#you might want to interpret this as the life of a loki variant who gets laid a lot because he looks like thor.

[nostalgia-tblr]

okay sorry to be a judgey bitch about literally everything (she lied) but i am halfway through the night manager and the plot of this episode seems to be that Blond Loki is being kept on an island for no obvious reason (possibly as a living sex doll?) and he wanders it meeting people who just instantly start explaining part of the plot to him. like this woman:

This is literally the first conversation I remember these characters having and this is the first topic she goes for. WTF. And I don't know what happens after this but if they AREN'T all playing a weird mindgame where they're all feeding him lies I will be disappointed as this is like watching someone play one of those video games where you have to go up to every NPC and ask them for a sidequest and/or plot info. There's a scene where a literal child starts expositing about secret rooms in the house and the magical items he'd need to find to access them to get to the portal to Hyrule.

I don't understand this, it is very odd. But this is the pattern so far, and sometimes the other characters are expositing because they want to fuck him (see above re: sex doll theory) but I don't think that's officially the plot. Is Hugh Laurie keeping him as a pet?

I do think maybe the Evil Gay Guy (so far the most entertaining character and therefore the best one) might be messing with him, otherwise it is hard to explain why you would approach a man, tell him not to fuck one specific woman, and then go back to the shop where you sell potions to plucky adventurers. I mean why would you do that unless you were trying to get him to fuck that one specific woman?

One of the amusing mini-games in this RPG is called "Who Is He Going To Fuck Next?"

(This is a different woman. She is not specific and so I assume she is on the 'fuckable' list.)

After I took that screenshot she asked why Hugh Laurie was keeping him on the island of fuckable NPC quest-givers. Blond Loki said he doesn't know. I don't know either. But it's okay, she has more information about the plot to share with him.

"Why are you telling me this?" he asks. IT'S HER JOB, BLOND LOKI, DON'T MAKE HER QUESTION HER ROLE IN THIS GAME >:( SHE WILL BECOME SENTIENT LIKE IN THAT EPISODE OF STAR TREK.

[luna-writes-stuff]

Considering my writing slump is over and Starcrossed Losers has its last two chapters coming up soon:

(Short fic analysis under the cut)

Show Me Mercy - Loki

This series will follow the events of the Loki series (I can fix it). Bowie Branwen is responsible for detecting dangerous variants and reporting them to the minutemen. When Mobius begs for her help one day, she reluctantly accepts, only to figure she has to keep a watchful eye out for the variant that she located and turned in. The more time she spends with him, the more she begins to realise that she might have had a life outside of the TVA. How else can you explain that everyone knows her name, or that Miss Minutes likes to ask the same three questions every single day to Bowie alone?

The Thing That Should Not Be - Eddie Munson

Follows the events of Stranger Things S3 and S4.

Ezra Davis is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. She just graduated, has a decently paying job at the mall, a handful of friends, and this random 15-year old kid who pretends to scan for records every time she works, asks a weird question and then leaves without buying anything. But that’s completely normal, right?

You First - Din Djarin

Follows the entire events of the Mandalorian + Book of Boba Fett series.

A bounty hunter and a smuggler walk into a bar. Then, they fight over a bounty, which Aiden doesn’t even care much for, save for the fact she’ll get paid twice as much when retrieving the object. Upon meeting the hunter who was supposed to get this job, she finds out she just loves to work on his nerves. Din is trying his very best to get rid of her. Thankfully, Aiden is quick. And extremely adamant.

Eternally Missed - Vax’ildan

Follows the entire series of TLOVM (not Critical Role, am sorry /:( )

If ‘wrong place, wrong time’ was a person, it was Kaia Lovric. She travels the wrong path, steals from the wrong person, ends up in a castle at a wrong time, and runs into the completely wrong group. Due to the wrong interpretation, she is roped into a story she wasn’t even meant to be part of. But there are only so many wrong turns one can take before ending up with the right thing, right?

[elasgottoomuchfreetime]

My personal headcanon (that no one asked about), is that our boy Loki was having a hard time after the whole New York thing and with the weird stuff that was happening in the TVA, and then he met a version of himself and maybe thought like yk we‘re kinda like the same person, maybe we can understand each other

Idk if the whole thing have him a new perspective on himself but however it went there is definitely some kind of connection going on and if it’s only because they‘re variants of the same person.

Now, I get this thing where, when I like someone, whoever it is, i start to get troubled confused because I can’t for my life differentiate between different kinds of affection/attraction, i just know it’s there (and that I don’t feel sexual attraction but that’s not the point). It gets to the point where I’m like do i want to kiss/cuddle you, love you, or be friends with you? Or do i want to BE you?!

So naturally, my personal headcanon involves Loki getting the vibe that there is some kind of thing going on (which, naturally), and that kind of messed with his head because, the whole situation is already confusing and he‘s kinda having a hard time with feelings in general. So now that he‘s confronted with a person that for once might ACTUALLY possibly be able to understand/relate to him in some way- that’s huge. And now he doesn’t know what to do. But he likes her and wants her to be ok so that has to be Love right?

Romantic love? Debatable. Not for me personally.

Of course a part of him searches for friends &/or connection because he‘s always lacked that. He probably feels like he might be more accepted by people that are like him in the closest way possible - the variant way.

The fact that they knew each other for like, a day or a week at most, and went through some serious shit, especially directly after what happened in New York & in the Time Theatre (& probably with Thanos) he‘s vulnerable. And it shows. If they‘d met under different circumstances or gotten the chance to actually get to know each other, this whole thing never might have happened.

I think it’s possible the kiss was a result of that emotional turmoil, because she saw that he cares about her, she saw the weak spot. He even tells her that he wants her to be okay if I remember correctly. So she goes for the kiss, because that is kind of a surprise for him. He‘s stunned. And that’s the moment she pushes him back and away.

I‘m not saying that Sylvie doesn’t care for Loki, i think a part of her does, but the part that wants revenge is stronger. Again, do i think whatever she feels for him is romantic? Probably not. I don’t think she feels much besides companionship for him at all actually.

In the end, I honestly don’t think they even had enough time to even make up their minds about that stuff. All that happened, in my mind-space, happened because of the circumstances they were in. Their escape, running from the TVA, fighting to get to the end of time, that stuff forges some bond. Fighting a war together always forges some kind of bond. And the emotions run high here, especially for Loki who gets poked in the feels every episode.

I don’t know if all of this is coherent or makes sense. It feels pretty much all over the place but I feel like I mostly said what I was trying to say.

Like do you get my meaning?

Emotional bond - yes. Romance - probably not.

Or something like that.

I don’t know if this makes me sound desperate or not, but it’s my take on this topic, and it’s taken me some time to wrap my head about what I personally think. And given that it’s a show and up for interpretation, i think I’m allowed to give my take to the people too. Right? Right.

[lokiitty]

https://screenrant.com/loki-show-sylvie-romance-incest-backlash-director-response/  Okay but this is super weird because... For a start she pretty much says the fans interpretation of it as incest isn’t invalid and for a second her own interpretation of it doesn’t really explain why its not incest in her eyes and furthermore it contradicts a lot.  We’re told countless times that Loki and Sylvie are “”the same.”” Shes literally a variant of him. I would have been content to NOT see it as incest if they hadn’t made sure to let us know (in easter egg form) that Sylive and Loki share like a genetic origin. She doesn’t come from some way out alternate universe where everything is different. She comes from a sister universe where Loki was born female. She has the same parents as Loki and if her timeline wasn’t pruned she would have the same family. 

