Ok so after our Ms Marvel Episode 3 breakdown broke the internet and trended worldwide last Wednesday because everyone watched it I’ve been very excited to check out Ms Marvel Episode 4. It’s filled with easter eggs, hidden details and a lot of things you missed. Seem to be missing a lot recently don’t you, including our episode 3 breakdown but I’m gonna do you a solid one and include some of the easter eggs and breakdowns of the characters in the last entry so you don’t have to go back and watch it.
Make sure you stick around until the end of the post where, I may, may explain why we didn’t get a chance to cover last week if you’re interested. Which I dunno, it’s not that big of a deal.
Anyway with that out the way let’s get into Ms. Marvel.
Last episode recap
Last week’s episode explained Najmas ties to the bangle along with some clues about where it came from. After we opened in British Occupied India in 1942, which is five years before India gained independence from the UK. This was of course also during the second world and we joined the Djinn as they searched for the bangles. Described as supernatural beings from another dimension Djinn are genies, though they have been described as both good and evil spirits.
Djinn History
In episode 4 they get referred to as both the Unseen and also The Clan Destine which are two groups that come from the comics. The Unseen is a group of aliens that worked with Nick Fury, potentially tying in with the end of Far From Home and also possibly setting up the character’s appearance in The Marvels. Clan Destine were actually X-men villains created in the 90s and they were the progeny of Adam Of Destine as well as Elalyth who just so happened to also be a Djinn.
Adam was born in the 1100s in Ravenscroft in England and he was badly wounded one day. However, he had a full recovery after dreaming of an Inhuman woman and this led his local villagers to name him Adam Of Destine.
Adam became impervious to damage; during the crusades, he was unable to be harmed. During his adventures, he fought a wizard with a magical gem and upon killing him the gem was broken open which is when Elalyth came forward as a genie.
She made him immortal and the two fell in love. The pair had children and they lived in Ravenscroft for centuries, building a family and their team. Now I probably won’t spend much longer talking about them as the show features completely different versions of the lineup complete with their own origin story but they are immortal.
The Djinn are desperate to get home and view the bangles as being a way to return to their own dimension. They need the bangle to unlock the Noore which is a word that translates to light. This is something that we’ve seen throughout the series whenever Aisha appears and it could end up also giving Kamran his powers. In the comics, he was an inhuman that was made up of light and Kamala is also using the bangles to control light.
Turns out they need a power source to send them home and they ended up turning on Kamala and the entry ended with them becoming Wedding Crashers at her brother Aamir’s big day.
The Red Dagger
Now Episode 4 titled Seeing Red features the introduction of a Ms Marvel character from the comics. This is The Red Dagger who we’ll talk about in just a bit. Speaking of Seeing Red we get the Marvel Studios logo and in the background can hear the song Summer Nights by Raaginder featuring Wise Child.
Really chilled way to start the intro off and we join everyone mid-flight heading out to Pakistan. Over the PA we can hear the pilot speaking Urdu and there are lots of cultural references laced throughout the episode. We also see Kamala wearing her green pilot jacket that was based on Carol Danver’s flight suit. A nice little touch on this is that it also has Captain Marvel’s logo too. Kamala is tightly holding onto a napping pillow which is a sloth and as we know from the first episode, her Youtube channel is titled Sloth Baby Productions.
She’s been doing what we all did on flights as kids, drinking Canada Dry, which I used to sip on my way to Spain before I started hitting the hard stuff of a shot of Absynthe to the eye.
We see her texting Nakia which, dunno how you got signal love, I suppose they do Wifi on planes these days but when I was a kid you were lucky to get a tv on the plane. Had to walk 7000 miles just to get a Marvel comic you did, and when you got there it was Squirrel Girl. F**king Squirrel Girl!
Anyway, this text message is a far cry from the neon signs and animations that we got in the first episode. In that entry, Kamala was constantly going off into fantasies which were shown in the graphics that the show used. However, here it’s toned down massively, suggesting she’s had to come to grips with the real world and no longer carries the childlike wonder that she once had.
In Karachi, she comes across not only her cousins Zainab and Owais but also her Grandma. She instantly goes off on her daughter being like ‘you’re on a diet or some s**t’ which I know my wife has to put up with from her mother.
My sister does too, so this is like, a big easter egg about my life…anyway, Karachi is called the City of Light and this location of course plays upon the powers to manipulate hard light that the bangle has.
