Iman Vellani is the best thing to happen to the MCU since Jon Favreau sat down and thought, ‘That Robert Downey Jr fella would make a great Iron Man if he just had a little beard.’ If you need proof, look at who she thinks Ms Marvel should be as the villain when Kamala Khan appears on our screens next.
Vellani would love the MCU to introduce the deceitful Doc.X as the next big bad Kamala Khan has to fight when (or if) Kevin Feige ever gives Ms. Marvel season 2 the green light.
“Definitely Doc.X. I think that’s a great villain from the comics and can really resonate with the Gen Z audience,” she told The Direct. “It would be so interesting—I don’t know, messing with kids’ psyche almost when you have this villain who only exists on your phone, and on your laptops, and on all your screens that we can’t avoid. I think it’d be really interesting position to put them all in to fight against something that you can’t even see, right? Yeah. Yeah, that’s one of my favorite comic storylines. So I would love to see that play out.”
Now, I don’t need the telepathic abilities of Professor X to know you’re wondering who Doc.X is. Introduced in Ms. Marvel Vol. 4 #14 (2017) Doc.X isn’t your standard Marvel villain; it’s a sentient computer virus that infected Kamala’s computer and learned her secret identity.
Using that information to blackmail our favorite Marvel character, the virus attempted to gain access to SHIELD’s supercomputer but was ultimately thwarted by Ms Marvel and her friends. Vellani is right that Doc.X is a very Gen Z threat; the entire concept is a metaphor for cyberbullying and the risk of people divulging sensitive information online, and it would strike a chord with younger viewers.
Beyond that, though, it would be really cool actually to see Ms. Marvel go up against a threat she couldn’t just punch in the face. Doc.X could force Kamala to think smarter, to use her network of friends in new ways, and generally push the boundaries of what we expect from a supervillain.
At the very least Doc.X can’t be worse than the Noor or whatever those bozos from season 1 were called. If you’re a fan of Kamala Khan, you’ve probably seen The Marvels, but on the off chance you missed it read out The Marvels review here.
We’ve also got a treasure trove of MCU content including guides explaining how to watch all the Marvel movies in order and breaking down all of the upcoming Marvel movies. If that’s not enough, we’ve also got pieces on all the Marvel Phase 5 and Phase 6 films including Deadpool 3.