There has been quite a bit of a heated debate when it came to the upcoming Ms. Marvel series and the handling of her abilities. Most of the trailer highlights that she has a new take on her powers that seem to be powered by bracelets rather than her Inhuman genes. Even the first promotional photo seemed to hint that she is just creating a crystal fist out of energy rather than polymorphing her own. Yet, if you look closely, the trailer might actually reveal that she has the ability to polymorph after all and it might even tie into her story arc.
The trailer has this odd trend of teasing Kamala shooting out her crystalized fist but doesn’t really show us the full movement of the ability. We either see her fist jet out in the corner of a frame against Red Dagger, or just her already retracting it. There’s this odd sense of the trailer purposefully keeping elements hidden from the viewer. We rarely see Kamala in action fighting. Yet, some scenes do hint at her having the ability to polymorph, especially when we see her leaping in the air.
At first, I believed that it was just an energy field expanding on her body, but if you take a close look, her limbs are stretching out during her leap. While the focus has been on the ability to create crystal lily pads to jump off from, her body is definitely being warped as she moves closer and clenches her fist to hit whatever she is aiming for. We don’t linger on this shot long enough to really get a good look, and it might connect to a later scene as she faces off against a SWAT team protecting someone from their shots, as she has her full costume on.
Of course, one visual isn’t a confirmation just yet if it weren’t for one more moment in the trailer that shows her limbs stretched out. Towards the end, there’s a brief sequence with a shockwave pushing various cars into the air. It’s only a few seconds long, but if you look closely in the corner, it’s Ms. Marvel creating the shockwave. Yet, what stands out is not only the pose that many might recall from the comics and even the Marvel’s Avengers game, but her body seems to be stretched in a similar manner as well. You can see that her legs are quite a bit longer and her body seems proportionally off in a way that you’d see when she does a ground pound attack while embiggened in other media.
The only element that seems to be pure crystal is her fists, but if the previous image of her leaping is an indicator, her body might be changing underneath that layer. So, the trailers do make a case that she has the ability to polymorph, but it’s not the focus of what’s being shown. Keep in mind, Ms. Marvel’s ability to polymorph is a bit more complicated than just stretching her body. In the comics, she is exchanging mass with herself at a different point in time. So, she technically travels through time on a molecular level every time she changes her form. So, the crystals might be a visual representation of that ability.
There’s a chance that it’s connected to the Quantum Realm, as it is how the Avengers traveled through time back in Avengers: Endgame. If they still want to build up her Inhuman background, perhaps the crystals in the gauntlet are Terrigen that activate her dormant abilities to tap into the time traveling-realm. The visual addition is due to it temporarily acting as a conduit as long as she is wearing it. While it doesn’t explain the lily pad and shield abilities, it may be that she’s using the gauntlet as a way to siphon the energy from the Quantum Realm into reality. Her imagination is a big focus of the trailer and it could be how she brings them to reality.
I’d even argue that she might lose the gauntlets by the end of the season, and it may result in her realizing that she doesn’t have to depend on them. It would make for a great story arc for her character, and could still build up towards her inherent Inhuman nature. The comics had the advantage of a Terrigen bomb going off and creating a world filled with Nuhumans. There was the promotional material that did tease the crystal fist with a smaller one underneath, which hasn’t changed, but they could’ve adapted it going into the reshoots to add the polymorph ability after seeing some of the feedback online. We’ll have to see if a new trailer might give us a better look at her new abilities and if she is polymorphing after all. My only wish is that she actually shouts Embiggening.
