And here’s the part where I get personal, because, as a educatee of U.S. public schools I have to admit that I did not know what The Partition was before Ms. Marvel. I knew of British occupied India from literature (primarily Kipling) and my own further reading, but school absolutely failed me when it came to Asian history unless it directly related to U.S. history.
So with that in mind, and yes a grain of salt because t.v. should not be one’s source of historic knowledge, episode 5, set directly in the time of the partition with India splitting between India and Pakistan with a heavy British influence still lingering, was utterly fascinating. Maybe we should start teaching more history through super heroes. It would work!
Episode 5 flashes back to Kamala’s great grandmother, Aisha, the djinn bloodline that supposedly gives her her powers, and hints of the Red Dagger Brotherhood that Kamala has already met and worked with. Typically I’m not a fan for these kind of closed timeline plots, where strange things in the past are revealed to have happened because of people passing back into their own timelines via time travel. But it works a little better in the context of this story, given that so many of the themes of Ms. Marvel are about generational trauma.
So far Ms. Marvel has managed to give us a very solid, almost intimate backstory of this new super hero without the traditional, repetitive dump that began to wear on the genre in the early Aughts. It’s also interesting, and poignant to watch Kamala piece together her costume from the events and contributions of her friends and family.