#is casey officially casey c casey like mobius???

[dspd]

Head cannon for why Loki's face shape changes so much from the first Thor to the end of season 2 of the Loki TV show when it's been canonically not that long and he's already at least a thousand years old:

Well Loki was born a boy she was more often than not a girl as a child when she was closer to and wanted to be more like Frigga. Then, as Loki grew up and was more influenced by Thor and Odin and everyone else wanting to be a warrior, Loki reluctantly started shapeshifting into a boy more often. But since he was more inclined to be like Frigga he'd be uncomfortable and subtly alter himself to a more androgenous look that's closer to how he felt. He thinned his jaw, grew long curly hair, and gave himself a muscled but svelt look.

And as much as he liked the look - and as much as he adored his brother back then - Thor, in that thoughtless cruel way that even Asgardians can have, would poke fun with painful jokes that pricked the back of his eyes and sent him crying to his mother's strong, sheltering, loving embrace more than once.

Still, Loki is still more inclined to quietly rebel against Odin and it becomes a favored form.

But then, after he sees how fruitless it was in the Sacred Timeline, when he sees how they still lost and died painfully and Odin never acknowledged them for who they were to his end, Loki just...stops caring so much about rebelling against the closest thing they'd had to a father figure.

He's so tired.

Loki keeps his male persona up in the TVA, feels the smallest bit more protected, and has that slight advantage of sexism in all its forms even in as peculiar a place as Mobius' side. It helps that Mobius seems enamored with the more masculine parts of his current form. At first, when he's still terrified for his life, he's tense, nerves screaming as Mobius places a hand so high on his shoulder, that his fingertips slip beneath the ring around his neck.

Later Loki finds himself softening, sliding between the wary "he" that he'd become before becoming a Variant and the more amorphous self he'd enjoyed as a child, learning seidr at his mother's knee. Something about the easy touches Mobius gives reminds him of his less frictious childhood. Soothing.

And when Loki meets Sylvie, a less lucky Variant who managed to stay true to her self, changing fluidly between she and they (and sometimes him) but always keeping a face that reminds him of Frigga, he feels like he can try it himself. It's more than unsettling to walk down the hallways of the TVA in a shape, any shape other than the one known as Variant L1230 and she's ready to bolt as her face rounds, her body shrinks and curves, hair lightening closer to the shadowed strawberry gold she'd preferred when female. But she's still recognized, Casey grinning and pausing to tell her that he got a pet fish and they're really cool.

Oh. Right.

TVA.

Loki somehow forgot they don't look at the surface if they look at you at all. Her temporal aura is the same, regardless of the flesh that houses it.

And if that isn't the most effervescent, bubbling affirmation she's ever had.

An indeterminate amount of time later, as time is different in the TVA, Loki ends up chasing a Kang variant who's closing in on the formula to start the interdimensional war He Who Remains...remained to prevent. Loki is panting, chasing him, dashing madly between pedestrians in the crowd, losing to the Variant and -

He's bounding forward, faster than ever on all fours, leaping up onto the parked cars, pushing off with his hind legs, claws digging in and swiping, severing the tendons in the Variant's legs.

The metallic smell of blood is bright and heavy and heady and -

Mobius is sliding between him and his prey, crowding in towards Loki's snout, one hand reaching for his wet muzzle. "Hey, buddy," Mobius murmurs, smiling that signature easy, appreciative smile, crooked nose wrinkling a little. It doesn't reach his eyes. Loki isn't sure why Mobius seems so hesitant, but he pushes his head forward anyway, accepting the touch with a slight rumble.

It feels nice.

When Mobius's hand slips off the back of Loki's skull, he nearly whines, scrabbling around to shove his head under those wonderfully scratchy nails again. When Mobius finds the best spot under his jaw, Loki melts into a loud, rumbling puddle, eyes sliding shut and head dropping into Mobius's hand.

Mobius grunts. "Damn, Loki, your head is heavier than an entire ten year old."

Loki flicks an ear and doesn't move.

As it turns out, unlike with Odin's exacting expectations in Asgard, Loki doesn't doesn't even have to be human to be accepted for who they are.

[aion-rsa]

Marvel’s Loki Episode 3 Raises Some Questions About the TVA

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This article contains spoilers for Loki episode 3.

Back in the first episode of Marvel’s Loki, viewers get a helpful expositional rundown about the Time Variance Authority from Miss Minutes (Tara Strong), a friendly cartoon clock.

In a ‘50s style orientation video, Miss Minutes described how the Time Keepers created the TVA and all the employees within it to maintain the Sacred Timeline and avert temporal chaos. Makes sense! But in this week’s episode, “Lamentis”, we are provided some information that appears to be at odds with the “official” founding myth of the TVA.

As rogue Loki Variant Sylvie describes what it’s like to enchant people’s minds (huh, almost like she’s some kind of…enchantress?) to our lead character, she reveals that sometimes a mind is so strong that she must create a fantasy of a memory to lull them. Such is the case with Hunter C-20 (Sasha Lane).

“I had to pull a memory from hundreds of years prior before she even fought for them,” Sylvie tells Loki.

Huh…before she fought for the TVA? How could C-20 have had a life before the TVA if the TVA created her for time-policing purposes? It turns out that, according to Sylvie, everyone who works at the TVA are just like her and Loki: Variants lost on the Sacred Timeline. 

In classic Marvel Cinematic Universe fashion, this answer to a question leads to only more questions. Let’s endeavor to answer them.

What is the TVA’s Real Mission?

