I can blame the tail end of the show for, again, being anticlimactic and feeling very tacked onto what was otherwise a family drama through and through. The more this show goes, the less interested it seems in telling a superhero story. I get it -if I was an underserved audience given Marvel money, you’d bet I’d pitch something intensely personal and pitch all kinds of retcons and updates to make my thematic goals work. The problem is, this just wasn’t an elegant close to the episode, and I wonder how much stronger the Clan Destine stuff would’ve been if it’d all been saved for the finale, along with Kamala’s mother discovering her secret. This all feels like a series finale where the Bruno & Kamran stuff setting up the finale as some kind of encore.

Hopefully it’s more elegant than this was, but I suspect it will feel rushed like the other Disney+ finales have.

Episode Six

Things I Liked:
+Cultural Reclamation
+Some of the superhero stuff

Things I Didn't Like:
-Kamala had no part in creating her own identity
-Home Alone High School
-The post-credits
-The Disney Channel vibe of the whole thing
-American realities

As expected, the finale episode was the big, action extravaganza where Ms. Marvel finally wears her comic book costume and has a token superhero fight. That was frustrating because she didn't design her own outfit or choose her own superhero name, meaning no part of her is of her own agency, which is completely opposite to her comic book origin and persona.

In fact, Ms. Marvel's geeky rebelliousness faded away as the series progressed to a more generic pluckiness that I found as annoying as how Disney Channel kiddie much of this episode's drama and action was. I dunno, maybe knowing how hellbent Dever was on bagging the supes and how murderous American cops are of POC that I struggled to believe Damage Control's SWAT team getting repeatedly punked by a bunch of high schoolers.

I also have problems with the show depicting hero cops standing up to Damage Control. After the series worked so hard to have an anti-authoritarian message with Damage Control's one rogue agent's villainy and racism, it absolutely faceplants with this decision. It's particularly hard to swallow having seen a cop checking his phone during the Uvalde mass shooting. And it has a Punisher skull, because American cops have adopted it as their White supremacist gang sign and why hasn't Marvel of Disney done something about it?

I also didn't enjoy Kamala randomly turning into Carol Danvers in the post credits. In the comic, Kamala polymorphing into her was a tragic point about how POC in America feel tremendous pressure to conform to White standards of beauty. The transformation here doesn't mean anything; it's just a series plug.

I guess it's a big deal that Bruno said Kamala was a mutant and we heard the 90s X-Men sting (is that going to be the X-Men movie's theme song? I kinda hope so)? Given what we know about Noor, it seems like an unnecessary overcomplication, but a clear indication that Marvel Studios ain't touching the Inhumans for a LONG time. If that ain't an F-U to Ike Perlmutter, I don't know what is.

I realize that many of my complaints are me differing with the form of the show, and if I'm completely honest, [i]at the end of the day, this was still a fun, family-friendly show[/u] about a Pakistani-American girl discovering that she has superpowers and in using them, helps heal her family's generational trauma. It's fine. It's inoffensive. I'm glad there were so many people of Pakistani and MENA descent in front of and behind the camera. That's wonderful.

I just wish the show had been smarter with a little more mature sensibilities.

The toxic fan culture is indeed a problem, and one I don't know how to address or even know if it can be addressed at all.

I feel like it's a consequence to some degree of how we were treated for our love of this stuff in the 90s and earlier. Being a comicbook fan at that time meant that everybody around you was just waiting for you to grow out of this stupid kids' stuff and develop an interest in real man stuff like football and beer and trucks or whatever.

And now that these characters are mainstream acceptable, like how the bro-iest of bros now like to plaster the Punisher's logo on their cars to show how interested they are in murder, I can understand the feeling of wanting to lash out whenever it comes under perceived threat.

Like to me, Martin Scorcese whining about how these movies aren't REAL movies just felt like that old "When are you losers going to grow up?" bullcrap a lot of us dealt with back in the day.