The only other thing that makes her “different” from Loki is obviously the fact that her upbringing was different after the TVA orphaned her and she had to raise herself. That doesn’t change her origins. She can’t just rename herself and suddenly shes not Loki anymore and changing her first name doesn’t change the fact that she still has the same parents as Loki.  Like Id love to see this as not incest too but when you put them both down on paper as the children of Laufey its hard to ignore.  Like if her family didn’t get pruned imagine this: Frigga your son is in a relationship with your daughter. Thor your brother is in a relationship with your sister. Lauefy your biological daughter is in a relationship with your biological son.  ?????? But this is suppose to be ignored because they’re from a different universe even when the universes only real difference is one is male and the other is female????  There is no obviously drastic difference that indicates a different origin like what is the case with Alligator Loki and maybe even boastful Loki.  I mean you could at least argue boastful Loki might have had different parents to Main!Loki or at least ONE different parent. Alligator Loki is a no brainer because hes a completely different species.  On top of ALL THIS we were told multiple times in canon that Loki and Sylvie’s relationship was wrong. Sick. Twisted. Demented. Unnatural. Ect. This obviously comes from the characters recognising that Sylvie and Loki are in fact too closely related to be trying to hook up. Though they’re variants of the same person they’re also basically boy-girl twins. 

Having different personalities and different goals and upbringings does absolutely nothing to change that. Me and my brother have different personalities, goals and even upbringings in places because he lived with my mum for a portion of his life and I didn’t. But guess what?? We’re still siblings LMAO. Like I’m sorry her explanation is UTTERLY BIZZARE & makes NO SENSE.  Get me wrong I don’t think Loki & Sylvie's “”romance”” is sustainable. I wouldn’t think it was even if it was written better. I don’t see it lasting and in fact I kind of think its already ended. But this is still so weird. And the way the canon handled this ““romance”“ was so forced and half hearted. 

I seriously cannot get my head around why it was ever there. Like I thought maybe it was another part of the writing team trying to indicate to us that it was wrong but with Kate saying this now I’m just ????  Also don’t like to think Loki would just casually engage in incest / any cest period and before anyone sprouts shit about the Horse Story A) Did not happen in the MCU and B) the whole horse story is born of a specific sort of homo/transphobia that existed in ancient Nordic culture, do some research. But like ??? if they could give me a SOLID understandable reason for why its not BASCIALLY incest I’d eat it up bc IF I HAVE TO HAVE SYLKI as canon ID REALLY love for it to at least not be Incest.  Then maybe I could be “”okay”” with it. Id still have my problems with it because theres just a LOT of awkwardness even outside of the too-close-to-siblings for comfort, but it wouldn’t be a completely untouchable relationship. You could imagine it being OKAY if it was written better and not seemingly used to censor  Lokis queerness but. 

Like really the least they could have done was been like “Sylvie had totally different parents”. Its an AU. Sylvie's parents could have been anyone. Any frost giants could have stood in Lafuey’s place. If its a different universe the royal Jotun family could have been totally different. But no, no one wanted to use their brains for ten seconds and just rushed together this cringe m/f presenting romance with no deeper thought because yawn. Obviously Frost Giant Laufey doesn't have to be your father for a Loki to be a Loki (again see Alligator Loki )  And thats another reason why I’m pissed with this whole series. Because its just sloppy with little thought for anything. Now those of us who arent painfully straight and arent 2012 era fangirls who are just seeing Sylvie as a self-insertion vessel to vicariously live out their wishful fantasies of having Loki fall hopelessly in love with them, have to sit here and bang our heads on the wall bc none of it makes sense and its tragic for both characters and Loki’s actual fanbase.  Just.

[iamanartichoke]

I wasn't sure if I was going to post this, but I may as well.

I keep starting to reply to things and then stopping bc the words just aren't there, and I suppose I figured out the core of what bothers me so much (and is making me have such a rollercoaster of a fan experience) about the show.

(cut for length)

It's not well-written. My opinion is my opinion, so I'm saying this subjectively, take it or leave it, but ... I feel that it's not well-written. The overall story is fine, and the plot is fine, but I don't know if it's because of the limited number of episodes not being enough to house the story, or because of the relative inexperience of the writer/showrunner+director, or both, or something else, but -

In an earlier reaction post to episode 4, I mentioned really wanting to sink my teeth into all of the subtext I picked up on. That was what made me initially enjoy the episode so much - there were a lot of little moments that I initially felt revealed so much about the characters and about Loki, and I wanted to analyze them. But at some point, as I gathered more information, my perspective changed and now I no longer want to analyze the subtext bc ... subtext = good. Subtext w/out payoff = not as good.

I'll go into more detail in a moment, but I think the tl;dr of it is that I feel like the narrative requires the audience to work way too hard to put together all of the moving pieces here and, like, I kinda just don't want to do that work? Not so much of it, and not in vain. A lot of the enjoyment of Loki's characterization is coming from fans who are rationalizing why he's behaving as he is, but the narrative never actually confirms those rationalizations. It's asking us to figure it out and maybe our conclusions will be correct but maybe they won't, though. At some point, subtext isn't enough without explicit follow-through.

I thought my issue was with the lack of character development - that is, not having enough narrative space to really earn the big things that are happening now, like Loki/Sylvie or Mobius turning against the TVA. And that's still true, to an extent; I still feel like the pacing is all very off and it seems like most of these things kinda came out of nowhere (but are not unbelievable - just undeveloped).

But, yknow, it is what it is, it's a limited series, and I can excuse some things. Ultimately, my issue isn't a problem with what the narrative isn't doing, it's a problem with what the narrative already failed to do and probably cannot recover from at this point.

The narrative has left out significant details that should at least help us do some of the work here. If a person turned on Loki and started episode 1 and had no background knowledge of the character besides that he tried to take over New York - how would that person interpret Loki? Would that person say, oh, well, he's been through X, Y, and Z, and plus A happened, not to mention B, C, and D, so really, it makes sense that he seems off-the-rails, or that he'd want to get ridiculously drunk at the worst time ever.

Maybe we'd like to believe they would, but how would they be getting to that conclusion? The narrative hasn't led them in that direction so, no, they would not say well we have to consider this, this, and that. It would be impossible to really understand Loki as a character from just what we've gotten in the series. The general audience would probably interpret Loki as being out of his element and so it becomes, I wonder how this character is going to get the upper hand here. And, while that's not wrong, it's just so limited.

The narrative at face value does not address Loki's identity crisis from Thor 2011. It does not address his hurt and devastation at being lied to, nor does it address how complicated his self-image is (bc it sucked to begin with and that was before he found out he was part of a race of "monsters," as he'd been taught his entire life). It does not reference Loki being so broken at the end of Thor 2011 that he deliberately let himself fall into the void of space (aka tried to kill himself). It does not reference that he was tortured by Thanos or even that he went through a seriously dark time in between Thor and Avengers, and it absolutely does not reference or address any influence or control of the mind stone.

These are all things that we, the fan audience, know because we've already invested our time into this character's story. But tons of people, the general audience, wouldn't know these things. Or if they did, bc they saw Thor and Avengers, they wouldn't be thinking about them as deeply as we would, nor contextualizing them with how Loki is behaving now, or why it would make sense that he needed to get drunk, or why it's understandable that he needs to keep going-going-going in order to not have a spare second to think or feel.

They'd probably look at Loki, again, as a character who was a villain and is now getting his comeuppance in a place where he has no power or control, and no literal powers, and even when he manages to escape and catch up to the variant, he proceeds to fuck up their plan for seemingly no real reason except that he wanted to get drunk bc he's hedonistic. Which Sylvie even berates him for! I mean. This is not exactly a complex character breakdown, nor a very flattering one, but that's what the narrative has given us.

(If the narrative has addressed Loki's mind control, his torture, his mental breakdown, his suicide attempt, and his general shitty self-esteem as a result of his upbringing, please point it out to me. If the narrative has explicitly acknowledged and referenced these things anywhere and I am missing it, please show me where. Please explain to me how the casual viewer would know any of these things that they need to know in order to actually understand what's happening in this story.)

