Loki

[MahrinSkel]

Two possibilities:

1) Lady Loki is a remnant from the Great Multiversal War that escaped the pruning of the TVA.

2) She's not a female Loki. Loki's core magic has always been illusions, we've never seen her use one at all. She's literally never claimed she is, in fact she gets mad when he calls her by that name.

I'm leaning towards door number two. She's some version of Silvie, Loki royally screwed her over and then she was supposed to be pruned out (and was reset from the timeline, so Loki doesn't remember).

--Dave

[Threash]

One thing I don't get, and is possibly tied to the TVA being a bit of a sham (or Sylvie maybe not actually being a Loki variant), is that if there's one sacred timeline how could there be such a divergent variant of Loki with that different of a history? This doesn't seem like someone who just turned left one day when they should have turned right. It seems like a case where there would be a completely divergent timeline. I don't want to think too deeply on the logistics of time travel in the MCU but I'm still not 100% sure of what the base premise that the TVA is putting forth even is.

She said she's been avoiding them her whole life, which presumably has been thousands of years. In that time anything could have happened.

[Velorath]

Sure but things like being told she was adopted, not being trained in magic, or barely remembering her mother seem like divergences that would have happened prior to being on the run from the TVA assuming we can believe any of it. I guess she could have been taken in by the TVA as a variant and put to work there when she was very young. It just seems odd that things could diverge that much before the TVA stepped in to try to do something about it.

[schild]

Your second paragraph is where I'm at BUT I feel like they pitched  variant timelines being wild and different well enough.

It might just be one of those *we didn't want to make 2 Loki's that were only a little different* + *I get to write whatever I want.*

[Threash]

Sure but things like being told she was adopted, not being trained in magic, or barely remembering her mother seem like divergences that would have happened prior to being on the run from the TVA assuming we can believe any of it. I guess she could have been taken in by the TVA as a variant and put to work there when she was very young. It just seems odd that things could diverge that much before the TVA stepped in to try to do something about it.

If she's been running from them her whole life that means they did step in ASAP, she's just avoided them for this long.

[MahrinSkel]

Sure but things like being told she was adopted, not being trained in magic, or barely remembering her mother seem like divergences that would have happened prior to being on the run from the TVA assuming we can believe any of it. I guess she could have been taken in by the TVA as a variant and put to work there when she was very young. It just seems odd that things could diverge that much before the TVA stepped in to try to do something about it.

Or those are the parts where she's lying, playing along with the TVAs assumption she was a Loki and Loki's acceptance of that assumption. She's either from a wildly divergent timeline that predates (wtf that even means in this context?) the TVA, or she's Enchantress, created by Loki and immediately pruned, but she escaped.

--Dave

[Khaldun]

Come on, this was two manipulators purposefully trying to get info on each other. This is like two IPO-seeking Wharton grads on a weekend retreat with one another where they have to give up their iPhones and go for a six-hour hike with one another and both of them are pretending they ran out of water halfway through to see if they can get a leg up on the other one.

I feel certain that Prime Loki will reveal he's been casting an illusion around the dimensional dingus and it's not broken and Sylvie Loki will reveal she's been manipulating him all along (she got a brain lock on him early) and maybe the whole thing never happened. Or something to that effect. This was a character-development, not plot-development, episode.

[Velorath]

That's basically what I said on the previous page, yes.

Edit: Just to say that we are in agreement.

[Draegan]

Is the broken Timepad just an illusion?
Did Sylvie actually enchant Loki and this is just a dream?
Is Own Wilson going to find out he's a variant and try to use a infinity powered jetski?


Filler episode, like it still, but not very great.

[Raguel]

Sylvie claimed that everyone working for the TVA are variants. That may not be true but we viewers got a chance at seeing her manipulate one of the agents, so we know at least that one had a life prior to being with the TVA. If that's true then perhaps "long-lived" variants don't cause red lines. Or everything we've been told about the TVA and the sacred timeline are basically lies.

I didn't really think much of the whole Kang is one of the Keepers theory but I'm warming up to it.

[eldaec]

I liked it, but it felt like a completely different show.

Turned into Dr Who, MCU edition. Not just the production style but the dialog was properly hammed up.

[MediumHigh]

So this goes all of a few ways.

A. The TVA is partially lying to their agents. Telling people that their lives and history have been effectively erased and then forcing them to work for you is a hard pill to swallow for most people so its more convenient to have them assume they "always" been at the TVA. But their job is real. I.E the TVA stops the creation of multiverses and ultimately prevent the breakdown of the universe.