But the other stuff, yeah, I got nothing for that. B****ing and moaning about Captain Marvel because Brie Larson challenged your fragile white masculinity one time, getting upset about a chaste gay kiss in The Eternals, taking offense at Black Panther celebrating African cultures, and on and on and on... maybe it's just that I don't want to claim them as fans, but those guys can just hop off a cliff to summon the Soul Stone. They're no more real fans than all the racist Star Wars agitators.

Agreed with all that, friend.

For a good year, it felt like every outlet was asking prestige cinema talent if they wanted to make a "Marvel Movie," and we had a nonstop barrage of clickbait takes from creators who were happy to decry Marvel's effect on the film industry (and as I've said above, I don't believe Marvel's success is responsible for Hollywood's shying away from risky, original IP)...

...and it's absolutely hard being a comic fan reading comments like that. As you say, up until the 10s, caring about comics was considered an embarrassing hobby. Reading comments like that now from creators and talent feels intensely invalidating when it suddenly(finally) feels like Hollywood is focusing on making content that's speaking directly to us. I don't blame anyone for feeling hurt by that. I feel a pang of hurt every time I read comments like that... but I also try to keep in mind the broader context of what the creative is saying and talking about --and how annoying it must be for a prestige creator to be asked about something very mainstream and not related to the project they're promoting. Their annoyance isn't necessarily about the franchise; it's a reaction to them not being validated and/or their reaction to changing dynamics in Hollywood.

...likewise, it's absolutely hard also being a film person, seeing that, and also seeing where movie theaters have lost many of the low-to-mid-budget genre films that dominated in the 90s and 00s and knowing both a combination of studio cowardice, streaming dominance, and an ever-more-selective audience is to blame. I don't blame audiences for going to quality, and --funny thing-- MCU movies have a pretty consistent level of quality that you can't guarantee with other films. But I do always want to encourage everybody to see as much as they can, because that fosters deeper discussion and film understanding --things that help audiences be more discerning and seek out -and by their wallet demand- more robust films.

Real complicated situation. Real complicated feelings.

Honestly, I'm just happy these films are getting made because, again, it mostly feels like being seen and respected.

Discussing episode 1 of Ms. Marvel:


Oh, I have been looking forward to this! Kamala is my second favourite superhero, so I was very excited to see her join the MCU.

So far, I'm not dissapointed. In terms of personality and role, Kamala and her supporting cast all feel pretty much spot-on to their comic book counterparts. Any slight changes I've noticed don't bother me.
The general tone and themes of the original comic run also feel similar to this.

I was a little worried about when the show would get to the superhero stuff (directly, not just the fan girling, which was also great), but in the end, I'm satisfied with how much ground episode 1 covered.


Now for some more specific points:

So far, I relate to both sides of the clash between Kamala and her parents. I recognise that her parents are being strict, but I also recognise that they made a genuine attempt to compromise. That whole "Big Hulk, Little Hulk" idea felt like they put in real effort to make her happy, and I loved how excited they were about it.
Of course, it wasn't what Kamala was looking for, especially since she had her heart set on being Captain Marvel, and the resulting conflict was fittingly sad for everyone involved.

I like the change from a generic party in the comics to the Avengers Con here. It feels like this event is more personally important to Kamala. It's also a great excuse to have her cosplay as Captain Marvel, which helps with a point I'll bring up below.

With how many times they teased Kamala putting on the armband, I would have been upset if she didn't end up putting it on by the end of this episode. But she did, and she even got to use it a few times, so I'm happy.

Speaking of the armband, there's the subject of her new powers. So far, they're fine. I very much appreciate that Kamala's first act of heroism was to save Zoe with an oversized hand (even if this one was just a hardlight construct), since that matches the comics. The specific scenario is different, but the homage was clear and appreciated.

The lack of shape shifting takes something away from the "What does a hero look like?"-part of Kamala's journey, but having her literally cosplay as Captain Marvel helps to still show the same idea.
I assume she'll keep wearing that costume for her first few outings, before she learns to be herself as a hero.

One aspect of her new powers I'm quite excited about, is that it gives me a great excuse to design a new HeroClix dial for her. The power change will make it easy to make this dial different from previous Kamala dials. I'll definitely be designing one after the season concludes, and I look forward to see the one you design, too, Squabbler.