So I mean, okay, we have a narrative that doesn't paint a full, accurate picture of Loki. Fine, sure. But because the general audience starts out on the wrong footing, they're not going to get out of the overall story what the writers probably intended them to. For example, in episode 3, a lot of us theorized that Loki had some kind of plan - that he broke the timepad on purpose, for some reason, bc otherwise it wasn't believable that he'd be such a failure. But episode 4 revealed that no, there was no bigger plan, Loki just plain old messed up. Which is fine if, again, one is only considering the surface-level portrayal here, but it's not true to Loki's actual characterization.

I mean. Loki is not perfect and Loki actually fails a lot, this is true. He fails for a lot of reasons, but incompetence has never been one of them. Usually it's that either things grew beyond his control, or there ended up being too many moving parts, or he had to change his plan at the last minute due to some roadblock or another being thrown his way, or even that he got in his own way - whatever the case may be for his plans' failures, he was always at least shown to know what he was doing.

That wasn't the case here. The "plan" to fix the Timepad failed as a direct result of Loki's actions, which were careless and made him seem incompetent, like he couldn't even handle this mission. "You had one job," etc. And there were pretty big consequences for this; they were not able to get off-world in time and would have been killed had the TVA not shown up at the last second.

And maybe none of these things matter bc the writers never intended any of this to be a reflection on Loki's character, positive or negative. The situation exists solely because the writers needed to put Loki and Sylvie together in some kind of hopeless scenario so that they could get closer, and thus the narrative could set up their romance. I get that - but, there were other ways to do it that didn't require Loki to look foolish.

Furthermore, the whole reason they needed to set up the romance is to show Loki eventually learning to love himself (like, figuratively but also literally). The audience is supposed to gather that Loki and Sylvie fell for one another, possibly due to the high emotional aspect of, yknow, being about to die (in addition to the variant-bond). The intent is clear: Loki and Sylvie almost die but get rescued at the last minute, having now created an emotional bond --> Loki and Sylvie team up and the narrative further establishes that Loki, at least, has caught feelings --> Loki might confess them but is pruned before he gets the chance --> he somehow survives, he and Sylvie are reunited and don't want to lose one another again, and the combined power of their love is enough to break the sacred timeline and spawn the multiverse, and the reason that the power of their love is so, well, powerful is because it's about self-love and self-acceptance as much as it is about having the capacity to love someone else. The end.

I get all that. The writers more or less said all that. And, I mean, it's certainly not the way I would have chosen to go about it, but it's a fair enough arc to explore. I don't really have an issue with the intent - but my question, however, is this: if the narrative has so far not addressed Loki's background issues (as outlined above), and has furthermore kinda gone out of its way to portray Loki as hedonistic and narcissistic, among other things (like kinda incompetent), and the context the audience starts with is that Loki's this villain who deserves what he gets -

- my question is 1, why should the audience care whether or not Loki gets to a point of loving and accepting himself (thus to make the theme of self-love, via the romance, hold weight) if they don't know that he hates himself to begin with and 2, why should the audience root for Loki to reach that point when so far the perception of him is that he's "kind of an asshole"? if he's a hedonistic narcissist, he probably already has a pretty inflated sense of himself, right? A misplaced inflated sense of himself, at that, because, again, the narrative has made him out to be not that capable of much of anything. (And it didn't start out that way! It seemed to start out with Loki being capable and intelligent but it's like episode 3, in trying to set up the romance, just jumbled it all up somewhere. I think this is why I'm harping on the Loki/Sylvie aspect so much - it's frustrating bc it kinda messes up the whole story and can't even accomplish what it's supposed to anyway.)

Anyway, that's beside the point. What I'm ultimately getting at is, at what point is the audience supposed to get invested in Loki's personal growth journey?

They can't, not really. Without understanding and having the context of everything Loki has been through up until now, and why he hates himself, and why it's so important that he learn to love himself, then the "payoff" becomes kinda pointless bc the significance of it is lost in translation. So suddenly we're left with this romance that comes off as either "Loki loves Sylvie bc of Reasons" (best-case scenario) or "Loki loves Sylvie bc he's vain, narcissistic, and kinda twisted" (worst-case scenario). Neither of these conclusions are what the writers intended or were going for, I'm positive, but there we are, regardless.

In order for the writers' intent in these storylines to land, they need to address the context of what makes these particular stakes high for Loki. So far, they haven't done that. They're asking the audience to pick up on all of these things, and they're showing things that subtextually make sense and are relatively in-character - but only if you realize there's subtext in the first place.

But you can't expect the audience to do all of the work for you. If you don't want the audience to think that Loki is a narcissistic asshole and instead you are trying to convey that, worst-case scenario, he thinks he's a narcissist but is an unreliable narrator, then you have to address that. If you need the audience to understand why you're going the selfcest route and why it's important to explore Loki's capacity to love himself and others, you have to address where that exploration is starting from and why it matters. Etc etc etc.

The narrative isn't doing any of that. And it isn't like it'd be that hard to do it. They don't need to reinvent the wheel here; a lot of the pieces are already there. A few lines of dialogue for context, a brief scene here or there addressing the issues, a little more care and consistency in how Loki handles things - these are all little things that could go a long fucking way in making the narrative stronger.

I'm rambling. My basic point is that my rollercoaster of emotions with this show is because

- as a part of the fan audience, not the general one, I can contextualize and analyze the subtext and come to the conclusions the show wants me to, and thus find the story and the characters more or less enjoyable,

- but I am also going to be using the subtext to come to conclusions that aren't there but probably should be (I think it would be a better story, for example, for Loki to confuse platonic love with romantic love bc it would pave the way to explore just how fucked up Loki's understanding of love - whether of other people or of himself, and the different forms it can take - actually is)

- and when they're ultimately not there, then I think, okay why am I bothering doing all this work just to ultimately feel very unfulfilled? They don't even have to write it the way I would, I'm not saying that, but they do have to do something to make the story feel rewarding.

If we don't get some confirmation of what Loki's been through, and where his headspace is, and why it matters for him to love himself, then the story remains pretty shallow and, for me, it's not fulfilling enough. It's not engaging enough. There isn't actually anything to sink my teeth into, so it becomes kind of boring. Maybe it's rewarding to other people, and that's great for them, but like - I need more than whatever this is.

So I'm just like - well, I had a lot of worries about this show, but my being bored wasn't one of them and now there's only two episodes left and am I really not going to get anything out of this, in the long run? No new canons, no new depths or layers, no new information on Loki's experiences? This is it?

I don't dislike it. I didn't start out disliking it, and I probably wont end up disliking it. I mean, there are a lot of good moments, and good things, and fan service-y things that I appreciate. As far as inspiration for fic goes, it's a goldmine, both plot-wise as well as aesthetic-wise. All of that is great. I don't dislike this show.

But I am disappointed in it, and I feel like I'll be watching the next two episodes lacking the sense of anticipation that would make it exciting. I'll still enjoy them, probably, if for nothing else just the sheer Loki content, but whatever it was I felt watching episodes 1 and 2 is gone and I'm sad about that, too. Because I really wanted to feel fulfilled by this series; I wanted it to fill up the void that Loki's death in IW created three years ago. And I just ... don't feel it. Maybe, maybe that'll change over the course of episodes 5 and 6. I don't know.

Everything that I end up enjoying long-term, I think, will come about as a result of my own interpretations and analysis and while theoretically there's nothing wrong with that, if I had known all I'd get out of this series was more headcanons or support for my current headcanons then, well - that's fine, I suppose, but I'll definitely a little bit robbed.

