Review: ‘Ms. Marvel’ Episode 6 — ‘No Normal’ Is Exactly What the Series Needed
The season (series?) finale of Ms. Marvel debuted today on Disney Plus, showing the conclusion of Kamala’s arc and teasing a lot about what’s ahead for the MCU. Let’s dive right into it!
Spoilers ahead for Ms. Marvel episode 6
The sixth and final episode of Ms. Marvel, titled “No Normal”, was directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who had already directed the premiere, and written by Will Dunn, AC Bradley, and Matthew Chauncey. This was by far the best episode since the first one, and the fact that Adil and Bilall directed both episodes is nothing but great news for Batgirl, which they also helmed.
While it relied a bit too much on the high-school-movie tropes for my liking, from incompetent law enforcement officers who were stopped by just mixing up two random chemical compounds or distracted by three kids in a hoodie, to the classic “let’s go to the high school during the night, that’s a safe place!”, the episode had a lot of heart. The kids vs. Damage Control sequences will probably be a lot of fun for the younger ones (I rolled my eyes multiple times), but there is a deeper message underneath that I think should not be overshadowed by the silliness of everything going around it.
I appreciated that in this episode they pretty much dumped the whole “other dimension” subplot and concentrated on Kamala saving the neighborhood. This is exactly what I wanted from the series, and even if we only saw it in the final one, I’ll take what I can get. As I discussed after watching episode 4, I didn’t like that they turned Ms. Marvel into another “saving the universe” adventure, so I love the fact that they completely dialed it back on this one. Kamala emerges as the hero of her community by the end, and seeing everyone circle around her by the end to protect their hero was as cathartic as you could get.
Ultimately, the episode was just a lot of fun. The dynamics of the Khans are always a standout, and I love that it was ultimately her parents who turned her into a superhero. It was her mother who gave her the costume, and her father who gave her the name, and all the apprehension they would have had in the first episode about her daughter’s outings was now turned into pride for her cause.
The Department of Damage Control were the big bads of the episode, and Alysia Reiner’s Agent Deever was almost turned into a cartoon villain, going after a bunch of kids with high-tech weaponry. But thankfully, Arian Moayed as Agent Cleary played the voice of reason and stated what everyone was thinking — what in the world are they doing storming a high school to chase a bunch of teenagers? He was one of the highlights of the episode for me, and I am already looking forward to the next time Moayed shows up in the MCU.
The episode then had not one but two nuclear bombs to drop on us. First, we have the reveal that Kamala Khan might be our first identified mutant in the MCU. I love how this just came out of left field — while we were all expecting Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to be our introduction to the X-Men in the MCU, or even Black Panther: Wakanda Forever later this year, Feige and the team at Marvel just surprised us by not only implying that there might be other mutants we haven’t identified yet, but also that Kamala is one of them. We will definitely learn more about this in the coming months, or maybe even next week at the San Diego Comic-Con panel.
At the same time, this could also recontextualize the entire season. If djinn is just another term for mutant, are mutants coming from another dimension? I would hate that, for the same reasons I was against this subplot — it is an unnecessary complication for a story that is already dealing with time travel and multiversal travel, and will lose viewers sooner rather than later if left unchecked. But does this mean that Kamran and his family are also mutants? There are a lot of questions about this, and I’m not sure how Marvel will move forward, but I really hope they knock it out of the park. Phase 4 has been slightly underwhelming, especially after the heights the MCU reached with Phase 3, but I also know it’s very early to say that, and I’m sure I’ll be eating my words very soon.
The second bomb was of course the post-credits scene. It was widely speculated that Carol Danvers would cameo in the series, both because she is Kamala’s idol but also because they both will be on a cosmic adventure together in next year’s The Marvels. But even then, I was surprised and very intrigued by the way she appeared — Carol simply swapped places with Kamala, possibly setting up the inciting incident of the movie, and also some very funny fish-out-of-water scenes that will probably happen during the first act of the film, for both characters.
Carol also has a brand-new look — she has yet another hairstyle different from the one she had in Endgame and then in the post-credits scene of Shang-Chi. She’s also looking thinner than ever, like she hasn’t been to the gym in months (something that we know is not the case for the actress). We will hopefully get some answers sooner rather than later, but for now, I thought this was fantastic — it was the perfect tease for what’s ahead, and we already know when the payoff will happen. It will be on July 28, 2023, and will happen in movie theaters all around the world.
So, what did you think of the finale and the entire series as a whole? Let us know!
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