As a final note, I love the way the credits segment uses a bunch of art from the comics. It's nice to see.

Definitely agree with all that! The situation with her parents is so fantastic, and Kamala's outbursts about the Hulk cosplay is such a great moment on a script drama level. Kamala goes from thinking it's bad that she can't go, to feeling hopeful that she can go with her parents' permission, to blowing it so badly that she both can't go and she's hurt her parent's feelings. Superlative "all is lost" moment.

It'll be interesting to see how our dials vary! I suspect yours is going to be very mechanically-crunchy and have all kinds of awesome effects. I think I'll have to wait until the end of the season to start dialing (that had been my mistake with Moon Knight), but so far adding temporary terrrain with knockback and placement effects seems to be the ticket.

So, here's a fun question for everybody:

How do we feel about Avengers-Con?

I think this is a more complicated question than it seems. For us, the viewers, yeah, it's absolutely fun seeing a convention on steroids memorializing some of the biggest moments of the MCU...

...but how does it look to people who live within the MCU?

Bear in mind, the Avengers have low key done a lot of shady stuff for which they've never truly been held resonsible.

-Most, if not all of the Avengers have had a body count.
-Captain America was fighting against government regulations after Scarlet Witch's actions killed civilians abroad.
-Captain America was a fugitive from justice who trashed an airport in Germany. He also aided and abetted an internationally hunted assassin who killed a ton of civilians.
-Which is nothing compared to Iron Man & Hulk's fight that destroyed a neighborhood in an African city.
-...or that Hulk contributed to devastating Harlem.
-Black Widow's whole thing is she's done a ton of murders and alternates between feeling bad about it and continuing to do wetwork globally.
-Was Iron Man's choice to undo the Snap in that way instead of rewinding time to before it happened more harmful than not? (we've barely seen any of life during the Blip, but we know that there were big, emotional, long-lasting effects.
-How much property damage has Thor's powers caused and has anyone been inadvertently killed by him calling Mjolnir?
-Black Panther is ALL ABOUT creating international incidents.
-How many people were killed during Ant-Man's heist at Pym Tech?
-Additionally, prior to the events of Avengers 2, the Avengers themselves were not well-loved, as evidenced by anti-Avengers grafitti and by resistance to Iron Man's drones.

Although the Avengers saved the universe from Thanos and individually saved the world from several other threats, they are still an infamous vigilante group without real checks and balances that we've ever seen (General Ross' oversight appears to be a paper tiger) and who have wrought a frankly insane amount of collateral damage.

Would there be an Avengers-con in this universe? Or, if it was, would it feel creepy and fascist, like valorizing The Seven in THE BOYS?

(note: Captain Marvel's in a safety bubble here because she didn't commit any collateral damage or civilian deaths as an Avenger or in her movie that I saw. Same for Doctor Strange, who at all points minimizes civilian deaths. That said, both have killed their fair share of villains -which is still extrajudicial punishment)

Discussing episode 2 of Ms. Marvel:

Overall, I liked it a lot.

I’m also an outsider to this culture, but it seems to be represented well, showing that people within it can be very different. Just like the comics it’s based on. So I hope a lot of people can see aspects of themselves represented fairly here.

The superhero stuff is also moving at a good pace, with Kamala slowly getting the hang of her powers. The slow walk switching to a full-speed run, when she had to rescue that kid, was great stuff.
Since they seem to have dropped the connection to the Inhumans, with all their fictional history and culture, I like that they instead doubled down on making a connection to Kamala’s family's own history and culture.

I also recognised a few weird moments in the script. Most notably, how did Kamala’s mom agree to her going to Zoe’s “intimate get together” so easily? She mentioned Bruno would be there as reassurance, but surely that just confirmed it would be a party with boys, right?
And yet, her mom was completely fine with it, when she wouldn’t let her go to the convention without her dad last time.

I’ll be interested to see what they do with Kamran in this version. It can’t be exactly like the comics, but there’s enough setup here to hit some similar beats.