B. The TVA is lying. The agents jobs aren't real. Now their theory on variants is real but either:
  a. the multiverse exist, is at peace and the TVA is pruning realities out of a religious crusade
  b. the multiverse exist, there is a war and the TVA merely picked a side, hence the Sacred timeline.
  c. the multiverse exist, there can be a peace but a war between the more violent realities that discovered time travel forced the time keepers to take a radical approach to prevent future problems.


C. Lady Loki is telling the truth but "her" truth, she is an escaped variant from a timeline that's been pruned and they have been chasing her ever since. She wants to destroy the Time Keepers because in her timeline everything was going great until the time cops showed up and killed everyone.

[Khaldun]

We still have absolutely zero explanation of what causes a variant in a universe that seems extremely well-policed against it. The single example we've seen is a direct result of the singular case of the Avengers doing time-travel and making a big accidental mistake in the course of it.

In the comics, variations happen ever single damn time anything happens and they happen especially, in profusion, when people travel in time. In Marvel Universe canon, hitting "post" on this message generates a variant who didn't hit "post". In the MCU? We have two sources (the TVA and the Ancient One) claiming that variants are a big problem and ZERO mechanisms for understanding how they happen.

[Velorath]

I would guess that it may likely be handwaved away as it being impossible to micro-manage the timeline down to each decision that each living thing in the universe does. Even for as many ramification as the smallest decision we make have, it's possible that most of the things most people do in their day to day wouldn't throw the timeline off the overall course it's supposed to be on, but sometimes (especially when time travel gets involved) one thing can mess up the timeline enough to create a branch

[Sky]

Kinda failing to see how it is well-policed against, unless you're just buying the TVA line. It's clearly all bullshit to achieve a specific goal.

[Khaldun]

That's kind of what I meant. If the TVA is actually about catching and eliminating variants, they've provided zero insight into what causes variants. If there are lots of variants to catch, it's already an indication that the TVA is a giant fake-out.

[HaemishM]

I don't want to think too deeply on the logistics of time travel in the MCU but I'm still not 100% sure of what the base premise that the TVA is putting forth even is.

I'm pretty sure it's destroying all the timelines that lead to divergent Kangs (and the variants are only specific pivot points that eventually cause a divergent Kang even if they themselves aren't the cause) without the TVA knowing that's what its purpose is. The divergent Kangs are basically "all the other Kangs that aren't me who is masquerading as a Time Keeper."

[eldaec]

That's kind of what I meant. If the TVA is actually about catching and eliminating variants, they've provided zero insight into what causes variants.

I might have misunderstood what was said but it didn't seem unclear to me. Tbh they've done a better job of a time travel premise than any other IP I can think of. I was impressed by how they presented it in endgame and this builds on it.

They've said 'nexus' events  cause the timeline to split.

We know from Wandavision that certain individuals can cause nexus events and based on what we've seen I assume that points on the timeline also carry inherent risk of a nexus event - in the case of the show, a timeline formed with the tesseract skidding closer to loki.

The only thing they didn't show or explain is how the timeline continually rolls the dice, but as the TVA and presumably the timekeepers exist in their own time dimension it seems reasonable that nexus events have a probability of forming at a given point on the timeline in a given amount of TVA time. That leaves the TVA playing whack a mole as the timeline naturally diverges.

Once a timeline is split they've shown they can remerge it by nuking the region that has been impacted by the nexus. Anything that escapes that process is a variant and anything a variant does is logically going to risk a further split, though an event big enough to wipe out those differences means those splits might not matter.



As for the plot, Sylvie doesn't seem at all loki-like - doesn't have loki's powers, and given she isn't loki in the comics, I'd say she probably isn't loki. In fact not a variant at all would be my guess.

[Khaldun]

If she's related to the Sylvie of the comics,

[Velorath]

I could see them changing that bit and that they're just using the name because it just makes things easier when you're dealing with multiple variants of the same person.

[eldaec]

But why use that specific name, and did they really need another name when they made her appearance and personality so radically different?

I can imagine it going either way, but by the end of the episode I was 70-30 she isn't really loki.

[Velorath]

But why use that specific name, and did they really need another name when they made her appearance and personality so radically different?

I can imagine it going either way, but by the end of the episode I was 70-30 she isn't really loki.

You use that specific name because she shares some things in common with the comic book character and because when you're verbally trying to refer to a specific one of the two Loki variants.

