I’d say Ms. Marvel is meeting the hopes and expectations of most Kamala Khan fans, so far. Kamala has gotten her wish to be a superhero, but as she’s chased across the world by Djinns and shadowy government agencies, she’s learning that the superhero life is nothing like what she thought it would be. One of Kamala’s guiding lights, though, is her admiration of Carol Danvers. From the very start of the series, Kamala shows that she’s a hardcore Captain Marvel fangirl: her room is covered in Captain Marvel posters, she cosplays as Carol for AvengerCon, and she has a Youtube channel devoted, in part, to Captain Marvel lore.
But for a series about a Captain Marvel fan, Ms. Marvel has a weirdly large number of references to Thor.
Episode one’s AvengerCon is full of Thor references. There’s a New Asgard Tours booth, an Asgard Pride sign, a giant replica of Mjolnir, and probably more stuff in the background. But, I mean, it’s AvengerCon, so that’s understandable, right? Of course, there’d be a bunch of references to one of the original Avengers.
But then, in Episode 2, Kamala and Bruno find out that Kamala’s powers don’t come from her bangle, but rather from inside of her. Kamala’s eyes get wide. “Am I Asgardian?” she asks. “Am I related to Thor?”
Ha! Cool. Not unreasonable to wonder, I guess!
But then, in Episode 3, Bruno is studying the bangle and tells Kamala that if she uses it to send Najma and the other ClanDestines home, it could set off an explosion. How does Bruno know? Why, by studying the work of Erik Selvig, the Norwegian scientist who helped Thor and Jane is the first two Thor movies.
THEN, in Episode 4, when Waleed of the Red Daggers is filling Kamala in on the Djinns and the Noor dimension, he tells her that if Thor landed in the Himalayas, he’d be considered a Djinn, too.
That makes a Thor reference in every single episode. Why is the Ms. Marvel series so obsessed with Thor, even though the two heroes don’t have any inherent connection? Why is Thor constantly name-dropped instead of Captain Marvel? Here’s some wild speculation!
Marketing Gimmick or Tie-In?
The most likely explanation for all the references, given the timing, is that Ms. Marvel is building hype for Thor: Love and Thunder, which hits theaters July 8th. Ms. Marvel wouldn’t be the first Disney Plus show referencing an upcoming Marvel project. For example, WandaVision’s final commercial is about “Nexus,” a drug that allows the user to shape their own reality. Nexus is a reference to both nexus events in Loki and Wanda’s plot to travel to another reality in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Loki contains a quick reference to Multiverse of Madness, too, when Miss Minutes says that if the timeline were allowed to branch, it would lead to “madness.” If you want a quick and dirty explanation, it’s easy to chalk the Thor references up to marketing.
And yet. Both the WandaVision and Loki references signaled that those shows tied directly into Doctor Strange 2. It’d be kind of weird for Ms. Marvel to keep mentioning a property, over and over again, that it had nothing to do with. Plus, it’s not like Thor 4 needs the marketing boost—fans are already champing at the bit to get into those theaters.
So, could there be something deeper going on here? Could we see a Ms. Marvel/Thor team-up at some point, either later in the series or in The Marvels? After all, the Marvels and the Asgardians all like to hang out up in the cosmos, so they could conceivably bump into each other. Space isn’t that big, right?
Another, more mundane possibility is that showrunner Bisha K. Ali or someone else involved in the series is just a really, really big Thor fan. It’s just gotten fascinatingly conspicuous, is what I’m saying. And as a superfan of both Thor and Ms. Marvel, I get giddy at the thought of a team-up.
As always with Marvel, we’ll have to wait and see what they’re planning, if anything. Episode 5 will drop two days before Love and Thunder‘s release date, so if Kamala suddenly turns to the camera and says, “Hey, everyone, let’s go see Thor: Love and Thunder, due out on July 8!” then we’ll know for sure it was a marketing gimmick.
But then again, maybe they’re planting the seeds for something bigger down the line! What are your theories?
(featured image: Marvel)
