5 Reasons Ms. Marvel Should Be Marvel’s Next Network TV Show

Once Agents of SHIELD has crawled its way to the gruelling finishing line of its fifth or sixth season, it will be humanely put out of its misery. Unloved yet constrained by the movie franchise which birthed it, its death will be mourned by only its most die hardcore fans. Farewell Coulson, Daisy Johnson, Melinda May and Fitzsimmons. You deserved better.

After it’s gone to the great syndicated cloud in the sky, there will be a prime time gap in ABC’s Tuesday schedule. Given Agents of SHIELD‘s underwhelming exploits post -season two, Disney will think twice about putting another superhero show in its place. It would need to be the right show, to be able to stand on its own feet while still weaving in and out of the wider Marvel movieverse.

Enter Kamala Khan, teenage Muslim high-schooler living in Jersey City, but as of 2014 also a super-powered Inhuman with body morphing powers. After getting her own comic series in February 2014, Kamala took up the former moniker of her hero Carol Danvers (set to appear as Captain Marvel in the upcoming movie) and has quickly become a pop culture hit.

Why should the new Ms. Marvel get her own TV show, though? We’re glad you asked.

 

1. She’s Marvel’s best creation since Spider-Man

Comic book fans, hear us out. It’s been an incredibly long time since the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby era of relentless creativity which brought us Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men. Since the Lee-Kirby era though, the number of new characters to catch on has steadily turned into a drought. The last new Marvel character to muscle their way into mainstream pop culture was Deadpool, and the merc with the mouth was created in 1991.

Here’s why Kamala Khan is destined to be the next. In the space of only two years she has become the avatar of the modern fangirl and fanboy, capturing what it feels like to love comics and video games and be a teenager at our moment in history. In many ways she has found the most elusive part of Spider-Man’s original success formula: relatability. The parallels with Spidey don’t end there: she’s a high schooler, and not one of the cool popular kids either. While Peter Parker is a bullied science geek Kamala struggles to reconcile her Muslim family upbringing with the expectations involved in being a normal American teenager.

The modern version of the audience who fell in love with Spider-Man are already falling in love with Ms. Marvel.

 

2. Her story could stretch over long TV Seasons

Many fans have pegged Kamala Khan as the potential star of a future movie series, and she could easily warrant one. We’ll get to that in a little while, but what’s obvious from her comics is how many potential stories there are in her world. High school hijinks and family drama have always been deep pits from which to mine television stories. Saved by the Bell, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars testify to the former, while every second sitcom ever made proves the latter.

For those who haven’t delved into G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel comics, we’ll cover just a few parts of Kamala’s life. She attends high school in Jersey City, where her Pakistani heritage leaves an invisible gap between her and many of her classmates. But she’s also got a best friend in the form of Bruno, who works part time at the local corner store and helps her fight crime. He’s also got a serious thing for Kamala, who seems to be blissfully ignorant of it. Early on there’s also the case of the disappearing school kids and her first supervillain, which could easily make a season long arc. All in all it’s a lot to chew on.

 

3. She Might be as marketable as the Frozen sisters

Have you been in a shop lately? Any shop will do, they all count. Yes? Okay, now have you been in a shop that doesn’t have some form of Frozen merchandise in it?

In a way which probably caught a lot of people at Disney off guard, Anna and Elsa of Frozen have taken off in a big way. In some stores they seem to take up as much as half of all Disney merchandise. This is Disney we’re talking about; with Star Wars, Marvel and all the Disney Princess stuff already in their arsenal. Now remember how many kids were annoyed they couldn’t get hold of Rey action figures after Star Wars 7 came out at Christmas. Imagine a character who mixed the marketability of both Frozen and the Marvel movies. Now try and tell us Kamala Khan isn’t going to crush it in merch sales.

 

4. She’s not another troubled white guy

“Damn it! I knew this guy was one of those SJWs. Just because a character is a woman or from an ethnic minority doesn’t mean they’re automatically better than white guy characters. Soon there won’t be a single movie with a white guy protagonist. Melissa McCarthy ruined Ghostbusters! RIP my childhood.”

Someone, somewhere on the internet is thinking this as they read. Please, let me assure you that your white guy movies are not going anywhere. In fact most stories given mainstream exposure still follow the “troubled white guy saves the day” model. It’s basically the boiled down plot of every Marvel movie, and it doesn’t make them bad. Some Marvel movies are really good. Thing is, there are only so many different versions of white guy saves the day and Marvel have nearly run through them all.

They’ve done the wisecracking narcissistic white guy saves the day (Iron Man), earnest white guy saves the day (Captain America), fantasy hero white guy saves the day (Thor) and zany wisecracking white guy saves the day (Guardians of the Galaxy). There aren’t many more places to go, so why can’t Kamala Khan save the world for once? And if  you can’t enjoy a story unless the hero is the same gender and ethnicity as you, we’re going to have a problem, buddy.

 

5. She’s Marvel’s last hope for an Inhumans Movie franchise

Oh Marvel, what happened to the Inhumans movie? Remember back in 2014, when you made your glitzy Phase 3 announcement? All those new movies, the Avengers Infinity War thing, Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr making pretend fisticuffs at each other? You also announced an Inhumans movie for the far future time of November 2018. Then, all of a sudden, it’s release date was much more opaque.

To our knowledge the uncertainty surrounding the Inhumans movie has something to do with internal politics at Disney and Marvel. Kevin Feige, producer on all the Marvel Cinematic Universe films may or may not be involved, it’s all too much  rumourmongering for us.

The Inhumans are only really a thing right now on Agents of SHIELD, where Daisy Johnson (formerly Skye) is one of them. If Marvel really want to give the Inhumans franchise a real go, though, Kamala Khan is the only real candidate to play the lead. Within the comics the Inhumans are somewhat akin to the scheming houses on Game of Thrones, with a ruling family as well as a secret city hidden on the ass side of the moon.

For something that convoluted to be shoehorned into the Marvel movies at this point, we’re going to need one hell of an audience surrogate character. Enter Ms. Marvel, hot off the heels of a successful TV run.

See, I told you we’d find her a movie franchise in the end.