Marvel Studios‘ The Marvels is taking superhero fans higher, further, and faster thanks to the Captain Marvel sequel’s confidence, heart, slickly-directed action scenes, and more! Despite the film’s mediocre performance at the box office this past weekend, The Marvels is getting great word of mouth and boasts an Audience Score of 84% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. A highlight of the film is Iman Vellani’s silver screen debut as Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, teams up with Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) and Captain Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) to defeat Dar-Benn, a scorned leader of the Kree Empire. The flerken-filled sequel finds Kamala living her dream of fighting alongside her idol, Captain Marvel and leveling up as a valued member of the superhero community. I will spoil a thing or two about the film in the next paragraph, so steel yourselves or risk it all for some fantastic insight into a particular scene and Kamala’s possible future in the MCU.
Spoilers for The Marvels begin here! Please don’t say I didn’t warn you!
At the end of The Marvels, Kamala Khan does her best Nick Fury impression while trying to recruit Hawkeye’s Kate Bishop to the Young Avengers. When asked about the scene, Vellani revealed she was supposed to drop in on a different character for the exciting scene.
“There was a version of this in an old script, but we never shot it. And then there were rumors that we were going to get to it in additional photography, but with a different young Avenger,” Vellani told THR. “So I never really got the script until right before additional photography and then I flipped out. I immediately rewatched Iron Man and texted Nia in all caps. I was like, ‘I cannot believe the honor that I am getting right now. This is crazy!’ I did not need to rewatch that entire movie, but it didn’t hurt. So I was giddy the entire time. All of us were freaking out. It was also the last scene we shot for the movie, and it is the last scene of the movie.”
Although Vellani doesn’t name the character, savvy Marvel fans could combine the pieces if they try hard enough.
Vellani also commented on the film’s mid-credits scene, featuring Kelsey Grammer’s Beast and Binary. It sounds like Marvel kept Vellani in the dark until the eleventh hour.
“They shot the mid-credit scene during principal [photography]. They shot it earlier, so they knew what they were doing. But I thought it was going to be something else. I did not realize Beast [Kelsey Grammer] was in it. I knew they shot it, but I was expecting to see something else. And lo and behold, they kept the secret even from me. I literally jumped and had a heart attack on my bed when I watched it for the first time. I literally texted every single person we worked with, and I was like, ‘How could you keep this from me?’ But at least I got to experience it as a fan, which was so cool. I’m just so excited to see what they do with that in the future.”
Finally, Vellani spoke about her hopes for a second season of Ms. Marvel on Disney+. “I am patient, and honestly, I hope all the love that Kamala is getting from this movie inspires people to be more vocal about wanting a season two,” Vellani said about the possibility of Kamala continuing her MCU journey in Ms. Marvel Season 2. “I would absolutely love to continue this story, and Kamala and her entire community has so much story left to tell. I want to see Bruno [Matt Lintz] again. I want to see Nakia [Yasmeen Fletcher] again, and that’s just me. So it would be really amazing to have a season two, and there’s so many different directions we can go with it.”
I’m a massive fan of Vellani’s portrayal of Kamala Khan. Ms. Marvel is currently my favorite Marvel Comics character, and I can’t imagine a world where Marvel Studios allows this character to slip through the cracks. Kamala is the closest thing Marvel has to a new Spider-Man-level character after Miles Morales, and if they were smart, they’d believe in her appeal to younger generations and place her front and center. Let’s go!