[iamnmbr3]

Hi. I've been reading threw a number of your posts related to Loki 2021 and the general impression your post give is that you don't like how Loki 2021 has been written and present (which I understand because while Loki is not a favourite character of mine, I want to see his character done justices). And I guess I was just wondering how you would have tackled Loki 2021, using the plot elements that have been established in the show, but with your own spin. Thank you :)

That's a great question! I think the premise actually had a ton of potential. @nikkoliferous and I often talk about all the really cool things that could've been done and why it's so particularly tragic that they wasted all that good story setup. I think there are 3 main types of directions the story could've gone in with this premise (and then a lot of variations within each type).

Direction 1 - A buddy comedy with a heart

So I think this is what they were trying to go for with Loki and Mobius's dynamic based on the narrative framing and how all the interviews have presented Mobius in a positive light. (Though that's not what they actually wrote at all).

The way to do this would be to set Mobius up in a more sympathetic way and put him and Loki on more even footing. They could've had Mobius be almost as much a prisoner as Loki. They could have started out with him being pretty indoctrinated into the TVA worldview, but also being considered expendable. We could've seen his superiors threaten him with deletion if he can't make things work with the Loki Variant. Maybe he even feels some compassion for Loki and convinces his superiors that Loki can be useful and shouldn't be deleted since he's powerless to do anything else and he figures being enslaved is probably better than dying. Loki could actually be in-character and question Mobius's world view etc. And Mobius could to the best of his ability treat him decently instead of smugly mocking and tormenting him.

We could have Loki escape early on and end up bringing Mobius along with him, either by accident or because he realizes Mobius will be killed for losing him and he feels bad about it. Then we have them thrown together by circumstances and they could slowly grow to trust each other over the course of the show. The series could dig into the parallels between them. Loki could point out to Mobius that he repeats the propaganda he's been taught but he's hardly less of a prisoner than Loki and his masters are hypocritical. This could also lead to Loki realizing that while maybe he wanted to tell himself that he was an ally of Thanos's the truth was anything but.

While they're on the run both could start to realize they're experiencing freedom from the first time. Mobius could learn to question the TVA and Loki could realize that maybe he can be himself and doesn't have to be a tool of Odin or Thanos. Loki could could grapple with how much control he had while attacking NYC (thus allowing Disney to leave that a bit open to interpretation without totally sweeping the torture and mind control under the rug) and Mobius could grapple with how complicit he has been in the TVA's horrific actions.

Rather than Loki "learning to be trustworthy" (smh) Loki could learn to trust someone else and that not everyone will betray him. Mobius could also be a stand-in for more casual viewers and slowly realize that Loki isn't just the uncomplicated villain he at first took him for. There could be a nice mix of substantive character drama and entertaining hijinks. And of course in the end they could burn the TVA to the ground and liberate all realities. There's so many variations on this and @nikkoliferous and I often chat about them. Because the show could've been so good! And yet. </3

Direction 2 - The TVA & Mobius are acknowledged as the great villains they are

This is kind of what they're making by accident without acknowledging it which leads to a lot of emotional dissonance in the narrative. In canon the TVA is a horrific organization and Mobius seems happily complicit. He doesn't seem to have any compunctions about supporting their agenda of using murder, genocide, forced labor, enslavement, torture, police brutality, sham trials without due process, and privacy violation to eliminate free will. He happily forced Loki to toil under threat of death, mocks and humiliates him, manipulates him, and participates in acts of torture. He is INCREDIBLY creepy and a great embodiment of the "banality of evil" concept. The TVA is also absolutely terrifying.

If the show actually leaned into that it would create a great sense of narrative tension. Loki has escaped Thanos only to once again fall into the hands of a horrifically evil and powerful enemy. And it's up to him to figure out a way out of this situation and a way to liberate all of reality from their grip. In this scenario it might be useful to introduce some other prisoner characters so that he has some friendlyish faces to interact with...and potentially an army to lead against the TVA after he's won them over and figured out a plan.

Mobius's parallels to Odin and Thanos would work really well here because having Loki eventually defeat him and tell him he doesn't get to tell Loki who he is or make him into a tool of evil would be hugely cathartic. We'd get to see Loki stand up to and defeat someone who parallels the two individuals who have most hurt and manipulated him and decide to make his own way from now on rather than trying to be what others make of him. It would be awesome.

Direction 3 - TVA are twist villains

Some people think this might be the direction the show is going. The problem is that if that's true it'll just fall flat because the TVA is already clearly villainous so there's no twist. In the first episode already we see them commit acts of murder, genocide (wiping out a whole timeline because they believe the beings in that timeline belong to a class - variants - that are unworthy of life), police brutality, trial without due process, privacy violation, torture, and illegitimate imposition of rule (they are not elected in any sense and yet they have appointed themselves the arbiters of reality) all in the service of eliminating free will. That is...not what heroes do.

However they COULD have been good twist villains with just a few tweaks. Maybe they approach Loki and play on his deep yearning to be viewed as good and worthy as well as his self-hatred and poor self image to convince him that an "evil" version of him is wreaking havoc and they need his help. Maybe they also sweeten the deal by offering him protection from Thanos and the Black Order since he has no idea they are dead in this timeline. (If you wanted to keep audiences more in the dark you could have them just talk about the Black Order so that audiences at first assume they are still hunting Loki even tho Thanos is dead and don't realize the TVA is manipulating Loki).

At first they don't do anything overtly evil. The authoritarian aesthetic would seem like a humorous parody of office culture. It would then take on a new, much more sinister meaning when the TVA get's revealed as evil later and we learn that they obliterate entire timelines, murder people for the slightest infractions, don't view variants as people, and want to eliminate free will. Mobius could either appear first as a friend and then get revealed as a villain or have a redemption arc where he ends up siding with Loki.

Also for all of these scenarios the script and characterization should be good. I should see Loki, not Larry his dumb lookalike cousin. The script should have Loki doing and saying things that are in-character. (Which certainly doesn't preclude humor since Loki's wit is one of his most iconic features!)

[juliabohemian]

oh dear

I have noticed a number of posts circulating which imply that ANY character being mean to Loki EVER and for ANY reason = abuse.

I will admit that I initially felt mostly irritation at what appeared, on the surface, to constitute such a complete and utter lack of critical thinking. What I’ve realized, though, is that people who make such posts definitely believe what they are saying. And like everything people do and say, there’s a deeper reason for it. The fact is, traumatized characters attract traumatized fans. And not all of those fans are in a good place, emotionally. And those people are perfectly valid, even if the conclusions they draw are not.

When it comes to fiction, good characters are complex. That means they are conflicted and flawed. They make mistakes. They lash out when they are afraid or hurting. They sometimes hurt other characters. Loki fits that bill very well. It’s one of the reasons he is so popular. Not just with traumatized people, but with people in general. He’s relatable.

The problem comes when fans relate to fictional characters, but really aren’t conscious of why, because they aren’t all that conscious of themselves. They haven’t done a whole lot of self-reflection. Maybe because they aren’t ready, because their trauma is too fresh. Or maybe they are still living in crisis and don’t have the freedom to self-reflect. Those possibilities are all valid.

But very often, when a person goes through trauma and doesn’t have the luxury (and yes, it is a luxury) of working through it, their reasoning skills can become flawed as a result. Trauma, especially childhood trauma, tends to have a negative effect on our ability to socialize and form intimate relationships, because it damages our ability to interpret the intentions of others. We call this hostile attribution bias.

The problem with hostile attribution bias, is that it makes it difficult to tell when people genuinely mean you harm. If a person’s words, actions, or facial expressions are ambiguous in any way, they will be interpreted as being hostile in nature. This keeps one on the offensive, constantly, always anticipating the next blow. Very often, no such blow is coming. But it doesn’t matter. Fear is real, and the experience of it is real.

