We were originally planning to wait till our munchkin was around 10 to let him start watching Marvel movies, and Black Panther was going to be his intro to the MCU. But along comes Ms. Marvel, slightly ahead of schedule, and I’m so excited for our little brown boy to watch a show about a brown girl from Jersey City (where we lived when he was a tot) who saves the world! So I’ll occasionally post musings from rewatches with our kiddo:

Episode 1

• Muneeba and Yusuf’s subtly affectionate Urdu background banter: “Hah, bolo,” (yes, I’m listening, go ahead); “Aap yeh le lo ji” (here you take this) across the dinner table – heartwarming and familiar and I never thought I’d hear snatches of my parents’ conversations in a mainstream TV show.

• Yusuf, trying to put a more gentle spin on Muneeba’s “No, I don’t trust you”: “We do trust you, we just don’t trust everyone else.” Lol, welcome to my teenage years.

• Not a bad approximation of Newark Ave. in Jersey City. And Ruby Aunty tsk-ing about Fatima and her gora boy certainly lends authenticity 😉

• Muneeba to Kamala: “I’m not recognizing you.” Ouch. My mom said that to me a couple times in my late teens/early 20s, and it still stings. Parents struggling to reconcile their idea of their child with the person the child is growing up to be, in this case across the cultural divide of immigration in addition to the usual generational divide – that’ll leave a mark.

• I am so relieved not to hear Peter Sellers-style horrible fake desi accents (Aramis Knight’s as Kareem is not good though). Not something I should have to grateful for, but the bar is very low.

• Also, when can I buy the Ms. Marvel soundtrack CD (yes, I’m old), please and thank you.

Episode 2

• Love the “Jalebi baby” needle drop.

• Kamala to Kamran, in full crush mode: “I love the color of your car.” Bruno, muttering resentfully in the backseat: “It’s black.”

• I would’ve gone with a deeper SRK cut – my personal fave is Raaju Ban Gaya Gentleman – but Shah Rukh’s early films came out before these kids were born, I’ll give them a pass 😉

• Cousin “haram-dot-Kamran!” Lol.

• Seeing worship at the masjid without any sinister-brown-people subtext shouldn’t feel so singular but of course it does.