What Happened To The Clandestines In Ms. Marvel Episode 5? The Veil Of Noor Explained

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for episode 5 of "Ms. Marvel."

Episode 5 of "Ms. Marvel," "Time and Again," took us back in time to 1947, wherein Kamala (Iman Vellani) helped her Nani get back to her father Hasan (Fawad Khan) after the latter got briefly separated from him at the train station. Back in the present, Najma (Nimra Bucha) and the remaining Clandestines encounter a rift in space-time, the Veil of Noor opening right in front of them.

Unfortunately, instead of taking the Clandestines safely back home to their home realm, the Veil of Noor ends up killing them instead after a mysterious mist wafting from the rift disintegrates their flesh. However, the manner in which this occurs is odd, to say the least, as the crystallized cocoon formed right before disintegration resembles the process of Terrigenesis in the comics.

As the show offers almost no clear answers about everything that happened after the veil opened, here is some speculation about what might have happened, how the veil works, and what's next for Najma's son, Kamran (Rish Shah).

In episode 4, Waleed (Farhan Akhtar) explains during his exposition dump that the Noor Dimension is a realm parallel to ours, and we are unable to see it as a veil separates it from ours. Explaining the Clandestine plan, Waleed says that if Kamala's bangle is used to create the portal necessary for them to go home, it will only consume our world, and transform the entire terrain into that of Noor's. While this explains why humans would be transformed/killed in the process of the Noor dimension swallowing up ours, it is a bit baffling as to why it kills the Clandestines, who hail from that dimension in the first place.

There's a prevailing theory that the Clandestines and the Inhumans from the Marvel comics are one and the same, especially due to the fact that the mockup of the Noor dimension looks extremely similar to that of Attilan. Attilan is a Inhuman megacity that was shifted to the Himalayas by Black Bolt at some point in the comics, however, that connection in the context of "Ms. Marvel" is too vague to arrive at a logical conclusion (unless the show provides more context in the final episode).

The Clandestines in the show do not really possess special powers apart from standard superhuman strength and agility, so could it mean that their true Inhuman powers can only be awakened after they undergo Terrigenesis? The mist from the Veil does cocoon their bodies before killing them, which could mean that their bodies rejected the mutagenic process altogether, as dramatized in "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." and the short-lived "Inhumans."

Kamala tells Najma not to enter the veil, but to think about her son Kamran instead, whom she had abandoned in favor of the Clandestine mission. This triggers a change of heart, leading her to close the portal and somehow activating Kamran's latent powers in the process. While Kamran had been a Clandestine until this point, his powers remained dormant until now, and Najma's sacrifice for her son could have potentially closed the veil, activating his dormant Clandestine genes in the process.

This begs the question: was Najma always capable of awakening Kamran's powers whenever she wanted, or is it a special case that worked in his favor due to the fact that she chose love or duty? The answers are obviously not clear, but Kamran seems to have inherited his bioluminescence powers from the comics, which he accidentally sets off by the end of the episode when the Stark drone approaches Bruno's apartment. Apart from Kamala, who is part-human, part-Djinn, Kamran is the only remaining Clandestine, and it is unclear whether he will be set up as the next Big Bad after learning about his mother's death.

Hopefully, we will get more explanations about how the Veil of Noor functions in the next episode, and how the Noor dimension as a whole, works.

Episodes of "Ms. Marvel" are currently streaming on Disney+.