Ms. Marvel episode 5 released this week and Pakistanis are beaming with pride !
“It’s been a long day, without you my friend… ” I want to sing these lyrics to Fawad Khan who’s taken his time coming onto the screen for us. More so, for finally finding his heroine at a stage when we thought there could be no other than the Marvel’ous M! Surprise, surprise, there’s more than one M in his (screen) life now, and thank God, emotionally invested (and highly volatile) Pakistani fans, who can just as easily not like as like a pairing, are in love with the two!
It is with pride in our hearts and a smile on our faces that we took in Ms. Marvel Episode 5 as Mehwish Hayat aka Ayesha & Fawad Khan aka Hassan did a speedy love story on us and took it to the next level.
Diving Into The Episode
To pack romance, mystery, suspense, action, drama and tragedy in 50 minutes is a feat to be mastered by writer, director and yes, the actors who kept us riveted to the screen. I asked myself why… what was so special about the performances that they made us smile from ear to ear when Hasan met Ayesha. Then kept us on edge when Kamala attempted to close the veil and Najma took the fall, then enveloped us in a 1947 throwback as the train carriages, migrants, utter pandemonium, sea of people with listless eyes heading towards no destination in particular, yet heading somewhere – leaving their lives & livelihoods behind and amidst all that, Ayesha, Hassan, and the weeping Sana pulling us in to the narrative.
The strange thing was, we knew she (Sana) would be saved but yet, we feared for her life.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy managed to recreate the palpable realms of time as it stood still, yet moved in fleeting seconds, to embrace an entire nation of people moving across borders to start a new one – a new nation, from scratch.
There was something about the train scene that threw us back in time. We could almost hear the past echoing through the frames, like the voices of those we lost & those who made it through. Shout out to the creators – How you tell the story matters! It’s been nearly 75 years, yet this is perhaps, the first time it resonates with the nation it represents.
A History Lesson That Resonated With Us!
This was a history lesson in under an hour. I took this moment to press pause on the episode as I explained to my 11 year old why his great grand father never made it to the other side. He was caught in that sea of people, he was perhaps, an Ayesha where Hassan and Sana were his family. He sent them across, to safety but didn’t make it himself. He made sure his family survived so that we, the next generation could be born and live & breathe on soil which granted us safe and free lives.
And that’s what Ms Marvel episode 5 handed to me in those 50 minutes – reasons to know that I could very easily have not been, to tell my child why he sat on that comfortable sofa, watching Disney Plus and reliving the moments onscreen. Moments that spoke of an event 75 years ago, yet moments that were the reason we were present here today, in 2022. Had it not been for those trains who made it to the other side, the same trains that brought my 10 year old father to Pakistan, it would have been an entirely different story.
My father lived to tell the tale, his dad didn’t.
And the tale I’d heard often in my family was very similar to what I witnessed onscreen. Some made it, some didn’t. That was the price of freedom… wish there was a Ms. Marvel to save the day at the time.
But even Ms. Marvel couldn’t save Ayesha. That’s the reality of 1947…and it might haunt the last generation who witnessed it, just like Sana – Kamala’s nani.
What Makes Ms. Marvel So Great?
Ms Marvel Episode 5 struck a chord in Pakistani hearts because it retold events from a perspective that had not been done before. We felt these were the stories we heard, this is what our forefathers witnessed and this is the price of freedom. And we finally got to hear them the way we imagined them, only – bigger.
If anything, I feel MCU has taken on a heavy task with limited time on its hands. To wrap up 75 years in 6 episodes is a gargantuan task indeed. But as you await the final episode, do press pause on that remote and tell your children what happened on those train tracks. The people who rode those trains meandered between a choice of life and death, and even as some chose life, they received death in return.
Yes, Ms. Marvel struck a chord in Pakistani hearts & kudos to the creators for making this one right!
Directed by our very own Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and created by Bisha K. Ali, Ms. Marvel is a six episode series starring Iman Vellani, Matt Lintz, Rish Shah, Farhan Akhtar, Fawad Khan, Mehwish Hayat, Nimra Bucha, Samina Ahmad and others.
