Ms. Marvel, Marvel’s newest limited series on Disney Plus, has broken a new record: With just one episode out so far, it has now held the rank of the highest rated MCU project on Rotten Tomatoes. Yesterday, Ms. Marvel‘s score on the Tomatometer went up to 97%, with an 84% audience rating. Ms. Marvel even beat the masterpiece Black Panther, whose Tomatometer score is a 96%. Although Ms. Marvel’s score has since also gone down to 96%, tying it with Black Panther, the new series was briefly at the very top.
Rotten Tomatoes’s Tomatometer assigns a movie or series a score by dividing critics’ reviews into two categories: Fresh (positive) and Rotten (negative). It then calculates the percentage of reviews that are positive and uses that percentage to assign the score (not an average of each review score itself). For Ms. Marvel, that means that 96% of all reviews so far have been favorable. The percentage might continue to fluctuate as the series goes on and new reviews come in, but so far, it’s a testament to how great the series is.
Ms. Marvel tells the story of Kamala Khan, a 16-year-old Pakistani-American girl growing up in Jersey City. Kamala loves the Avengers, especially Captain Marvel, and fantasizes about being a superhero herself. When a bangle that she wears with her Captain Marvel cosplay outfit gives her cosmic powers, she suddenly gets her wish.
It’s easy to see why Ms. Marvel is performing so well. It isn’t just the momentum of Marvel’s ever-growing Disney+ presence, although that might be a factor. It isn’t just the Muslim representation Ms. Marvel offers, although that’s definitely a factor. The main thing driving Ms. Marvel’s meteoric rise is that the series is really, really well done. Iman Vellani absolutely sparkles as Kamala, with her ebullient personality and sly charm. The animation in the first episode, from the mixed media opening sequence to the text conversation playing out on asphalt and the sides of buildings, gives the show a fresh and playful feeling befitting a story about a geeky teenage superhero. There’s just so much to love about Ms. Marvel.
As of this writing, Ms. Marvel’s Rotten Tomatoes score is based on 179 critic ratings and 3017 audience scores. Here are a few of the top reviews:
Marvel does a great job of spotlighting facets of American culture that often go underrepresented, and Ms. Marvel’s spotlight of Islam is incredibly well done.
Sheri Flanders, Chicago Reader
Ms. Marvel is powered by humor and high energy.
Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times
It’s not just Kamala’s powers that make the future seem a little bit brighter — it’s her smile.
Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence
And then, of course, there’s our own Rachel Leishman’s review:
[Kamala is] so free and open to everything happening to her that she’s not afraid of embracing her powers in a way that many new superheroes are. She’s ready to take them on and train, and it’s so refreshing to see.
New episodes of Ms. Marvel drop every Wednesday!
(featured image: Marvel)