Now I'm sure there's more to Sylvie's background here than she's revealing. The main reason I think they might not go with a similar origin than the comic book Sylvie though is simply because it's more convoluted. "Variant but very different Loki" is more digestible than "Loki can give other people powers, and he powered up a some random human, but the TVA thinks it's a Loki variant because reasons, and Loki did this because he has a plot to do such and such and for some reason he felt this was the best way to go about it".

[Khaldun]

Might let Loki Variant discover something he didn't know he could do with interesting consequences--"oh, I can empower people with magic and mischief".

Maybe Loki Variant actually creates Kang? Maybe that's who Morbius really is--Kang in Waiting, until Variant Loki gives him the juice. Maybe the whole thing is just a con to get Loki to MAKE Kang.

I mean, Wilson-as-Kang would fit in really well to the mood of an Ant-Man film--Stoner Executive Trying to Become Conqueror.

[Ceryse]

Might let Loki Variant discover something he didn't know he could do with interesting consequences--"oh, I can empower people with magic and mischief".

Maybe Loki Variant actually creates Kang? Maybe that's who Morbius really is--Kang in Waiting, until Variant Loki gives him the juice. Maybe the whole thing is just a con to get Loki to MAKE Kang.

I mean, Wilson-as-Kang would fit in really well to the mood of an Ant-Man film--Stoner Executive Trying to Become Conqueror.

Kang has already been cast. It's Jonathan Majors, so it won't be Wilson.

[MahrinSkel]

There's definitely a Chekhov's Gun on the mantle in the form of the "other analyst", and Moebius M. Moebius doesn't feel like a one-shot character we're never going to see again after this series.

--Dave

[Khaldun]

Oh yeah re: Kang being cast already. Still, also yeah, Moebius doesn't feel like a one-shot character.

[Teleku]

Speaking of Chekhov's gun, I'm wondering when 'Chekhov's explanation of the two different types of illusions you can cast' is going going to go off.

[Khaldun]

Yeah. I'm thinking it's specifically about the allegedly destroyed McGuffin--I will not be at all surprised if the next episode opens with Loki just gating the two of them out using a working version, as he feels he's learned as much about Sylvie as he can.

[MahrinSkel]

Yeah. I'm thinking it's specifically about the allegedly destroyed McGuffin--I will not be at all surprised if the next episode opens with Loki just gating the two of them out using a working version, as he feels he's learned as much about Sylvie as he can.

Yeah, Sylvie never touched the sparking macguffin. Wouldn't surprise me if it's actually fully charged, she seemed surprised it even *could* be out of juice.

Of course, it also wouldn't surprise me if the whole thing was Sylvie doing head games, although that seems less likely (she said it builds the interrogation world out of memories). Yeah, both of them are liars, but if they start lying about exposition that's really aimed at the audience, the whole thing falls apart.

--Dave

[eldaec]

Yeah. I'm thinking it's specifically about the allegedly destroyed McGuffin--I will not be at all surprised if the next episode opens with Loki just gating the two of them out using a working version, as he feels he's learned as much about Sylvie as he can.

If the answer is that shit the rest of the epsiode would have to be bloody amazing to bring me back on side.

[Sky]

Yeah. I'm thinking it's specifically about the allegedly destroyed McGuffin--I will not be at all surprised if the next episode opens with Loki just gating the two of them out using a working version, as he feels he's learned as much about Sylvie as he can.

If the answer is that shit the rest of the epsiode would have to be bloody amazing to bring me back on side.

Really? My immediate thought was that it was a fake broken goober, because it's Loki. I'll be surprised if it wasn't fake.

[Rishathra]

My guess is the other analyst is

[Trippy]

Mid-season sneak peek, lots of spoilers obviously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgdWQBvS0_A

[eldaec]

Yeah. I'm thinking it's specifically about the allegedly destroyed McGuffin--I will not be at all surprised if the next episode opens with Loki just gating the two of them out using a working version, as he feels he's learned as much about Sylvie as he can.

If the answer is that shit the rest of the epsiode would have to be bloody amazing to bring me back on side.

Really? My immediate thought was that it was a fake broken goober, because it's Loki. I'll be surprised if it wasn't fake.

I have no problem with that being a plot point within an episode, but bad cliffhangers annoy me no end.

If the PoV character is hiding a broken thingy literally up his sleeve,  I want it resolved within the episode it is part of.

[Sky]

I get that. My thing is doppleganger bullshit. The newer BSG cylons, the 1st season of Jessica Jones with Tennant mind-controlling people. The whole 'is this person an alien/robot/mind-controlled/illusion/disguise' thing is weak af imo, but when an entire series is based on it, I'm out. Thus far they have been surprisingly good about this in Loki, despite illusion being his jam.