That's a great point about her mother allowing her to go to the party. After a screw up as profound as Kamala's in the previous episode and especially with Mrs. Khan's hinted backstory being as traumatic and defining as it was. Just felt too easy of a narrative decision and out of Mrs. Khan's character, imho. I read the scene as giving Kamala more agency to keep her more in control, but it just didn't play right, giving the magnitude of previous events.

But that's still a minor concern for the show that's doing so much else right, imho.

Agreed

Waiting to start Ms. Marvel although clearly I don't mind the spoilers, but I finally got to rewatch Eternals this weekend and it's much, much better on re-viewing now that I know what it's up to. It's critical to the understanding of the film that everything we see in the first hour is a lie; somehow that landed with a thud in theaters but makes it a lot clearer now. There's so much great, subtle work here.

- This is a movie about love; the words "love" and "family" are there a lot. It's striking that Sersi's "first words" are about Earth's beauty, and that everyone's motivations are based on love (Ajak lets the Eternals live their life out of maternal love for them; Sersi rebels out of love for humanity; Thena gets to keep her memories thanks to Gil's love for her; Sprite's betrayal is out of her love of Ikaris; ultimately Ikaris relents out of love for Sersi).
- Also striking as a counterpart - I can't imagine Arishem's phrasing of "plant my seed" is unintentional, as a more forceful, clinical, and nonconsensual relationship the Celestials have with the universe.
- I also noticed that Ikaris tends to keep his distance - he doesn't shake Dane's hand, he doesn't respond to Ajak's maternal affection, and even his fighting style emphasizes a long-range laser-beaming instead of rumbling up close and personal if he can help it. Again, that's a counterpart to the very touchy-feely relationships we see between Gil + Thena, Druig + Makkari, etc.

This is also a movie about evolution and growth - there's almost a bladerunner "do androids dream" sort of vibe to its question on whether creatures like the Eternals, literally created to not grow or evolve, can be more than they were made to be. I think this theme gets a bit muddier, but maybe they're saving it for the sequel?

I think this movie is actually really great now, and I'm thankful for Squabbler and ya'll for helping me prepare to rewatch this movie in a new light .

Whoa. My friend, these are some damn impressive insights and strong, thematic reads of the material. All three points -but particularly the second two- blow my mind and are great things to notice about all the film's subtle details. That third point about Ikaris' staging and tactics... dang. Great observations!

I think part of the issue with ETERNALS was that Chloe Zhao's approach demands subtle reads and she trusts audiences to do so -her previous films did just that. I think the difference is the subtext of Marvel films like THOR: RAGNAROK or GOTG2 aren't required to understand the films' full breadth, but it's helpful if you pick up on them. It didn't help that the film's first act isn't as elegant as it could be.

I've seen another reviewer point out that leaving Ikaris' betrayal a third act twist prevents the audience from knowing the stakes throughout the film, which can make the first 2/3rds feel ponderous. I'd be curious to see a recut of the film where we know the truth very early on and every moment with Ikaris is Hitchcockian dramatic irony suspense: the audience knows the bomb under the table... but when will it go off?!

Discussing episode 3 of Ms. Marvel:

I also enjoyed the wedding a lot. It looked like a fun celebration.

I somewhat agree with the slow pace being an issue. I would have liked a bit more balance between down time and action. However, I love seeing all these comic characters come to life on the screen, so I'm still enjoying it.

I do hope we get Kamala's comic-accurate suit fairly soon, preferably in the next episode, since we're running out of time to see her do cool stuff in it.
Especially since I've heard rumors that it'll be redesigned somewhat for "The Marvels", so this season might be the only time she wears the comic-accurate version.

Now for the villains: The Clandestines/Djinn/"we've had many names" group.
From what I've been able to find, Clan Destine is a less-than-benevolent super-powered family with ties to the Djinn (who are like sinister genies), but that's where the similarities stop.
It seems like they just needed a new name that wasn't mutants or Inhumans. I'm okay with that. Though I agree with you that their fight scenes were a bit underwhelming.

