Marvel Has A Simple Solution That Can Keep Inhumans In The MCU

Warning: Contains spoilers for Ms. Marvel episode 6.

The future of the Inhumans in the MCU doesn’t look very promising right now, but there’s an easy solution for keeping them around. The Inhumans haven’t had a big presence in the wider MCU, and various changes that Ms. Marvel made to its titular character have decreased that even further. There’s an easy way to fix that, however, and it’s something that works even better by taking elements of the comics into account.

Ms. Marvel changing Kamala Khan’s powers from her iconic stretching ability to producing hard light already suggested she might not be an Inhuman in the MCU, but the series finale confirmed it by revealing that, in a major twist from the comics, Ms.Marvel is a mutant in the MCU. This twist has been the subject of controversy since its reveal, as while many people are happy that mutants are officially part of the MCU, others don’t like how the twist makes it even harder for Inhumans to have a place in the MCU. Kamala is one of the most iconic Inhumans in the comics, so if she’s going to be a mutant in the MCU, then it suggests that the MCU has little to no interest in dealing with Inhumans anymore following the conclusion of Agents of SHIELD, and that’s more than disappointing for those hoping to see more of the Inhumans.

That being said, there’s a very easy way to keep Inhumans in the MCU: Inhumans can be a subcategory of mutant, with mutant being an umbrella term for any sort of mutation. If mutants and Inhumans were grouped together, then Kamala could be a mutant while technically being an Inhuman, thus allowing for Inhumans to still have a presence in the MCU. Comments from Kamala Kahn’s co-creator Sana Amanat also help with this, as she implies that there might be more to her having a “mutation” than just being a mutant (via Uproxx), so there’s already a suggestion that mutants won’t be the same as how people are familiar with them.

How Mutants And Inhumans Are Connected In The Comics

The idea of grouping mutants and Inhumans together also works because of the history they have in the comics. Mutants were created by the Celestials experimenting on ancient humans, and it was the Kree trying to copy those experiments that led to the creation of the Inhumans. This means that the Inhumans were connected to mutants from their very conception, so assuming that the MCU Celestials are also responsible for mutants, it would be more than reasonable to group mutants and Inhumans together like this.

Making Mutant Subcategories Could Fix The Comics’ Weirdest Mutant Issue

Having there be different subcategories of mutants could also fix one of the weirdest issues surrounding mutants in the comics. A core element of mutants in the comics and their various adaptations is how much the general population hates them, but that hatred gets confusing when they don’t have problems — not nearly to the same extent, anyway — with people like Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, who also got their powers from mutations; people like them are technically mutates, but that distinction has always had a sense of redundancy to it. If mutates like Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four were also a subcategory of mutants, though, then the issue of there not being a good distinction between the two would be gone, and that, in turn, could even out mutant hatred by either having mutates go through the same struggles or using them to lighten the issue, altogether.

Ms. Marvel makes it easy enough to conclude that the MCU is distancing itself from Inhumans, but it’s not impossible to fix that. Making Inhumans into a subcategory of mutants would be an easy way to keep Inhumans in the MCU while focusing primarily on mutants, and in addition to the comics providing justification for it, the idea could even work to fix one of the more confusing aspects of mutant hatred. All in all, the MCU Inhumans might have a bigger future in the franchise than it might initially appear.