Karachi is a very important location as it was also shown on the front of the train in the vision last week.
The title screen has now changed up massively to fit with the location and this now includes Urdu and graphics of Temples.
At her grandmother’s she comes across a room with several newspaper clippings detailing historic events in the country.
The first one showcases several people at a train station which I believe comes from the Partition journies that were talked about earlier in the season.
We also have the Birth Of Pakistan clipping which discusses Lord Mountbatten.
Mountbatten was the Viceroy of India and he oversaw the Partition. Several decades later he was assassinated by the IRA in 1979. There are also mentions of Tributes to Quaid e-Azam which means Great Leader. The surname Jinnah refers to Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the first Governor-General.
This is very much her grandmother’s way of remembering as so much was lost during the Partition. She also shows her a picture of Aisha and hears about the fact that she’s a Djinn.
The Bangles
Now we’ve slowly started to learn a bit more about the bangle and last week we saw how Clan Destine came across it. They found it attached to a blue arm which I think further backs up the theory that this is actually of Kree Origin. In our episode 1 breakdown, we discussed how we thought that this was the MCU version of the Nega Bands and I think this arm backs up that theory. We watched as Kamala travelled through what could be the negative zone when she put it on and the bands are also of Kree Origin.
They were gifted to Captain Mar-vell by the Supreme Intelligence but they came with a curse as they trapped one inside the negative zone. In the comics, Mar-vell became trapped in this and on earth after Rick Jones found the other one he used to switch places back and forth with Mar-vell.
In the opening of Episode 3, we learnt that the group were told by a man in the temple that to return home they would need two.
So I think that there will be another one that pops up in the series and potentially it might allow them to return home by having them swap places with someone in their home dimension.
Ten Rings Connection?
There was also a carving of the Ten Rings on the floor, potentially making this one of Wen Wu’s temples. The ten rings themselves also came from an alien world, namely the makluans home planet. The bangle could end up being made from the same technology as the rings are and there was even a hint to the rings in the first episode. So I kinda have a theory that it’s all connected and that we’ll learn more about this connection in The Marvels.
The Marvel are of course Kree, Carol worked alongside them. Kamala is going to be in that movie, the bangle itself might be Kree and so on and so forth. We might even get a cameo by Brie Larson at the end of the series and who knows. The power source used to charge up the bangle and send the Clan Destine home might even end up being suped-up by her. I do think that they will in fact get home and that the ending will be somewhat of a happy one for them even if they’re the bad guys for now.
From here she hears the story of the stars once more and confirms that it is the same train from the visions. In episode 2 we also got a flash of Najma reaching out to Kamala which could have been seen through Aishas eyes. Perhaps this was her potentially betraying her and the train rushing towards her might have caused her death or something. Not too sure as this storyline isn’t really in the comics perse though it does take inspiration from them.
Exploring Karachi
This episode is heavily based on Issue 12 of Ms Marvel and it actually opens with her in the airport before she travels to her grandmother’s. Lots of similar set-up devices with her travelling through the airport and she also learns a lot of her history at her grandmother’s. If you want to read this comic book for free you can actually get it by scanning the QR code at 14:32 which is on the photographer’s stand.
After a dream in which she sees several visions Kamala and co go to the boat club for lunch. However, they aren’t allowed inside because of their policy on Jeans and outside they meet Kamala’s aunty.
They tour the streets of Old Town and it’s a really great scene that gives you a quick run-through of the cultures, dress and style.
I like that the creative team didn’t add the yellow p*ss filter that you tend to get when characters go to anywhere that isn’t America or Europe. Makes the entire environment actually feel authentic and I love exploring it as much as Kamala does.
We can also see that Kamala is wearing a New Jersey AvengersCon T-shirt which of course was a big thing in the first episode. She saved Zoe and got the t-shirt and ey, I might even bloody buy one too.
Now her cousin refers to her as an ‘ABCD’ which means American Born Confused Desi. Major reach here but by the restaurant we also see ABC…so…put that in your breakdown Ryan Arey, I bloody dare ya.
After getting very useful directions to Karachi station, Kamala heads there to see if she can piece together anything.
She ends up going into the restricted zone and she dons her Ms Marvel mask. As she moves through the area we can catch an Ant-Man Mural and this showcases the character growing from small to big like you when you have a night with Ryan Arey’s Mom got you again you punk.
