The following contains major spoilers for the “Ms. Marvel” finale episode. Turn away now if you haven’t seen it.
The season finale of “Ms. Marvel” ended, per Marvel Cinematic Universe tradition, with a post-credits scene setting up a future project.
But as much fun as the brief moment was (and yes we’ll talk about it more below) it was vastly overshadowed by the episode’s final scene proper, which contained a huge reveal so important to the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that we’re honestly surprised this wasn’t the post-credit scene instead.
Literally, it changes everything for Kamala — even more than learning she’s part-Djinn did — and just as important, also seems to set up how Marvel is going to finally introduce, uh, a flurry of X-related puns into the MCU.
Obviously, yes, we’re talking about mutants and the X-Men.
The scene happens right after Kamala talks with her father, where he makes the audience feel some pretty sincere emotions, explains how in Urdu, the name Kamala means “Wonder, or “Marvel,” then blesses her with her superhero name, Ms. Marvel.
We skip ahead to one week later, where we find the newly-christened Ms. Marvel out on patrol and using her glowy stepping stones to walk down to onto a street. At this point, Bruno (Matt Lintz) and Nakia (Yasmeen Fletcher) drive up in a very nice car that, we learn, belonged to Kamran before he went to live with the Red Daggers.
After some fun banter between the three over who gets to drive the car, Bruno pulls Kamala aside to tell her something serious. He explains that her brother Aamir wanted to know if he might have Djinn powers like Kamala does, and asked Bruno to examine his DNA. Instead, Bruno discovered that there’s something unusual about Kamala.
“We know why you have access to the noor, and how you can wield it,” Bruno says. And for those who can’t remember, it’s that she’s part-Djinn (or as it’s bastardized in English, genie) on her mother’s side, and “Noor” is the magical energy of their realm.
“But when I compared you to the rest of your family, something still seemed off,” he says. “Kamala, there’s something different in your genes. Like… like a mutation,” he adds with the seriousness of someone about to activate a very strict NDA.
The implication seems to be that this is why she’s so powerful. After a stressed pause, Kamala exhales and says “whatever it is, it’ll just be another label” and asks Bruno for the keys to the car. Bruno momentarily looks extremely concerned by Kamala’s reaction but shakes it off and reaches for the keys. Cut to credits.
And by now you’ve obviously figured it out: Bruno just formally introduced Mutants into the MCU — by the way when he said “mutation,” the score sure sounds like it’s referencing the 90s “X-Men” cartoon — and in the same moment revealed that Kamala is the very first confirmed MCU mutant.
Of course, Marvel Comics fans already know this is a huge departure from the comics, where Kamala is an Inhuman rather than a mutant. Perhaps if the ABC series “Inhumans” hadn’t flopped as hard as it did, that would still be the case, but it did and here we are (although Inhuman Black Bolt, played by Anson Mount, made a brief reprisal in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” alongside Patrick Stewart’s Professor X — before they were both murdered by Wanda)
Where things go from here, I can only speculate. But we have to assume that since Kamala is the first official mutant in the MCU, she’s going to be the gateway to introduce at least a couple of whichever characters end up being the core of the new, Marvel Studios-owned version of X-Men.
In fact, given that Kamala has been revealed to literally be the kind of “gifted youngster” Professor Xavier founded his school to help, I wouldn’t be shocked if she ends up as a charter member of the team.
Now the only question we have left is this: Which “X-Men”-adjacent character will we meet next?
Given this fairly surprising reveal — honestly, we assumed “she’s half-genie” is a fairly iron-clad explanation for having powers as it is — we can probably assume Marvel will want to keep people on their toes and avoid starting its new “X-Men” with rebooted versions of the characters who anchored the Fox Studios version of “X-Men.” Except, probably, Wolverine.
So is it going to be some “X-Men” character we haven’t seen in the movies before? Will it turn out a character we’ve already met, or one of the already-announced new characters, is actually a mutant? We’ll leave it to you to speculate wildly.
But the answer is obviously Channing Tatum as Gambit.
Oh, as for that post-credits scene? The short version: A very, very expensive cameo shows up, we’re assuming, at some point in the middle of 2023’s “The Marvels,” the sequel to “Captain Marvel.”
So, Kamala is at home avoiding homework, when suddenly, her bangle starts to act weird. After a few seconds of the bangle blinking, Kamala turns into swirl of multicolored energy, which crashes into the closet behind her.
But then, it’s Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) who gets up and — we think — out of the closet, looking around in confusion as she notices that Kamala’s room is filled with posters of her. It’s not clear if she switched places with Kamala — maybe Kamala’s bangle works like Marvel Comics’ nega bands — or if its that Kamala (or someone else) has somehow turned into Carol Danvers. But whoever Brie is playing gasps “oh, no, no” and scampers away, leaving the audience as confused as she was.