But we did learn that the bangle belongs to a pair, and if you have both, you can travel to the Clandestine's home dimension. That sounds a lot like the Nega Bands and possibly the Negative Zone. That keeps the connection to the Kree, and the severed hand they got the bangle from certainly looked blue to me.
Of course, they might fuse the lore together with that of the Quantum Bands to avoid confusion. So we might still get Quasar, too.

I'm excited to see how much of this comic stuff they'll use.

Discussing episode 4 of Ms. Marvel:

I'm still enjoying the show overall.

I like that Kamala seems to be settling into her own fighting style more, even if her opponents aren't as interesting.
I also like that her look from this episode seems like a step towards her comic book costume, though it looks increasingly likely that she'll barely spend any time in the finished suit, which is disappointing. That's a serious bummer.

The younger Red Dagger seems similar to his comic book counterpart, so that's fun. Connecting everyone to the Clandestine lore is obviously a departure from the comics, but I'm on board for now.

The Inhumans are also an example of genetics and heritage making you speical, so in that sense, I don't mind them doing the same here. And tying this version to her cultural heritage seems like a good idea to me. But if it's becoming an overused trope, then I get that it's not as good an idea. I hadn't noticed that trend.

I worry about the pacing of the show, and I agree that going to Karachi doesn't exactly help in that regard. It seems like a portion of the next episode will be spent on a flashback to the train station, so there's not much time left to give every plot thread a satisfying conclusion.

At the very least, Kamala needs to fully become Ms. Marvel, since that's who she needs to be in "The Marvels". That's what's needed for this show to have served its purpose, but a lot more is needed for it to be a good story.

Yeah, Kamala's costume is another thing annoying me about the show. It's not expressly the show's fault, but a feature of live action comic book adaptations that the protagonist rarely gets to create their own costume. Kamala creating her costume in the comics is super meaningful because it's completely an expression of her; not as much inflections upon her by other characters.

Haha there's other MCU specific stuff that's amusing but not a problem. This episode showed us the long awaited material + pictures = diorama exposition that we've been doing since IRON MAN. You can set your watch by it.

I'm willing to bet the train Partition episode will be profound in the way of Kamala's family drama and she'll wind up being the creator of the trail of stars her grandmother used, but yeah... I suspect we're going to wind up with yet another MCU show where the finale episode feels rushed and oddly unsatisfying. Like, it's WILD that we set up how oppressive Damage Control is and how Kamala's friendship with Nakia is crumbling and we just... leave them hanging, likely to get a rushed half-resolution in the season finally.

I suspect the problem is that most of these shows are designed to be 6 episodes long to fill out the weeks between theatrical releases. That's good for keeping the MCU one thing at a time... but most of these shows -save debatably for WHAT IF...? have all felt to have shorted some major aspect of themselves and have left the finale open ended enough to feel like it lacks the consequences and resolutions necessary to have a solid series conclusion.

I also suspect that because Marvel Studios listens to feedback, this will be something they attempt to correct in coming years, either with longer seasons, or likely with more story economy.

What I really want is to see a broader array of superpowers from ClanDestine and the Red Daggers, if only to have something interesting to dial. At this rate, I may only dial Kamala, her friends, her mother & father as a duo, Red Dagger's leader, Red Dagger generics, ClanDestine's leader, and ClanDestine generics. Those last four are going to look awfully similar : /

I’ve always loved that Kamala’s comic suit was made from a burkini. That always felt clever and fitting, since a lot of female superhero costumes end up looking like swimsuits. But the Avengers video game didn’t keep that, so I didn’t expect the tv-show to keep it, either.

In the comics, Red Dagger is just one guy: The young man called Kareem. He’s a vigilante/hero who has no powers. So I wouldn’t want the Red Daggers to have powers. The big focus on knives is comic accurate.

And based on that, I would also say that Kareem is more important to dial than the older Red Dagger.
But did we even see any other Red Daggers, except for those two? Two (non-generic) dials are all you need for them.

The Clandestine could definitely stand to be more interesting, though. Especially since Kamran has Inhuman powers in the comics.