Fans of Marvel have reason to celebrate this week. On Friday, news broke that Marvel is developing a live-action Ms. Marvel series for Disney+. The show, based on the comic book of the same name, will feature Marvel’s first leading Muslim superhero. Bisha K. Ali, a British writer who is currently writing for Hulu’s adaption of Four Weddings and a Funeral, has been hired as the show’s writer and showrunner.
Ms. Marvel first appeared in a 1976 comic and featured the heroine Carol Danvers. Since 1976, multiple other women have taken up the mantel of Ms. Marvel, with Danvers herself evolving into Captain Marvel in 2012. Fans of Marvel’s cinematic universe may recognize Danvers from the recent Captain Marvel film, which was met with a slew of positive reviews in 2019. But Ms. Marvel has seen a lot of success apart from Captain Marvel, as the comic has appeared on a number of top 10 lists and won a Hugo award in 2015.
The new Disney+ incarnation of Ms. Marvel will feature a new heroine. This show will center on a teenager named Kamela Kahn, a Pakistani-American navigating her formative years with a religious family in New Jersey. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the young heroine will have the ability to change and stretch her shape, possessing polymorphous abilities.
At this time it is not clear what role, if any, the Ms. Marvel television show will play in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The studio is currently developing a number of television projects that will play into the MCU. The first of these to air is The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which will debut in 2020. This show will be followed by WandaVision, Hawkeye, and Loki, which will debut in 2021.
As of Friday, neither a release date nor an episode count for Ms. Marvel have been announced by Marvel or Disney+.