It stands to reason that someone who struggles to interpret the intentions of real-life people would also experience the same difficulty with fictional characters. For instance, fans who identify with Loki because they perceive him as being a victim will have a hard time seeing him as anything else. Thus, anyone who harms Loki in any way is just further proof that the universe is against him and always will be.

This is referred to as an external locus of control. It means that a person sees life as something that is happening TO them, and that they are powerless to affect the outcome. It’s also important to note that people with this mentality struggle deeply to heal from their trauma. They are stuck in a sort of Groundhog Day scenario, living the same thing out over and over again. Because of their flawed perception, everything that happens to them feels like an extension of that initial trauma.

So, it would make perfect sense that a person with a history of trauma, who suffers from attribution bias, and who has an external locus of control, would be extremely uncomfortable watching anything bad happen to Loki. In fact, it would probably be traumatic for them.

And while their feelings and their experience of those feelings are 100% real, their perception of reality is not entirely accurate. In other words, what they think is happening is not necessarily what is happening.

Loki’s initial trauma, believe it or not, was just being abandoned as an infant. Even though he can’t remember it, that experience alone can result in lifelong emotional struggles. In real life, we refer to this as an attachment disorder. A person with an attachment disorder usually develops major issues with abandonment. They also suffer from (wait for it) attribution bias. And that bias absolutely affects their perception.

Loki’s next trauma was being raised in a dysfunctional family. Not only were they dysfunctional, but they weren’t a very good fit for Loki. Loki was a quiet, contemplative person. He was a thinker, an intellectual. He would rather read or do magic. So, not a good fit for Asgardian society. The combination of Loki’s initial trauma, with his inherent temperament, and his dysfunctional family is what led to the inevitable breakdown that is regarded as Loki’s “villain” arc. I’d like to point out that, in reality, such a person would have probably suffered a breakdown much sooner than that. Typically, prior to reaching adulthood.

Loki’s next trauma was encountering Thanos. Now, we have no idea exactly what happened between Loki and Thanos. We know only that it wasn’t good and that it resulted in Loki being absolutely terrified of him. Other than that, details are fuzzy. I think it’s fair to assume that whatever mistreatment Loki endured probably qualified as torture. Whether it was physical or psychological, we cannot know for sure.

While Loki’s Thanos-related trauma was NOT an extension of his family-related trauma, his decision to entangle himself with Thanos was a product of that trauma. By which I mean that his willingness to align himself with someone like Thanos came from a place of desperation, and a desire to prove himself to someone who he perceived as being qualified to validate him.

So, fast forward to the LOKI show. Our version of Loki never returned to Asgard in chains, was never told that it was his birthright to die, nor endured any gaslighting from Ragnarok-Thor. He never got his neck broken by Thanos. He never went through any of that. He arrived at the TVA, fresh off his failed attempt to take over planet Earth. He was all fired up and defensive, as anyone in his situation would probably be.

Now, here’s where we need to put our critical thinking caps on. Because, I hate to tell you this, folks...but unlike most of the Loki content we’ve gotten prior, this content is actually well written. It’s VERY well written. And while it might be tempting to respond to it with pure emotion, it is imperative that we don’t abandon all logic and reason. This show is not an extension of the gauntlet of trauma we’ve watched Loki endure since he first appeared on screen. The creative minds involved in this venture ALL care deeply about Loki’s character and want to see him succeed (whatever that means for him).

Enter Mobius. He’s a cog in a very big machine. He likes to think of himself as being more than that. He establishes a rapport with his boss in the hopes of distinguishing himself from his peers. His interest in his work is personal. He likes what he does.

From Mobius’ point of view, Loki is an asset. He has information that could help solve the bigger puzzle. But Mobius exists in a world that affords him access to multiple realities. He has probably met dozens of Lokis. And he has probably seen hundreds of people casually pruned or executed or reset. It’s just part of the world he happens to be in. And he doesn’t question it, because he has been brainwashed.

So, does Mobius attempt to manipulate Loki? Absolutely. Just another day at the office. And it works, because he knows Loki better than Loki knows himself, has studied him and other Lokis. And it’s hard not to be mad at Mobius for causing Loki pain. Especially when that is followed up by Loki eagerly taking Mobius up on his offer to help track down the other Loki variant.

I think some people might find Loki’s enthusiasm disconcerting. And there are certainly aspects of it that can be considered such. Loki, at his core, just wants to be told that he is doing a good job, that his contributions matter. That part of him is definitely a product of trauma. But is Loki motivated entirely by his trauma? Not really. Despite his manipulations, Mobius offers Loki the closest thing to warmth and compassion that he has seen for a while. Some of that is genuine and some of that is not. And faced with the reality that everything he knows is gone, Loki does what most people in his situation would do, he tries to be productive. He gets busy. He distracts himself. Because at the moment, little else is under his control.

Despite all of that, you simply cannot have compassion for Loki and none for Mobius. Because Mobius is a victim too. He was abducted from his own reality. He is living a lie. He is part of something that, upon deeper reflection, he realizes he doesn’t agree with. He is so very much like the Loki we first met in 2011. He is such a well-written and multi-faceted character, I thoroughly enjoy his on screen time with Loki.

But I understand that there are people who are not in a place, emotionally, where they can overlook such plot devices. And I sincerely hope that those eventually people find healing. In the meantime, let’s try to remember that this is a work of fiction. And unlike real-life trauma, when it becomes upsetting, we can turn it off and walk away.

[emptymasks]

Loki Series: Please listen to queer voices

I had this whole post written out and them Tumblr deleted it. And here’s my regular preface: I am in no way speaking on behalf of all genderfluid or bi/pan people, just on behalf of myself and other genderfluid people who I know feel this same way. I know that there will be some genderfluid people who aren’t as bothered.

So, my opinion as a genderfluid person on episode 4 of Loki:

the TVA had already been assuming Sylvie’s gender calling her ‘he’ before the reveal when they could have been using ‘they’ so I am surprised Mobius decided to be fluidphobic and called Sylvie Loki’s “female self”. Loki is genderfluid, a variant of his being female doesn’t make them different.

the almost-kiss between Loki and Sylvie. I don’t care if you ship Slyki/Sylkie, I really don’t, I don’t care if you ship selfcest, ship it all you want. The problem is the with amount of Sylki shippers who are being fluidphobic and/or biphohibc, and with the fact it is now canon. I hope anyone shipping it can understand how fluidphobic the canon implications are. 

Stop calling Sylvie ‘female Loki’ or ‘Lady Loki’, stop calling Sylkie het/straight, stop calling Lokius gay/mlm/mslash, stop erasing Loki’s (and possibly also Sylvie’s (genderfluidity), stop...

I had more written out last time but Tumble ate it and I’m shaking. Don’t tell me to get over it and that it doesn’t matter it’s just a show, I have already been subjected to so much abuse and harassment from people in the Loki fandom who are being fluidphobic and transphobic and biphobic and panphobic, but especially fluidphobic because the show can’t do good genderfluid rep and people are misunderstanding things, thinking Loki is only a different gender when he shape-shifts, because you have to shape-shift to be genderfluid meaning there are no real genderfluid people in real life because you can’t shape-shift, genderfluidity can only exist in fiction.

Some people have put their thoughts out better than I can, I’m shaking and on the verge of tears if you’ve seen my other posts these last few weeks you know there are parts of this fandom that are bigoted, but there’s also a chunk of the LGBT+ fans who are fluidphobic and biphobic:

Don’t tell me it’s okay to make selfcest canon or imply that it is, while denying on-screen representation of dialogue confirmed that Loki is genderfluid. The “sex: fluid” on a piece of paper doesn’t count. The genderfluid rep is more important than Loki getting a love interest of any kind. I’d rather us have proper genderfluid rep than Lokius be canon.

