The first season of _**Ms. Marvel**_ is... frustrating. The series is blessed with high energy, high concept visuals and writing. The cast comprises of charismatic, top notch performers, blessed with refreshing cultural backdrop. So what went wrong? The lack of clarity. For me, one consistent problem with most "Phase Four" Marvel Cinematic Universal series is that they try to be too clever and mysterious. The side effect is a villain arc that doesn't get the time to fully develop. On _**Ms. Marvel**_, I am not even sure who the villain is. I am guessing it's **Najma**, a mother of Kamala's crush, **Kamran**, but she is given so little air time and is dismissed relatively early that I would dismiss her as the season's primary antagonist/villain. The series suggests her son could become a villain, but the idea is not fully explored. It might also be the government (Damage Control), but they are just so comically inept. Maybe it's no one and it's a story about Kamala discovering her root and embracing herself, a shade of Pixar's _**Turning Red**_? Having said that, the **Khan** family is an infectious bunch. Everything from their appearances, their voices, and their characterization is just so lovable that I found myself tuning in just to be a part of the family for about an hour. And their friends are equally and uniformly charming. This is just one attractive show! Ultimately, however, I need more substance and there's nothing for me to hold on to, nothing to root for.

This is a tough show to rate. Would probably place it somewhere between a 6 and 7 but giving it a 7 to be a little generous. I actually really liked what they did with a lot of elements of this show. Especially early on it was a lighthearted and fun teenage story about family and culture which was really enjoyable and fresh for the MCU. The middle episodes then took a bit of a different turn and the show morphed into something else that was much larger in scale and a lot more complex. I actually enjoyed a lot of this stuff too as it spent even more time diving deep into the cultural elements and even a lot of history, but it was also at this point that the MCU formula took over a little bit by turning the show into so much larger in scale than it needed to be. And again, like most other marvel shows, the story came to a screeching halt in the fifth episode right before the finale as it spent a ton of time in flashbacks away from the main characters and just threw the pacing way off. Then all of this larger scale historical and cultural stuff was pretty much resolved by the end of episode five and for the finale the show went back to what it was in the first few episodes of a much more contained story with Kamala's character development at the center. Which again, I really liked, but it didn't match the middle episodes. When I look at the details of this show I enjoy pretty much all of it, but it feels like they made two different shows and sandwiched them together. A fun teenage superhero story at the beginning and end, but a large scale globetrotting historical exploration in the middle. Therefore as a whole, the themes felt somewhat inconsistent and like a lot of the themes that were set up at the start of the show were abandoned in the middle then brought back in at the very end. Therefore some of the character arcs and dynamics feel like they're missing a little more development. A true instance of the individual parts being greater than the whole. I'll choose to focus on the fun parts and the cool exploration of culture and visual style. 2022 TV Shows Ranked --> https://trakt.tv/users/justinnumerick/lists/2022-tv-shows-ranked?sort=rank,asc

It was cute. Though it would have been better if it was Kamala up against small time villains instead of some world ending threat

Again the same formula. The first episode was cool, but sadly it wasn't continued. It's even monotonous. How can Kamran go to the harbor only through a hole? That's not logic.

Decent show, but some of the pacing and plot lines were weird and rushed. I enjoyed the cultural elements they included.