Spoilers

A return to New Jersey as the DODC make their move…

Ms Marvel ends in triumph. Of all the MCU shows it ends with the best landing. It’s a little neat but was surprisingly well put together – especially since episode 5 felt like it could have been a season finale in its own right.

In many ways this is a simple episode – Kamala returns from Pakistan. Upon arriving she’s faced with the Department of Damage Control running out of hand, launching explosive ordinance in civilian areas and attacking children. She deals with it.

Except it’s much more than that.

We have some more excellent family moments, with previous relationships turned on their head (there’s a wonderful little discussion about trust that flips the one Kamala had about going to AvengerCon).

What’s even more fun and full of joy is the team-up battle at Kamala’s school. It’s full of lovely moments and had the kind of energy I want from showing ordinary people doing extraordinary things. No reaching for guns, no inflicting real harm but resistance with the tools at hand and the people you trust by your side.

This episode also did something I think will be missed by many – it showed how the marginalised resist when power wants to tramp over them. It doesn’t push back, it doesn’t fight – it shifts its position, bends with the wind but retains who it is. When power comes we resist by remaining who we are even under pressure.

This is exemplified by advice from Sheikh Abdullah who quotes Lincoln and then reminds those resisting that their resistance is most powerful when they remain themselves and do not let those they are resisting shape them or their actions.

It could be seen as an ideal to be aimed for and in many ways it is. However, this kind of resistance is firstly a survival mechanism. As a minority I’ve tried both types of resistance and it’s only when I’ve chosen the kind exemplified here that I’ve not then been damaged by the experience. It is a learned response and one that’s no less frustrating because having to resist at all is always distressing.

Most of all, resisting power on its own terms nearly always leads to escalation and in those cases those with less power always lose.

For many types of oppressive power this is exactly what they want – the less powerful to take up arms, to give them an excuse to cast off restraint and freely erase those they are seeking to harm.

Allies often don’t understand this. They ask ‘why not fight back?’ because they do not understand how asymmetry of power works.

Resistance of the kind shown here in Ms Marvel is nearly always the kind that helps us, works for us, but most of all, preserves our identities in the face of hostility.

Two scenes in particular struck me as radical (although the way they’re presented make them feel cosy). The first is how the people at the mosque resist with kindness and complete compliance; stalling and slowing down those who seek their harm and see them as, at best, obstacles and at worst co-conspirators.

The second is a scene right at the end that put me in mind of footage of how allies and neighbours have blocked deportations by turning out en masse and resisting those who seek to isolate the vulnerable.

There’s a funny little moment that permits New York police a kind of quasi-redemption when they side with their community. It’s back handed in that the police make a stand which felt powerfully emotive. However, they then entirely back off and let the antagonists have their way. It reminded me strongly of how many police officers stood with BLM protestors during daylight hours and then shot at, kettled and abused those same people after dark.

Could the Department of Damage Control have been a different type of antagonist? Possibly. Except this is a show that’s foregrounded the experience of first and second generation immigrants and in that context, law enforcement isn’t your friend. Worse still, for those fleeing persecution where they’ve only ever experienced law enforcement as a tool of oppression, it can be hard to cast the police as anything except dangerous. For Ms Marvel it balanced this by showing it was people acting beyond their authority. I wasn’t sure in earlier episodes; they felt like a second rate antagonist but it works because of the way they engage in this last part of the series.

So a fantastic ending. Neatly tied up for once (if a little too neatly). I would have watched another six episodes of this family quite happily, letting the characters breathe, letting them explore their relationships more deeply and seeing how Kamala’s changed identity impacts her neighbourhood. That is the mark of a show that’s worked.

There’s also a really rather significant moment at the end where a single word and a cracking audio cue are used to describe Kamala and it opens up the MCU for the team of superheroes we really want to see join the Avengers on screen.

Rating? 9 proud mothers out of 10.

Stewart Hotston