Warning: This article contains spoilers for Ms. Marvel. Read at your own risk!
Kamala searches for answers about her powers throughout the series and in Ms. Marvel Episode 5, she ends up in 1947 after seeing visions of a train, she jumps back in decades in the past. While time travel is nothing new in the MCU, how it happened to her is. Exactly how did she get there?
Ms. Marvel Episode 5: How Did Kamala End Up in 1947?
The bangle of Kamala has always been her guide to her powers as it activated her abilities to create hard light out of thin air. The same bangle gives her various visions: first, it was Najma, then there was the train, but the last one, it sent her back in time.
In Ms. Marvel Episode 4, when the dagger of Najma met the bangle of Kamala, she surprisingly travels back in time to the night when the last train departs to Karachi during the Partition in 1947. From visions, Kamala went straight through a time in the past – some sort of a new way of traveling through time in the MCU.
Ms. Marvel Episode 5 fully reveals how it was possible for Kamala to travel back in time in 1947. As Aisha feels her life slowly fading away, she calls for Kamala with the words, “What you seek is seeking you,” the same words inscribed on the bangle that Kamala wears.
READ MORE: Ms. Marvel: What Are Kamran's Powers?
This effectively sends Kamala back in time and she is lost in the middle of the bustling people trying to get on the train. Looking for answers, Kamala sees Aisha dying on the side and Aisha knows at that moment that the bangle works. She even calls Kamala “Sana,” but Kamala explains that she is not her grandmother.
Aisha, before dying, entrusts Sana to Kamala to make sure Sana gets on the train and for her to protect the bangle. Aisha knows that Sana will be okay because Kamala is already there. Aisha hands a family picture to Kamala then her life finally fades away.
Kamala rushes to find Sana who is crying in the middle of the crowd and she immediately goes to Sana telling her that she cannot create stars, only circles. Kamala knows that she cannot go through the crowd so she makes a hard light for Sana to step on until she can go to Hasan but Kamala bumps into another person.
The hard light dissolves into tiny pieces of light leading Sana to Hasan. Hasan sees the light with Sana following it and he immediately knows that such is Aisha’s magic. They jump into the train and it leaves. Kamala realizes that all this time, she is the trail of stars that led Sana to Hasan as told in the stories.
After Kamala’s realization, she is brought back to the present as if no time passed. Just like in Endgame when they traveled back in time, in the present, it only seemed a few minutes. However, what makes Kamala’s time travel different is that she actually played a role in history and it is part of the main timeline all this time unlike the others where they can’t make any changes.
Will this new form of time travel be explored more in the MCU?
Ms. Marvel Episode 5 is now streaming on Disney Plus.