And before anyone says ‘Well in episode 5/6 it might be shown that he doesn’t have romantic feelings for her and it’s just that he’s never known love before so he’s confusing romantic love for platonic’,

Here’s an interview published today on Marvel . com with the words of Michael Waldron, the writer of the Loki Series:

Maybe he’s lying, or implying romance when there won’t be one and Loki will realise that he only has platonic feelings for her... I don’t know, but I need everyone, no matter what you ship or don’t ship, to read and understand this:

Maybe the implication was that it was meant to be a hug. Maybe interpreting it as a romantic scene is the wrong interpretation. But don’t you dare tell me it’s crazy to interpret it that way, they clearly at the very least wanted it to be ambiguous whether it was platonic or romantic and even if it was misdirection, it’s still very harmful to see. 

[anzcty]

Analysing Episode 6 Sylvie - her actions, her choice and a whole bunch of theories (Spoilers!)

After watching the Loki finale, I have been scrolling through Tumblr for quite a long time. I already knew that people's opinions were gonna be incredibly different but I definitely did not expect this much negative backlash. Especially when it comes to two specific topics - the Sylvie and Loki kiss and Sylvie's betrayal (/choice/actions). I'm gonna be talking about the latter, for it is another time I'll talk a lot about Sylki's relationship. (Beware that this post is also really long though)

First of all, everyone has different opinions and I respect that. I absolutely adore movies, books, TV-shows and videogames because despite what's happening within the story, each viewer has the opportunity to see something else in what they are shown (besides the obvious canon). What I mean is that everyone interprets certain scenes differently and gains the opportunity to make up theories. Therefore I want to clarify that I do, by no means, want to force my views upon others. It's nice to see people talk about the Loki Series (as long as it doesn't get too negative and hateful, iykwim) because every viewer can share their specific experiences with it :)

I'm gonna analyse Sylvie's character a bit ( because, well, I'm bored and I kinda wanna protect my beloved character that I've only had for a few weeks >:^0 AND the only thing I could think about the past day was this episode) and try to explain her actions in the finale (keep in mind: not justifying them, but explaining them).

I'm terribly bad at concentrating on one single topic point so I kinda made a 'list' with questions and whatnot that I wanted to dive deeper into. Your thoughts are also more than welcome!

I already want to apologise for grammatical mistakes, for I am not a native english speaker.

Sylvie's reason for being taken away by the TVA is still kinda unknown

You know, I've heard quite a few theories about Sylvie's nexus event by now. Some people say that she got taken away because she was playing with her toys in a way that indicates her having a good heart (playing as a Valkyrie and wanting to save someone, another hint may also be the reaction she showed towards someone else who got kidnapped by the TVA, yelling at the soldiers to "help them out"). Another theory is that she already knew she was adopted, unlike Loki who found out way later than her. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but we never got to hear the actual reason why Sylvie got kidnapped. Even Renslayer didn't say a word about it.

Now I'm gonna come up with yet another theory. What if Sylvie didn't really have a nexus event in the first place how we know it? In the final episode, Kang has said that he has planned out everything beforehand so both Loki and Sylvie would end up right in front of him. Did Kang's plan also possibly involve him getting killed by Sylvie? Hear me out: We don't actually know if the Kang we saw in episode 6 is the actual 'nice' Kang and not one of his evil variants. He has already talked about 'reincarnation', so who says that after ending the first universial war, Kang didn't reincarnate into someone with an unpure heart (aka, one of his evil variants)? That'd mean that the real Kang would have been killed and the Kang we've seen in the finale is actually an evil version that simply lied to both Loki and Sylvie. Besides that, we also don't know if Kang actually had that 'point' where he didn't know what would happen next. The show revolves a whole lot around trust, not only regarding the characters, but also the viewers. Who's to say that Kang said the truth? Maybe he planned it all out: He created the TVA, let Sylvie get kidnapped and therefore give her a reason to hunt after Kang, who in return could reincarnate if he got killed OR get killed and therefore give his other variants a possibility to conquer the universes yet again. Don't you think that it was kinda suspicious that Sylvie escaped so easily out of Renslayer's hands? The one person who's probably closest to Kang? (Even though, yes, she doesn't know who he is but Renslayer seems to play a very important role in his plan). What if the Kang we saw was the nice Kang though? Would he plan everything up to a point where another universial war would break out because he might know that there is indeed something/someone out there who could end it and therefore, possibly end Kang as a whole or create a new kind of system revolving around the universe? And therefore, get rid of the possibility of another universial war happening? Who knows. I am definitely overthinking and reaching at this point. One more thing that stood out to me while thinking about the episode again today (which kinda weighs more into my theory of Sylvie being a keypoint (or rather a puppet) in this plan): Kang has talked about his Tempad and that he knew that he would need it to have enough energy. But for what? Yes, his initial idea was to give it to Loki and Sylvie to rule over the TVA, but what if it was supposed to be used for another reason? Sylvie used it to transport Loki back to the TVA (though I kinda think he was accidentally transported to another timeline, hence the reactions of both Mobius and Hunter B-15) and therefore get rid of the only thing that could prevent Sylvie from killing Kang. The Tempad was used to secure Sylvie's path and therefore eradicated Kang's only option of safety. You can see the Tempad loosing it's glow after Kang was killed, possibly due to Kang himself being the origin of it's energy. But maybe, it only had enough energy for one specific action: getting rid of Kang's protection. I do think that Sylvie is now stuck at this place and somehow has to find a way back to Loki's reality. The Tempad clearly doesn't work anymore (at least in my opinion) and there was quite a long shot showing the Tempad up close, which is kinda suspicious tbh. Also, something regarding Sylvie's unanswered nexus event feels kinda odd to me, too.

My theory in conclusion: Sylvie (and Loki) are unconciously helping Kang with his plan (a big, big, BIG plan). They're his puppets, especially Sylvie, because she's the one who created the Multiverse to begin with. Think about Loki, who was said to be manipulated by Thanos in Avengers? It's basically the same train of thoughts.

Sylvie does not take Kang's offer into consideration

To be honest, this was something to be absolutely expected of her. Sylvie was kidnapped as a child, taken away from her home and family, and had to grow up in countless apocalypses where she could never form a real bond with anybody because she knew that those people were all going to die anyway. (Please don't judge me if I got that wrong, maybe I understood the next thing wrong? Idk, if so, I'm very sorry) She revealed that she was kidnapped way before Loki was even born (something I have to think about, too, because, if Loki is the actual Loki the other variants are based off, why did he exist after Sylvie? Wouldn't that make him a variant of Sylvie instead? Idk timelines and parallel universes are hard to understand for me :') I'm kinda stoopid ), therefore she must've had spent several decades of her life running away. She had no life at all. Her only goal was to bring down the TVA and whoever is behind it, driven by pure rage, seeking out revenge for stealing her life and basically forbidding her existence. And now that she has found said person, the only thing that'd be right for her character would be to go for the kill. As immoral as it may sound, it is the only thing that makes sense. And I am actually very happy that Sylvie's goals didn't change besides the fact that she did indeed soften up a little and has gotten someone really close to her. In contrary, it makes sense for Loki to do the exact opposite. His goals have changed. He does not act the way he did in Thor or Avengers anymore. He has found another goal for himself: to make Sylvie feel alright. He has had immense character growth and didn't take a chance to change his goals back in the Thor movies or in Avengers, (....maybe later in Thor: Ragnarok, kinda). This is exactly what I think might happen to Sylvie, too. She is at the beginning of her character arc. She doesn't take the chance to change her goal, but goes for her original goal instead. Said goal does not really have positive consequences (though, maybe it might have some? We're about to find out), which results in a so called 'negative character development', which Loki has already gone through. I think that Sylvie is gonna grow as a character in season 2 and get a positive character development in addition, just like Loki did. I highly doubt that she's gonna become the antagonist, it does not make sense at this point.