This was created by artist Adrian Alphona who’s name also pops up on the mural alongside Sarah Hussain who has worked on several marvel movies such as Eternals. There’s been a number of nods to Ant-man in the series and I think it would be great if we got a voice cameo by Paul Rudd tying into Scott Langs podcast.
Here she’s ambushed by Red Dagger which leads to the second Train station fight in the MCU since Infinity War.
Red Dagger is played by Aramis knight who you might recognise from Into The Badlands.
Red Dagger Origin & in the Comics
Now the Red Dagger is someone that was first leaked on the back of Funko Pop boxes for the show. This is a character that doesn’t make all that many appearances in the comics but over the last couple of years, he’s slowly started to drop into some titles.
Kareem AKA The Red Dagger first appeared in Ms Marvel Volume 4 Issue #12. This was Post Civil War 2 and he popped up when Kamala went to Pakistan to discover her heritage This is similar to the show where she’s been beckoned to Karachi to learn more about the vision of the train, Najma and her bangle.
In the source material, Kamala meets Kareem at her grandmother’s home and he said he was studying for his university entrance exam. After an awkward first meeting, they started to hit it off and they became best buds.
The pair met again in their vigilante personas when Kamala stopped an illegal subsoil well operation and here she came across The Red Dagger in his vigilante disguise.
He scolded Ms Marvel for wading in and blowing up a truck because she was pretty careless and didn’t understand the complex local situations. She also didn’t check in with the other local heroes before doing this mission and it was very much a lesson for Kalama.
Something similar ends up happening in this episode during the chase scene which turns into a disaster because Kamala isn’t prepared.
Dagger later appears in Issue 23 as a foreign exchange student needing a language credit for his university entrance requirements and he helped her stop a runaway train.
Kareem then buddied up with a bunch of knock-offs of Ms Marvel’s when Kamala seemingly disappeared. Wonder if they had hockey pads? In reality, Kamala was at Over Lee Private school, very on the nose, after taking a break from the supe-life.
Kareem also kissed Kamala in the aftermath of a battle with the knock-off inventor Gregory Knox again just as Bruno had returned from Wakanda.
He returned to Karachi realising that New Jersey was Kamala’s domain and that he needed to go back and protect his home while Kamala looked after hers.
Kamala and Dagger kinda fight to a stalemate and she makes fun of him for learning to jump like that from the Ninja Turtles, he is wearing green as well as a cloth over his face, similar to them teenage mutant hero turtles.
Dagger rebuffs this by saying Donkey Kong which of course was a platform game.
Dagger then says “come with me if you want to live!” Which is of course a play on this line from Terminator 2.
Kamala is taken to The Red Daggers and we see that the group are highly intergrated into the area even with their own hideout hidden in a restaurant. This shows that the locals are very accepting of the heroes and that they’ll do what they can to help and hide them.
Inside she meets Waleed and they discuss the red scarf and it’s meaning. This red scarf is something Kamala adopts in the comics for her costume and we know from the trailer and so one that this will appear as part of her outfit in the show too.
Waleed is played by Farhan Akhtar a big Bollywood actor who’s a nice addition to the show.
They discuss the difference between the legend of the Djinn and the reality of it. Thor is brought up as being someone who would be considered a Djinn if he crashed in the right area and therefore, they’re seen as gods.
The Clan Destine are from another world and they also go over different dimensions. The Noor is the only thing dividing the worlds and though I mentioned before that it could be the negative zone, it could just be more straightforward than that.
The painting from earlier in the episode actually looks like people leaving the noor and we discover that if its destroyed the Clan Destine’s world will ravish 616.
Waleed also points out the inscription on the bangle. Which could be a hint to Aisha also looking for her but yeah, let me know your thoughts below on what it means.
Damage Control
Cut to the Damage Control Supermax Prison which looks pretty much exactly like how it did in the She-Hulk trailer.
The Clandestine is being taken in and they manage to escape and fight the damage control forces who fire sonic weapons at them. These were also seen in the She-Rek teaser and my guess is that they fire concussive blasts.
Family Ties
Kamran is ditched by them due to his choice last week and juxtaposing this family split up we see Kamala’s grandmother is fine with her trying to figure out who she is. She talks about the identity struggle that she’s gone through due to England messing everything up and there is some acceptance that Kamala finds in this. This idea of her starting to become happier is also reflected in the text which ends up being displayed to us in kites.
She meets Kareem and just gets to hang out with her friends. Really nice scene of her just chilling out and I love that this series takes the time to just relax and build the character. I think it’s one of the most well-thought-out Disney shows and after I was kinda meh on the first episode due to it just going through the emotions of being an origin story, it’s really grown on me.
