The best show of the year ended its run on Disney+ last week. The hero saved her community and had a loving moment with her family, which was teased in a mid-credits scene. It was a happy end.
A young kid from somewhere in or near New York City gains startling superhero abilities and must follow their calling, all while trying to survive adolescence. It is more original than that. She is a muslim and lives in a world where the authorities watch her mosque. When India gained independence from British rule in 1947, the area was divided into Pakistan and India, causing one of the greatest migrations of all time.
Real events have always been included in the stories of the superhero. While Steve Rogers was turned into Captain America to fight in World War II and the Eternals, the narrative brought that connection to the ground level. She was a young girl when her family fled to Pakistan. Every family has a partition story and none of them are good. In her family's partition story, her powers turn out to be roots. The show has a sense of realism that Disney+ hasn't had in a long time.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker who directed the season's final episodes, says that the show's depiction of the Partition puts something unseen in Hollywood. They went to Pakistan to find her family's story. Obaid-Chinoy got messages from South Asian families detailing conversations they had with each other before they watched the show. People have unfinished conversations with their best friends. Partition was created because so many lives were connected to it. You have to do it in a way that brings dignity when you bring a superhero into that world.
As the universe gets bigger and more multiversal, it strays from humanity in both the physical and mental sense. In the first season, we learn that she is a djinn, and that she is also a Mutant. Thanks to Iman Vellani, the 19-year-old actor who plays the character, the character is fully three-dimensional in a way that many on-screen superhero aren't. The strength of the story is that it is woven into the show.
The first monthly series to feature a Muslim woman as its hero was hailed as the first of its kind by the creators of the original Ms. It was said to be the most important comic of that year. It won a Hugo Award and became a best seller because it was a good story told. The first Muslim girl to headline a show on a Disney show is Vellani. The compelling and well-executed story of her show is what makes it the most critically acclaimed series of its genre. This time, it's Kamala Khan making history.
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