Why does she not take Kang's offer (besides her very obvious intention ofc)? That leads straight (or not so straight, pun intended) to the next thing I wanna talk about. Sylvie's distrust in everything and everyone. Besides not wanting to let other people go through what she has been gone through and wanting to let people have a free will, she also does not trust Kang with his offer of 'ruling' the timeline. And it might be because she also does not trust the one she'd be ruling with: Loki.

Why does Sylvie not trust Loki?

I don't even have a specific answer to that, except that Sylvie has an incredibly thick wall built up around her. Loki has always been portrayed as the one you should not trust because he's known for backstabbing people. Loki could have thought the same about Sylvie, but he didn't. Due to his character arc, he himself has learned to trust other people and tries to redeem himself with making himself a person others can trust (He may project that onto Sylvie, meaning that he puts his trust into a Loki variant and therefore in himself, too). You can connect that fact with both Sylvie and Mobius. They're both people who are incredibly important to Loki. He wants them to trust him. He openly told Sylvie about his mistakes and tells her that he's not that person anymore. Sylvie on the other hand does not trust that easily and is - in my opinion - a very important key regarding Loki's character development. It is incredibly hard for Sylvie to trust others (probably due to her trauma) and it therefore creates a very difficult situation for Loki, where he has to 'prove' himself as trustworthy. It's basically about 'trusting yourself' if you put it that way. It's something Loki has to learn about himself: not betraying the trust of others. Sylvie might have to learn something like this, too: learning to trust someone else. It's kinda like a two sided coin - one side is about putting trust in others, whereas the other is about gaining trust from others (and what you do with it). (Good) Relationships in general are always based off trust and honesty. So in order for them to be able to have healthy relationships with others and themselves, they have to learn about trust within themselves (I hope you understand my point, I got carried away, sorry). Loki started to trust Sylvie very easily (maybe because of love? Maybe because of something else? There are still a lot of unanswered questions) whereas Sylvie doesn't trust Loki very easily. Sylvie's character arc might (hopefully) carry on with this topic in the next season.

Was that kiss initiated due to emotional or practical reasons?

Kinda both, somehow. I do think that Sylvie used the kiss to her advantage but you can also clearly see how moved she is while hearing Loki's words. Facial expressions are insanely important when it comes to acting and both Tom and Sophia delivered perfectly. You might've already heard of the quote "The eyes tell more than words could ever say". Look at Sylvie's face when Loki tells her that he wants her to be okay. She is teary eyed, sighs even. She is indeed touched by his words and I strongly think that Sylvie also has non-platonic feelings for Loki, despite barely showing anything.

Here's a snippet out of an interview with Sophia:

(Source)

Both Sylvie and Loki are said to be people who can not trust others. They both have a vulnerable side though. Loki clearly showed that several times when with Sylvie (singing to her, the blanket scene, the comfort scene in the room of the timekeepers, the confession of wanting her to be okay) and is also shown incredibly vulnerable at the end of episode 6: there are several shots showing him, crying. Sure, we have already seen Loki cry a few times beforehand but this time, it's different. He cries because the one person he is the most vulnerable with doesn't trust him, and that does hurt like hell. By the way, if you look at the close-up shot of Sylvie after she yeeted Loki back into the TVA, you can see pain in her eyes, too. But that pain quickly shifts into rage and determination. Something that I have to admit was incredibly well executed by Sophia and the people who directed this shot. Sylvie does show her vulnerable side for a brief moment before putting up her walls again and reaching for her goal.

In conclusion: I think Sylvie initiated the kiss as an emotional response to Loki's words but also used it to distract him to be able to kick him back into the TVA at the same time. Keep in mind that it was because he was in her way of fullfilling her goal. She didn't want to kill or hurt him, so she sent him away instead. So, yes, I think the kiss had both emotional and practical intentions.

Did Sylvie betray Loki?

Even though it really felt like she betrayed him, she didn't. Let me tell you why:

Loki knew exactly what Sylvie was gonna do after reaching the person behind the TVA. Loki supported her all the way up until Kang suggested a deal to them, that's where Loki's and Sylvie's paths divided. Loki is a very smart character, he outsmarts a lot of Marvel characters and therefore I think it's very in character for him to consider one part of the deal and outweigh the pros and cons. Not because he wants the throne, no, but because he wants Sylvie to be okay. A universial war could lead to countless casualties - possibly those people close around him, so of course he would want to keep her safe through that decision. Making them both rulers over the TVA and the sacred timeline would probably guarantee a strong protection from several threats. Also, maybe he thought about the possibility of Sylvie regretting her decision (which she clearly did in the end) and wanted to protect her from even more emotional pain. But as we know, Sylvie's intention has always been laid out in front of her and it didn't change. Loki knew what choice she was going to make and merely tried to change her way - without being successfull.

I don't really know what to think about this scene though. To me, it doesn't meet the requirements of a 'betrayal' but at the same time it does feel like one. It's very difficult to explain :'D

Also, I've seen some people asking themselves how or if Loki will ever be able to forgive Sylvie for making her decision. Let me assure you one thing: he will forgive her. He has said it himself: "I know what you're feeling, I know what you're going through". He has been at Sylvie's point, too. Not only once, but several times already. He seems to have learned from his mistakes, Sylvie has yet to do so. ("I betrayed everyone I've ever loved" is a line to keep in mind now, too. Maybe it could even be projected onto Sylvie this time, because Loki is indeed very dear to her) If there's someone out there who can empathise with Sylvie the most, it is Loki.

Why would Sylvie straight up cause another Universial War?

As I already said. Sylvie's arc is a negative character arc. It does not end well and causes a lot of chaos. Think about Peter Quill in Infinity War and his rage moment on Titan. They could have had the infinity gauntlet way before but Peter got emotional (understandable) and therefore destroyed the chance of an early good ending. The same happened with Sylvie. Her decision was mostly emotional, but also practical on the other hand (giving people free will and freedom). She will face the consequences and I'm pretty sure she's gonna redeem herself and tries to help fix the big mess she has caused.

Sylvie's breakdown

Another scene that was absolutely brilliant was the scene after Sylvie has killed Kang. She backs off slowly and then slumps to the ground, breathing heavily (now that I think about it, I think she even started to cry). She has waited for this moment her whole life, but now that it's done, it kinda feels like she didn't exactly get what she needed. Hunter B-15 has already mentioned it before that Sylvie needs to hunt the person behind the TVA down, unlike Renslayer, who only wants to find out who it really is. Although Sylvie might have recognized that this wasn't everything she needed at this point. We already got to know that she didn't have a clue what to do after she's done with the TVA. She didn't have a goal beyond that. And now that she has reached the point where she is clueless, she might have recognized what she really needed beyond finishing her goal: friends, a life, literally anything that doesn't make her feel alone. And she literally just kicked that one thing away from her. Loki, the one person who has been closest to her and gave her the feeling of not being alone anymore, the feeling of having a friend (or someone more than a friend), has been pushed away by herself. I think that in this exact moment where she sinks to the ground she recognizes that not trusting Loki was a mistake this time and that revenge isn't enough to satisfy her forever.

But maybe that one thing that will satisfy her for a long time is something she's returning back to in season 2. I am so excited to see her again and find out more about Sylvie's character!

Thank you so much for reading this! If you want to add something to this list or correct something or anything, feel free to do so. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Sylvie's character in the finale and what you think might happen with her in season 2 :) see y'all, stay safe and have a nice day/night!

[forasecondtherewedwon]

If You’re a Robot and You Know It, Clap Your Hands

Fandom: Loki Characters: Sylvie, Ravonna, B-15, Mobius Rating: G Word Count: 1774

Summary: Sylvie faces off against Ravonna while Mobius hangs out in post-prune purgatory with... himself?