At its heart, it’s about identity and family. It’s just a solid coming-of-age story.
You also get a great mother and daughter scene that follows it and I think this probably has the most fleshed-out side characters in any Disney plus show. Muneeba discusses why she fled to America and that she just couldn’t take the stories about Aisha due to how they made her look to others. Muneeba of course didn’t want Kamala to do anything with the bangle early on and you can finally see things from her point of view.
With help from the Daggers, Kamala ends up training her powers further and she’s also given a blue waistcoat which would of course later be adapted into her costume.
At this point they’re attacked by the Clandestine which leads to Waleed taking them on by himself.
We then get an awesome Tuk-Tuk chase scene through the streets which reminded me a lot of the one from Octopussy.
Due to their Bond…James Bond…Kareem, Waleed and Kamala end up working together to some extent but it is a bit of a mess in the streets.
Really well-put-together chase scene with Motorbikes doing endos, people getting hit by trucks and the whole area is bustling with life adding to its dynamism of it.
Waleed ends up leaving himself open to attack in order to save Kareem and Kamala and Najma kills him showing how ruthless she is.
This eye for an eye mentality leads to Dagger taking out a Clandestine member and Najma stabs the bangle which ends up transporting Kamala back time to the Partition.
She sees the train head-on like how it was in the vision, making me think that she swapped places with Aisha. As we discussed earlier, this bangle in the comics switched out Captain Mar-vell and Rick jones so it could end up doing the same thing here.
Theory Time
I actually think that Kamala might end up being the one who leads her grandmother using the stars to guide her and this is why the person who did this was never seen. Though it was thought to be Aisha, with Kamala being in the past this would make a lot of sense. It also wouldn’t require the TVA to step in as it wouldn’t create a branched timeline if this was always supposed to happen. Kamala has of course heard the story thousands of times as well so she’d know to stay hidden in order to not destroy the time-space continuum. Therefore she will likely keep out of sight, save her grandma and then potentially find Aisha to discover what’s going on.
Again this ties back to the inscription. This could mean that the bangle pulled her here to find Aisha and that is what this trip through the past will be. It’s also possible that she’s gonna go to the Red Daggers and this will be how they end up learning so much about the bracelet. No idea how long the organisation has been about but it could also exist in the past.
Great episode and I really enjoyed it.
Episode 3
Now as for why I didn’t cover episode 3 – it basically just boils down to a number of reasons that made it pretty difficult for me to fit it into my schedule. As you know I’ve just had twins so a lot of my time during the week involves making sure that they’re hard at work editing vid… Making sure they’re just having a great childhood.
On top of that last Wednesday was just full of big releases. You had the Obi-Wan finale, Ms Marvel Episode 3, The Umbrella Academy On Netflix and also Doctor Strange In the Multiverse Of Madness. I also wanted to do a big easter egg video for that but as I mentioned, it was a pretty busy day. Then we had the Boys dropping on Friday and because I get those episodes early I tend to try and do as much work as I can on the Thursday so we can hit the ground running Friday and then on Friday I do a video that I can release either Saturday and Sunday. So even when we aren’t dropping videos me and the team are still working on others, however saying that I also dropped the Umbrella Academy ending explained on a Thursday so we didn’t really stop posting.
Now the way I weighed it up is that it was the Obi-Wan finale and the Umbrella Academy also had a finale in it as it was the full season which meant either I covered those two things last week or I wouldn’t get a chance to do them because of how much other stuff is coming out.
I figured I could miss a week of Ms Marvel…ey that’s why they call it that, and then drop the most important parts of episode 3 in this video, do a stupid joke at the start and no one would be any wiser.
And it worked, because this video was so bad you’re like ‘thank f**k I didn’t waste my time last week with an episode 3 breakdown on top of this crap one as well.’
So you’re bloody welcome, but nah nothing against Ms Marvel, really enjoyed Episode 3 it just happened to land on a day where there was a season finale along with an entire season of Umbrella Academy on the same day.
Anyway thanks for watching and eh, I’ll be honest you know, I did feel a bit bad and that I’d let people down not posting it but if it had’ve been the other way around with Wednesday being the Ms Marvel finale and just episode 3 of Obi-Wan then I would’ve done the same thing.
Anyway I hope you enjoyed the post and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it below or over on Twitter.
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