Ms. Marvel Star Teases Character’s Surprising Return

Spoilers for Ms. Marvel Episode 4 follow! Ms. Marvel surprised fans when Farhan Akthar, a legend an Indian cinema, made a surprise debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a leader in the Red Dagger group. Almost as quickly as the character was introduced, he was seemingly taken out of the franchise, as well. Waleed provided a bit of a history lesson to Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan before helping her and Aramis Knight’s Kareem escape the Clandestine villains. In doing so, Waleed took a spear into his back and fell off of a balcony, appearing to be dead… but if you think that was an abrupt and misleading end for the character, Akthar is with you.

Although Kareem took a look at Waleed and assured Kamala that Waleed was gone, some believe Akthar’s character will have survived the encounter. Akthar is a member of that camp. “I’m in complete agreement with you that it’s not,” Akthar told ComicBook.com when presented with the idea that the knife to the back would not be enough to kill his character. Whether or not we will see him again, Akthar won’t say for sure.

Unlike some other secretive Marvel projects, the cast of Ms. Marvel were given the entirety of their roles upfront. ‘they did give me all the stuff,” Akthar said. “When we got into discussing Waleed in detail, I must say the writers, the creative producers, had really, really kind of dug deep and created a character that one could get an understanding of what it is that one should play. So yeah, it was pretty clear in terms of what was being asked of me and what was being asked of this character. Of course, when the scene comes when I fall off the balcony and Junior Red Dagger goes like, ‘Oh, my God, he’s dead.’ And there was a part of me that just wanted to get up and go, ‘No, he’s not!’ But the director wouldn’t allow it.”

Ms. Marvel is Akthar’s first foray into stateside projects. The actor seemed to enjoy his time as Waleed and viewers seemed to love seeing him appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so there is certainly hope the directors allow him to stand up later and show us Waleed survived! 

Akthar is not the only Ms. Marvel cast member who dove into researching and planning his role upon getting cast in the Marvel franchise. Knight also started looking for new intel, turning to the comics to learn more about his Kareem character. “I definitely think there was some research in the comics, but I think the difference between Ms. Marvel and a lot of the other comic to show adaptations, is that Ms. Marvel is quite new,” Knight said. “All these characters are very new, so there’s not a lot of stuff online about them or in the comics even. There’s some backstories built and things like that, but for me, I feel like we are kind of creating the characters as we go. And I think the comics will follow in line with the show. So, it felt very much like a clean slate. We were able to have creative freedom to create the character that we wanted to create.”

The first four episodes of Ms. Marvel are streaming on Disney+ now. What do you think of the series so far? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Twitter. ComicBook.com’s full interview with Akthar will be available on the Phase Zero YouTube channel on Saturday!