Nia DaCosta, the director behind Marvel Studios’ next feature film The Marvels, discussed Ms. Marvel’s age in the MCU sequel.
Featuring three key female heroes in leading roles and a fun body-swapping plot, this forthcoming sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel will hopefully live up to the hype.
The Marvels is headlined by Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau, and Ms. Marvel herself, Kamala Khan, who will make the jump from her own TV series onto the big screen.
How Old Is Ms. Marvel In The Marvels?
Speaking to Total Film magazine, director Nia DaCosta discussed the fact that Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel is 16 years old in The Marvels.
It’s important to note that Kamala was also 16 years old in her 2022 solo series on Disney+. This would indicate that The Marvels only takes place a short amount of time post-Ms. Marvel. Iman Vellani is also 21 in real life and was 19 throughout the majority of filming The Marvels.
Another interesting detail is the fact that Khan was 16 in her comic book debut as well.
In comparison, there’s Spider-Man. Peter Parker was born on August 10, 2001 in-universe. This means that he was even younger than Kamala when he first arrived on the scene in Captain America: Civil War. In that 2016 film, Peter was 14 years old. And in the follow-up, Spider-Man: Homecoming, it’s explicitly stated that the wall-crawler is 15, which is still a year behind Ms. Marvel during her origin story.
DaCosta confirmed Iman Vellani's hero age while discussing what each of the film’s main character brings to the table:
“But on top of that, they’re all switching places. That gives it so much dimension, but it makes it really fun. And then you have the complication that two of them can fly and are basically invulnerable, and then [there’s] one 16-year-old girl who can make hard light. So how do we mix and match and keep the peril and the stakes high with these three women switching places? That was so fun.”
By “switching places,” DaCosta meant that Carol, Kamala, and Monica are literally teleported to each other’s locations whenever they try to use their superpowers due to a mysterious entanglement.
The MCU's Current Roster of Young Heroes
If one has been paying attention to the MCU over the past few years, they’d notice that Marvel Studios added several superheroes in their teens and 20s.
There’s the aforementioned Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man, plus Cassie Lang, Riri Williams, Kid Loki, Billy and Tommy Maximoff, and even Hulk’s son, Skaar.
The question on many a fan’s mind remains: is the MCU leading toward the Young Avengers? Nothing is officially confirmed at this point, but it is a bit conspicuous that the studio introduced so many rookie heroes in Phases 4 and 5.
And with the regular Avengers team out of commission, perhaps it’s time that the newbies rise up and take on the challenge of protecting Earth.
On another note, it’s worth considering that what a director says about the ages of the characters in their movies isn’t always the most reliable. Case in point, Peyton Reed mentioned multiple times that Cassie was 18 in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumainia, but when compared to the character’s ages in her other MCU appearances, the overall timeline becomes seriously muddled.
The Marvels arrives in theaters on November 10.
