In an interview published today, July 15, Ms. Marvel co-showrunners—Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah—discuss their struggles with shooting the show when Marvel Studios president, Kevin Feige, is dedicated to keeping secrets about the plot.
Note that there will be major spoilers ahead for season one of Ms. Marvel.
After Disney purchased Fox back in 2019, fans have continued to wonder how mutants might be introduced into the Marvel universe. So, if you’ve kept up with Ms. Marvel, you know that by far the most significant development in the show is when Kamala Khan is suggested to most likely be a mutant. While we learn early on that Kamala is a djinn, it’s suggested later that there’s something different about her still, “like a mutation.”
Today, in an interview with IGN, we learned that the showrunners are basically just as in the dark as we are regarding this new development. “Yeah, so when we read the scene, the script, we had a bunch of questions which were not answered,” El Arbi says. “It was just you are tasked to shoot this, and put the music on it, and that’s that. Basically, that’s the only information we got.”
Series director Bilall Fallah elaborates this to mean that they will be discovering the impact behind Kamala’s genetics just like everyone else. “We only know the scene that’s now in the finale,” he explains. “It’s a big honor obviously to have that, and to have that iconic song there, the little piece of the soundtrack, but that’s that. We will have to discover it.”
Despite their lack of clarity, it was clear that the showrunners have great care for the show. “It’s just such a beautiful experience that we are able to tell this story, that Marvel is creating this story, and seeing that a lot of people get inspired, a lot of Muslim women get inspired,” says El Arbi. “Hopefully, it will open a lot of doors, and hopefully more and more of these kinds of stories will be told onscreen. That’s my hope, and I’m just proud that we could have done this in the Marvel universe.”
