Move over, Spider-Man, because there’s a fresh wide-eyed youngster fighting it out with the grizzled veterans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and her name is Kamala Khan (or Ms. Marvel, if you’re being mean). Screen Rant claims that now that the life-changing events of Spider-Man: No Way Home have caused Peter Parker to mature, Marvel needs new blood to assume the role of the spunky kid attempting to find their feet in a world full of gods and monsters. Iman Vellani’s character, Kamala, enters the picture at this point.
Although we don’t believe that Spider-Man will ever leave the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), he does not play the same part in the franchise as he did in the past. As a newcomer to the world of superheroes, Spider-Man and his alter ego, Tom Holland, were presented to fans of Marvel for the very first time in the film Captain America: Civil War. During the iconic fight sequence in the airport that took place in Civil War, Peter Parker didn’t spend nearly as much time fighting as he did marveling (pardon the pun) over everyone else’s awesome powers and costumes.
But over the course of three solo movies and two additional trips with the Avengers, Peter Parker went through a significant amount of maturation. At the conclusion of No Way Home, he was no longer the star-struck kid he once was, creating a hole in the fabric of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that Kamala Kahn will now have to fill.
In addition to providing comedic relief through his never-ending stream of one-liners, the adolescent web-slinger also had another purpose: he acted as a surrogate for the audience. Peter Parker stood in for the audience members in many respects as they watched the movie. He refers to the superhuman identities of the Avengers as their “made-up names” because he believes that this is how an average person would refer to them.
Now, Kamala Khan is performing same duties, and she could even be doing a better job than Peter did. It’s true that Peter Parker encapsulated our nerdy enthusiasm for watching the Avengers in action, but Kamala takes things a step further. In the Disney Ms. Marvel series, Kamala Khan goes to AvengerCon, which is a stand-in for real-life ComicCons such as the ones that real-life Marvel fans go to.
