This story contains spoilers for the season finale of Ms. Marvel.
We knew it was coming—but maybe not this soon. You see, back in 2019, Disney acquired 20th Century Fox for a whopping $71.3 billion. What did that news mean to a certain pocket of Marvel fans? Mutants. X-Men. That the legendary crew, which counts the likes of Wolverine and Professor X amongst its ranks would likely soon join the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Fast-forward three years, and still all we'd heard on that front was the announcement of an animated series (X-Men '97) and a choice dick joke (remember Ralph Boehner?). Until the Ms. Marvel finale, anyway. As season one came to a close on Disney+ this Wednesday, we learned a fairly surprising bit of news: Kamala Khan is a mutant. Her buddy, Bruno, tells her that there's "something different in your genes" that's "like a mutation." Khan says, “Whatever, it is it’s just going to be another label." Roll credits!
There you have it. The MCU has its first mutant. Ms. Marvel head writer Bisha K. Ali told Marvel.com that the last-second X-Menification of the series wasn't always in play. "It wasn't from the beginning [of the show that we knew]," said Ali. "With Marvel, something's always a moving piece, and we're trying to solve this question of, 'If any of [Kamala’s family] put the bangle on, would they have powers?' The answer was always no, from a character perspective, no."
If we had to put money on it, Kevin Feige is going to take the stage at Comic-Con next Saturday and drop some X-Men news, whether it be a full-on film announcement, or just the reveal of Hugh Jackman's long-awaited Wolverine successor. Either way, Khan is likely to join up with the MCU's future X-Men. It's a good time to be a Marvel fan, folks.