Marvel’s first Disney+ series WandaVision made it clear from the get-go that all wasn’t what it seemed to be. Conversely Loki appeared to end its first episode with all cards on the table. Sure, the science fiction premise was ambitious and at times hard to understand, but the TVA’s mission was outlined quite clearly in that aforementioned orientation video. Now one can’t help but wonder whether Loki isn’t more like WandaVision than we anticipated.

The TVA says its only mission is to protect the Sacred Timeline. As the series goes on, however, the very notion of a Sacred Timeline seems increasingly impossible. As discussed in this feature, which irreparably broke my brain, the lack of alternate universes in the TVA’s worldview is just not feasible. Where do all of these Loki Variants come from if not alternate universes or alternate timelines?

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Sylvie has a fundamentally different appearance from our Loki and, if she is to be believed, an entirely different family history. How could two such contradictory beings exist on one Sacred Timeline? The answer is that they can’t. The TVA claims that the emergence of just one alternate timeline branched off from the Sacred Timeline would have disastrous consequences. Clearly it doesn’t though as all the Variant Lokis already exist.

Perhaps when Miss Minutes and the Time Keepers say that the TVA maintains the Sacred Timeline, what they mean is that they guard it from external threats. Pruning Nexus events here and there is also part of the job, but the main goal is to make sure that the Sacred Timeline doesn’t come under attack from other timelines. If we buy into that logic, then of course the Time Keepers would bring brainwashed Variants aboard to assist in this mission.

Speaking of the Time Keepers…

Are the Time-Keepers Even Real?

Episode three brings us closer to meeting the Time-Keepers than ever before. C-20 tells Sylvie that the Time Keepers reside on the top floor of the TVA offices, accessible only through a golden elevator. Sylvie makes it quite close to invading their sanctum before Loki intervenes.

Now that a basic tenet of the TVA’s history is in question though, so too is the existence of the Time-Keepers themselves. Loki’s understanding of the deities is that they are three “space lizards” who oversee the timestream. While that would certainly be cool to see depicted onscreen, it now seems more likely that they’re a fairy tale.

The TVA’s own internal depiction of the Time-Keepers is too holy and sagacious to possibly be real. As evidenced by the bureaucratic nightmare around them, time keeping is not a sexy business. It requires hard work and determination, not ethereal space iguanas. Recall that the only character who claims to have met with the head honchos is Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). 

Is Miss Minutes the Big Bad Here?

If the Time-Keepers aren’t Loki’s main foe to be vanquished then who is? It’s possible that the answer was in front of us the whole time. Simply put: there’s something off about Miss Minutes. At first glance, she was just a funny satire of the friendly cartoonish faces that corporations use to hide their dirty work. Then episode 2 revealed that Miss Minutes is actually able to achieve something resembling a corporeal form as she quizzes Loki on TVA history from a desk.

This past week, The Hollywood Reporter had a chance to interview Tara Strong, the voice of Miss Minutes, and there were some intriguing tidbits uncovered. When asked about director Kate Herron’s assertion that Miss Minutes was about to go on an “interesting” journey, Strong responded:

“I can cryptically tease that you’ll see her again. There’s much more to be revealed, and it’s fun to watch that unfold. The beautiful thing about this character is you don’t really know who she is, where she’s from, what her origin story is, how sentient she is, if she has a horse in this race at all, and what her intentions are, if any.”

Strong made good on her promise to remain cryptic there, but it’s still surprising to hear just how much Miss Minutes content is yet to come. I suppose that’s to be expected from a character with her own poster and that played by a voice acting titan. It’s not out of the question that Miss Minutes will be revealed to be an antagonist of sorts, perhaps even the main one. 

For better or worse, Miss Minutes represents the TVA. What if the agency started with noble intentions before gradually becoming corrupted over centuries? And now Miss Minutes is the anthropomorphic embodiment of the flawed institution, stamping out timelines that don’t need to be stamped out. Perhaps she’s like HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

After all, does this look like the face of mercy to you?

Does Agent Mobius Know He Had A Life Before the TVA?

The biggest loser in the revelations of episode 3 might be poor Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson). Back in episode 2, Mobius had a conversation with Loki about how much he appreciates order in the universe rather than the chaos that Loki prefers. That same episode reveals, however, that Mobius might not be as straight-laced as he appears.

The man loves jet skis, calling them the perfect combination of form and function. Unlike his co-worker Casey (Eugene Cordero) who doesn’t even know what a fish is, Mobius likes to spend much of his infinite time reading jet ski magazines. We should have known right then and there that the TVA did not create its employees because why would they program in a love for something from the outside world? 

Mobius is probably a Variant conscripted into the TVA’s mission just like everyone else. The question is: does he know that? I’m inclined to think he does not. Though Mobius is a respected Agent in the TVA, he is continually shown to be shockingly far down on the totem pole. Judge Renslayer won’t let him meet the Time Keepers (probably because they don’t exist) and even Hunter B-15 bosses him around in the field. 

Although, there’s another possibility. In the comics, many higher/executive positions in the TVA were held by Mobius. Multiple Mobiuses. The Marvel Comics TVA had a policy of cloning its managers, rather than hiring/training new people, and since Mobius was great at his job, they made more of him. Perhaps the MCU Mobius is based on a Variant, one who did his job so well that they chose to duplicate him for more work. It would mean that he isn’t necessarily lying when he tells Loki the “creation myth” of the TVA agents, it might just be the only truth he knows.

Wilson also brings a sensitivity and world-weariness to the role that suggest deep down, Mobius knows something is missing in his life. On a subconscious level, maybe that’s why he’s so taken with Loki. The only being that can take down the Time Keepers and TVA’s strict order is the God of Mischief. 

The post Marvel’s Loki Episode 3 Raises Some Questions About the TVA appeared first on Den of Geek.

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