Ms. Marvel Creator Bisha K. Ali Teases A More Hopeful Future For Kamran Than The Comics Suggest

This post contains spoilers for the season finale of "Ms. Marvel."

With any Marvel property, there's always going to be a sense of a "to be continued..." hanging in the air. And while certain threads of "Ms. Marvel" are guaranteed to continue, other, equally-compelling storylines are already raising a few questions. Ms. Marvel herself, aka Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), definitely has her work cut out for her, and her immediate future in the MCU is more or less charted out ("The Marvels" honestly can't come soon enough). But Kamala isn't the only superpowered kid still struggling to come into her own by the end of "Ms. Marvel." The series also sets up Kamran (Rish Shah), Kamala's on-and-off crush — and the son of her former adversary, the Clandestine Najma (Nimra Bucha) — for a similar storyline.

After Najma sacrifices herself to the Veil in episode five, Kamran is imbued with his own powers back in Jersey City. This reveal is more or less in line with his characterization in the comics, where Kamran is an Inhuman. But Kamran's counterpart in the comics is bad news any way you slice it. He's aligned with the villain Lineage, and he's not above deceiving Kamala — or sacrificing her outright — to get what he wants. Now that he's got powers in "Ms. Marvel," his turn to the dark side seemed all but imminent. Fortunately, the series subverted Kamran's original arc in a few subtle ways. And according to "Ms. Marvel" creator Bisha K. Ali, that was always the plan for this iteration of the character.

The "Ms. Marvel" finale focuses on Kamran's struggle to gain control over his new abilities, all while running from the shady Department of Damage Control and grappling with his mother's death. For a moment, it seemed like "Ms. Marvel" was setting Kamran up to become one of Kamala's biggest adversaries down the line. The DODC are set on vilifying Kamran, and Kamran himself wants to pick up his late mother's mission to return to the Noor dimension ... which would probably destroy the Earth as they know it. But Ms. Marvel (as well as the series creators) keeps hope for Kamran's redemption alive. When we last see the character, he's managed to flee to Karachi, where he meets the Red Dagger Kareem (Aramis Knight).

Though Kamran seems to find sanctuary with the Red Daggers by the end of "Ms. Marvel," that doesn't mean he'll have joined their organization when we see the character next. The Daggers and Kamran's former family, the Clandestines, have been enemies for generations, and there's always the chance that Kamran could pick up the Clandestine crusade again down the line. But for Ali, who spoke to Deadline about the fate of the "Ms. Marvel" characters, there's "no world that exists" in which Kamran becomes a villain. "I will not write a young Muslim boy as a bad guy," Ali said. "But that's not to say somebody else may want to take it in that direction in the future."

In the world of interconnected storytelling, a comprehensive character arc isn't always a given — especially when said character appears in multiple projects written and supervised by multiple storytellers. Ali admitted that, though "Ms. Marvel" might have had a bigger plan for the Clandestines and the Red Daggers, their storylines were eventually "truncated." But Ali always intended for Kamran to find some semblance of belonging with Kamala and even Kareem, especially after losing the Clandestines:

"My intention was always that Kamala and her group of friends and the Red Daggers become his community. He and Kareem are Red Dagger. I see [Kareem and Kamran] almost becoming brothers in the future. So he does find a home here. I want to note that this is all Bisha canon and not Marvel so it all could change, but my intention was always that he finds a home here because of Kamala and all the people on the show."

Whether Kamran will actually join the Red Daggers in the future remains to be seen. "I hope Marvel decides to run with it going forward," Ali added. Kamran definitely deserves a chance to find happiness after that doozy of a finale — and all that led up to it. Time will tell, but let's hope that Ali's influence carries over to other Marvel projects that involve these characters.