This article contains spoilers for Ms. Marvel episode 1.
The MCU avoided a huge Captain Marvel costume mistake, at least until Ms. Marvel episode 1, which features an Easter egg that doesn't quite make sense. Carol Danvers made her comic book debut as an officer of the USAF who worked alongside the Kree hero Mar-Vell, and in 1977 she was transformed into the superhero Ms. Marvel. The MCU has largely skipped much of Captain Marvel's backstory, with Brie Larson's character taking her modern codename right from the start.
Marvel Studios also wisely chose to avoid Carol Danvers' original superhero costume. That was an homage to Mar-Vell's, although highly sexualized, with her bare midriff, back, and long legs on display. Readers were bemused at the outfit; one of them wrote (in a letter published in Ms. Marvel #8): "Question: where is a woman who wears long sleeves, gloves, high boots and a scarf (winter wear), and at the same time has a bare back, belly, and legs? The Arctic equator? That costume requires a few alterations." The Ms. Marvel outfit seems to have been partly imposed by editorial fiat, with artist Dave Cockrum particularly unimpressed, drawing a distinctly NSF birthday sketch of Ms. Marvel for editor Jim Shooter and switching it at the first opportunity. Marvel Studios rightly skipped all this, going to a more modern costume for inspiration instead.
This background makes an Easter egg in Ms. Marvel episode 1 all the more surprising. The MCU's Kamala Khan is a Captain Marvel fangirl, and she's been producing a 10-part video series on the woman she considers to be Earth's mightiest hero. Curiously, she's actually drawn a sketch of Carol Danvers in her original Ms. Marvel outfit. This is intended as just another of Ms. Marvel episode 1's countless Easter eggs, but the problem is that it doesn't quite make sense in the MCU.
Ms. Marvel never wore this "Arctic equator" costume in the MCU, meaning it doesn't logically fit as part of this shared universe. The logical assumption is that Kamala Khan has herself designed it in the MCU, imagining her favorite superhero wearing this outfit, but that in itself feels rather out-of-character. Kamala is, after all, a teenage girl whose idea of a perfect cosplay is the fuller armor-like outfit she wears to AvengerCon.
It's only a minor Easter egg, and no doubt most viewers didn't even notice it. But the inclusion of this particular Ms. Marvel costume hints at a greater problem with Easter eggs: they need to be chosen carefully, lest they break the shared universe model. Marvel has encountered the same problems on a far greater scale; a major Infinity Gauntlet plot hole was created because the studio included a glimpse of the Infinity Gauntlet in Odin's vault, and all their attempts to fix it just made it worse. Ms. Marvel's Captain Marvel Easter egg is nowhere near as problematic, and any implications for the MCU as a whole can simply be ignored without any problem. But it points to the same issues, suggesting Marvel hasn't learned their lesson.
Ms. Marvel releases new episodes on Wednesdays on Disney+.
