Super-fan Kamala Khan is determined to go to the inaugural AvengerCon – and cosplay as Captain Marvel – no matter what her parents say…

Ms Marvel is glorious. It is vibrant, snapping with a creativity and life affirming joy. The show is created and written by Bisha K Ali based upon the character created by Sana Amanat for Marvel Comics. There are a four directors across the series, Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah, Meera Menon and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy – two women and two men of South Asian heritage. In bringing a Muslim superhero to the screen, Disney has entrusted the job to people who understand the actual experience of being brown and non-Christian in America.

It’s at this point that I need to confess something and this will go to tone of the whole review. Three minutes into the show there’s a scene with the family going about their normal business and for no reason I could fathom I just burst into tears.

I stopped watching, tweeted about it, and then thought it through.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen people like me on screen living their lives as they might want to live them but it was the most unexpected thing – I felt like I’d walked into somewhere my own family might be.

I was overwhelmed with memories of my grandparents and how they treated us, how they always fed us, how everything was a problem they would tell us about while preaching on the need to be stoic in the face of if.

The parents here are stereotypes but of the kind that anyone like me will instantly recognise as based upon real people and real experiences. In other words, they’re the kind of stereotype that’s arisen from truth.

More than that, they are loving and caring and nuanced and in just this first episode alone we learn a huge amount about Kamala’s life and the rhythms it dances to. I wanted to immediately send Bisha an email thanking her for making so many of us immigrant children feel seen.

My own childhood had far less pressure than Kamala’s to conform to cultural norms – but I grew up in an age when to be brown in Britain was to try to be as white as possible and not get noticed. Kamala lives in an age where she can be herself (to a greater or lesser degree) and that change is celebrated right through this show.

It echoes the punchy attitude of Spider-Man Into the Spiderverse in all the best ways – with popping visuals, fantastic ways of integrating modern technology and delightful little moments of what it means to be young.

I think this is going to hit people like my daughter right in the mouth – they’re the same age as Kamala, facing the same issues and wrestling with the same questions. Given how well this series thundered out of the starting gates I can see it becoming a massive hit in a way perhaps only Loki has managed so far (even if Loki isn’t the best of the MCU TV shows – hello Moon Knight).

That’s not to say it’s not for anyone else. Far from it. Honestly, I was not ready for how good it was, how much it moved me.

There’s not a whole lot of actual Islam here but there is a whole lot of cultural knowledge and I think that’s the right approach. I don’t think any portrayal of a religion is going to please everyone because most belief systems come with as many different ways of practising as there are people but for me the balance felt both well struck but also inevitable and I don’t mean that as a criticism.

As for Kamala, she’s played with a wonderful sense of dazed energy by Iman Vellani. She doesn’t come across as child genius or precocious but as someone just wanting to be excited about things and to enjoy the place where she’s at.

There’s also a subtle thread here about the importance of fantasy and fiction in our lives that I hope gets taken further.

Verdict: This is only episode 1, so we have a long way to go, but I sincerely hope they keep this up because, for me, it’s the best opener to an MCU TV series yet.

Rating? 9 dippily happy older brothers out of 10.

Stewart Hotston