Ms. Marvel made a crucial mistake with its villains

polygon.com:

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for the end of Ms. Marvel season 1.]

A superhero’s rogues’ gallery is often more interesting than the hero themselves. They are the architects of conflict, mapping out the plot by achieving a nefarious goal or one that conflicts with the hero’s priorities. But too often a villain’s darkness contrasted with the hero’s light becomes a flatline of monotony, rather than a shade providing depth to the story.

Take Disney Plus’ Ms. Marvel. I love this show, and its central hero. It was wholesome, funny, gorgeous to look at, and portrayed people like me as fully human. But whenever the villains were around, that magic imbuing the show was lessened. By giving too much screen time to villains who needed an entire season of breathing room, while providing too little to an established group, the show encountered the pitfalls of a short yet overstuffed season.

In just six episodes, we get three sets of villains — The Clandestines, Kamran, and the Department of Damage Control — with differing levels of personal involvement with Kamala and her new powers. The Clandestines are a group of superpowered beings who appear human but are exiles from another dimension. They are djinn who, in Islamic myth, are invisible beings made of fire or light (noor in Arabic). This group includes Kamran, who finds himself torn between his loyalty to his mother, Najma, head of the Clandestines, and being a good friend/love interest to Kamala.

Finally, there’s the Department of Damage Control, a faceless bureaucratic entity whose goal appears to be capturing superpowered individuals. Viewing such people as inherently chaotic and dangerous, Damage Control pursues Kamala and others throughout the season. With only six