The following article contains spoilers for Episode 5 of Ms. Marvel.Ms. Marvel’sfifth episode offered fans an insight into the history of the Khan family. The show has mentioned Aisha, Kamala Khan’s great-grandmother, several times, and the latest episode showcases her journey back in the 1940s. The only issue, however, is that the episode unites Aisha and Kamala, leading to some confusion over the rules of time travel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In its latest episode,Ms. Marveltakes Kamala back to 1947,during the partition of India. This isn’t the first time that members of the MCU have traveled back in time, and previous projects have made the rules of time travel pretty clear. When Kamala arrives at the train station and interacts with Aisha, she breaks a vital rule, which should essentially lead to the creation of an alternate timeline. But she returns to the present without any issues, and this is what has left some fans feeling slightly confused.
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Towards the end of Episode 4,Kamala faces the Clan Destineas they once again attempt to take the magical bangle away from her and open a gateway to their dimension. In the process, Najma stabs the bangle with a sharp weapon, which throws Kamala off balance, and she suddenly finds herself at a train station in 1947. While it was a great cliffhanger, it left some uncertainty behind. Going into the past meant that Kamala could potentially interact with her great-grandparents, and alter the course of the sacred timeline.
Episode 5 ofMs. Marvelwas a deep dive into the past, as it followed Aisha’s journey from being an outsider arriving from another dimension, to finding love, all the way to helping her daughter Sana escape during the partition of India. But she doesn’t manage the last bit on her own, and receives a helping hand from Kamala. As the country faces partition, Najma arrives at Aisha’s home looking for the bangle. To ensure her daughter’s safety and to take her as far away as possible from the Clan Destine, Aisha convinces her husband Hassan to migrate to Pakistan.
During the migration, the family arrives at the train station to board the last train to Karachi. Spotting Najma at the station, Aisha urges her husband to take their daughter and get on the train, while she deals with the threat. Unfortunately, Najma stabs Aisha in a bid to kill her for betraying her clan, but before she dies, Aisha performs one final magical act to save her daughter. “What you seek is seeking you,” she narrates, the same words that are imprinted on the bangle. It seems like she sets off the time traveling saga that Kamala goes on.
Throughout the series, different characters talk about the “trail of stars” that led Sana to her father at the train station after they were separated. The scene plays out inthe latestMs. Marvelepisode, as a young Sana walks off into the crowd looking for her mother. In the meantime, Kamala has also arrived at the station, and speaks to her great-grandmother in person. But, it isn’t her who Aisha was expecting. It seems like Aisha’s plan was to bring grown-up Sana back into the past, and lead her two-year-old self to the train. “The bangle worked Sana… it brought you back to me,” she says. Little does she know that the bangle was passed on to Sana’s granddaughter.
At this point, therules of time travel in the MCUare completely forgotten, and emotions take over the plot. Kamala goes on to create the trail of stars for Sana that lead her back to Hassan. The teenage hero is surprised herself, as she has heard the story multiple times, but never realized that it was in fact her, and not Aisha, who helped Sana in her time of need. The scene carries a lot of emotional weight, and works perfectly to bring Kamala’s familial relationships and arc back into the picture. But while fans are wiping their tears at that emotional reunion, they need to remember that what Kamala did is against the rules that the MCU itself has created.
Time travel is a topic that has been brought up in several MCU projects. In2019’sAvengers: Endgame, many of the heroes in the MCU travel back in time to obtain the various Infinity Stones and reverse the actions of Thanos’ snap. The film clearly established that if anything is changed in the events of the past, it will create a whole new timeline. The heroes are warned of this, and urged not to interact with their past selves. If the rules are so strongly established, why weren’t they followed inMs. Marvel?
As part ofAvengers: Endgame, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, and Scott Langtravel to New York City in 2012, during Loki’s attack. As part of the mission, Stark and Lang are assigned to retrieve the Space Stone from the Tesseract. However, their mission goes sideways when Hulk attacks and Stark loses the stone. Loki is then seen taking the stone, opening some sort of wormhole, and escaping. This whole sequence creates an alternate timeline, or a branch in the timeline, which led to the Disney Plus seriesLoki’sentire plot.
In the seriesLoki, the sacred timeline and its branched realities are explained in further detail. When Loki escapes with the stone, not only does he create an alternate timeline, but an alternate version of the character as well. Fans will remember thatthe MCU’s original Lokiwas killed by Thanos as part of 2018’sAvengers: Infinity War. The show then got slightly derailed when Loki started traveling through time and space to help save the so-called sacred timeline under the supervision of the Time Variance Authority (TVA). But, the ultimate message that the show kept repeating was clear: change the actions of the past, and the main MCU timeline gets affected.
Ms. Marvelcompletely negated this basic rule of time travel when Kamala interacted with Aisha and helped her in her mission. Fans could argue that she was destined to be there, and the sequence is aBootstrap Paradox or a causal loopin the timeline. This basically means that if teenage Kamala did not go back in time and help save Sana, then her grandmother would not be able to begin her new life in Pakistan, followed by the chain of events that eventually leads to Kamala’s birth. By that effect, Sana manages to save her own life in 1947 by sending Kamala the magical bangle in Episode 1 ofMs. Marvel. Kamala is essentially stuck in an infinite cause-and-effect loop.
From the looks of it, the MCU has used this causal loop as part of the main plot, and Aisha’s grand plan of saving her family and the world from the Clan Destine. The repetition of the words “what you seek is seeking you,” emphasize this loop, with Kamala seeking answers in her past, but being the answer to the bigger puzzle all along.
While it sounds like a great plot for a time travel flick, did the MCU conveniently forget its own rules? That is not how time travel works in this universe, as was established inseveral MCU projectsthat came beforeMs. Marvel. It remains to be seen whether the last episode, or the team behindMs. Marvel, will clarify this confusion.
