When Kamala Khan made her Marvel Comics debut, she was revealed to be an Inhuman. This came at a time when the publisher had a mandate from Marvel Entertainment CEO Isaac Perlmutter to shift the focus to those characters instead of the X-Men.
As a result, mutants were sidelined and plans were put in place to essentially replace the X-Men with Inhumans. It ended up being a colossal failure, but Ms. Marvel's Inhuman heritage became a big part of who the character is (it was even the main focus of the Marvel's Avengers video game).
Kamala's Inhuman status explains some of the backlash to her powers being changed in Ms. Marvel, though the finale confirmed that the reason the Noor bangle works for the teenager is that there's already a "mutation" in her genes. In other words, the hero is the MCU's first known mutant.
Talking to Empire Online, the character's co-creator and Ms. Marvel Executive Producer Sana Amanat revealed that she originally planned for Kamala to be a mutant in the comics, too.
"We've been talking about it for some time," she said of making Ms. Marvel a mutant. "Here's a really important thing that people do not know - when we were thinking about the character of Kamala back, back, back in the day in 2012, 2013, when [G.] Willow [Wilson, comic book writer] and myself were ideating, we originally wanted to make her a mutant. That was the whole intention, to be able to do that."
"Is she a mutant, question mark?" Amanat says of the show's big reveal. "I don't know. I don't know, guys! All I know is that we use the word 'mutation', and that's all I can say. I will say, I think this is opening up doors for a lot of great storytelling, obviously, as a huge fan, um...of the word 'mutation.'"
This is a massively exciting development for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and one that could see Ms. Marvel taken to some very interesting places down the line. While it's fair to say we've all imagined her joining the rest of Earth's Mightiest Heroes as an Avenger, what if she ultimately chooses to team up with the X-Men instead?
The Marvels arrives in theaters next July, so fingers crossed we learn more about future plans for the MCU's newest hero then. In the meantime, Comic-Con is fast approaching!
All six episodes of Ms. Marvel are now streaming on Disney+.