“You’re more stoic than he was,” Ravonna noted, nodding at the empty air between them where Loki had lately stood.

Why the taunting, Sylvie wondered. Who was there left for Ravonna to impress? Her subordinates were all dead or unconscious, Loki was gone, the animatronic lizards who were not in fact ruling rigidly over time sat slumped in their seats. There was only Sylvie. Even when she had been a child, thin arm in the grip of a stone-faced woman in black armour like the shell of a beetle, Sylvie had not felt so alone with Ravonna as she did in this moment. It made her very angry. She would much rather have been alone with herself.

“How do you know how stoic Loki looked?” Sylvie spat. “You pruned him in the back!”

Ravonna tilted her head, glowing baton still raised.

“I don’t mean in the face of his own erasure from existence, I mean watching someone he cared about disappear.”

Sylvie’s expression had been hard—more than once, to get by, she’d imagined herself protected by that beetle armour from her childhood, closing her vulnerable parts away behind a scowl—but it slackened slightly in confusion.

“Agent Mobius,” Ravonna explained impatiently. There was a twitch of her eyelid that Sylvie caught and homed in on.

“They were friends,” she said slowly. Then, she stared hard into the Judge’s eyes. “You were friends. You and Mobius. You killed him?”

“I didn’t! I—”

“You had someone else do it?” Sylvie narrowed her eyes scornfully.

With an irritated groan, Ravonna lunged for her, but Sylvie hopped backwards over the head of the fake Time Keeper. She looked down and Ravonna followed her gaze, distracted from her attack by the sight of rubbery faux-flesh and protruding, crackling wires.

“And this?” Sylvie asked quietly, trying not to spook the woman with the weapon. “Did you have a hand in this deception? I never sensed it in you.”

Ravonna scoffed and looked away from the head on the floor.

“You were a child.”

“I was a Loki,” Sylvie snapped back.

Saying that name—the name she’d rejected but never forgotten, the name that had also been his—jolted her into action once more. She wedged the toe of her boot beneath the Time Keeper’s decapitated head and flipped it up, striking Ravonna in the stomach. The Judge folded forward and defensively swept the baton in a wide arc. Sylvie stepped out of the weapon’s path, not anticipating the way Ravonna swung her arm quickly back to hit her with the non-pruning end of the rod; she hadn’t been a Hunter in who knew how long, but she clearly hadn’t lost her skill with the tools of the trade.

The blunt end thudded into Sylvie’s ribs.

She was knocked back, but when Ravonna advanced, Sylvie’s hand shot up to grab the baton, hauling the Judge forward. Unbalanced, Ravonna was no challenge to send sprawling at the foot of the stairs leading up to the Time Keepers’ dais. She landed awkwardly. Sylvie breathed hard as she wrenched the baton completely free of Ravonna’s hold and went to retrieve her sword as well.

As she then moved to assess B-15, who was rising shakily to her knees, Sylvie never put her back to Ravonna. Pruned in the back. What a Loki death.

“You alright?” she asked B-15 softly.

The Hunter grunted and allowed Sylvie to support her into standing.

“Better if I knew where to go from here.”

“Let me worry about that,” Sylvie said.

Ravonna struggled to her own feet and Sylvie held the baton at arm’s length between them, keeping the Judge at a distance while B-15 opened the door behind them.

“Ah ah ah,” Sylvie warned archly, chin and eyebrows raised in impish caution. “You stay here and play with your robots.”

“This is temporary,” Ravonna said as Sylvie edged back through the open door.

Sylvie performed her signature cocked head and smirk.

“Isn’t everything?”

The second they were out of the Time Keepers’ chamber, B-15 slammed the doors and leaned into them, as if Ravonna would imminently begin trying to break them down from the inside. Which Sylvie supposed she might. She really almost admired Ravonna—or would have if the Judge hadn’t ruined her entire life.

She stared at the door handles, then at each of the weapons she held in her hands. Sword or baton, sword or baton? With a deep breath, Sylvie jammed the blade of her sword through the handles to bar the door, electing to keep the baton close. Though it was a less familiar weapon, she was nothing if not highly adaptable. Besides, touching the glowing end of the rod to a person was certainly more efficient than dispatching them with a blade. She wasn’t sure how many TVA workers they would encounter before they were out of here. This place and this time. Keeping the baton was the right choice.

She stole a last glance at the sword. Another little piece of herself left behind.

At the sound of reinforcements headed towards them, she and B-15 hurried away from the chamber.

“She used to be a Hunter,” B-15 said, shaking her head as they strode down the corridor, “like me.”

“I suppose she might have been like you at some point,” Sylvie said. She was interpreting the words a little differently. “I wonder when she stopped.”

“Do you?”

“Not really. I can trust you but not her.” Sylvie shrugged as she walked. “That’s about all I need to know.”

“Do you trust me?”

“I have to.”

“Same for me. Though I can’t say my faith in allies hasn’t been shaken recently,” B-15 said sarcastically. “The Time Keepers aren’t real, Ravonna’s been helping to cover up the truth, and I wasn’t even created here! I probably had to go through that degrading process of having my clothes zapped off!”

“Probably. I didn’t think you’d want to see that as a prioritized memory,” Sylvie said, half-apologetic. While they’d stood in the torrential rain outside Roxxcart, she’d allowed a highlight reel of memories to flash through the Hunter’s mind.

“You know, I always found it kind of strange that one of the few tests we run in this department is to judge whether or not someone is secretly a robot. I guess whoever designed the Time Keepers got paranoid.”

“Whoever that person is, paranoia is the least of their worries.”

“True,” B-15 agreed as she produced a TemPad. “Now, they’re going to have to deal with us.”

“If they’re still out there somewhere and not dead like Loki and Mobius,” Sylvie said bitterly. She flipped the TemPad open and programmed their destination.

“Maybe they aren’t dead. We’ve been misled about everything else. Maybe everyone who’s ever been pruned just ends up someplace… else.”

“It’s no place I’ve ever been.”

“Yet,” B-15 said.

The Time Door appeared before them. Pounding footsteps raced against Sylvie’s accelerating heartbeat as she prepared to step through and leave this place behind. They had to go now, her and her one ally. She couldn’t get above one ally these days. It was better than none.

“Yet,” Sylvie agreed.

—

Meanwhile in Jet Ski Land…

“That’s why I always felt such an affinity for that Earth actor,” Mobius said. “I am Owen Wilson. Or was.”

He dug his bare toes deeper into the slightly rocky beach and watched the slow wash of trash along the shore. It was almost nice here, but not quite. Not a place to stay. Everything inside him had already been screaming that. A lifelong (in this life, anyway) bureaucrat, he’d never felt such restlessness.

“Am… was… what does it matter?” the man next to him asked rhetorically.

He was also Mobius. No, Mobius was him. No, that wasn’t right, they were both Owen Wilson. Variants of him. But this man had shaggy blond hair where Mobius had been grey for as long as he could remember. Also, he appeared to be the only Owen Wilson in sight who had a mustache and he was a little proud of that. Probably stupidly, but it was helping him hold on to his sense of identity in the presence of so many hims.

They were on the beach around him, sitting in the dunes behind him, swimming in the water in front of him. One of the Owens was freaking parasailing through the air up above while another Owen drove the boat that towed him.

“How long have you guys been here?” Mobius asked in awe.

“You know, it’s hard to say,” Owen said, folding his arms thoughtfully. “It’s tough to figure out exactly how time flows here. A little like what you were describing, with your experience at the TVA.”

“Have you gotten to know everybody?”

“Oh yeah, they’re good guys. And all of us Owens are naturally social.”

“What about that one?” Mobius asked, pointing. He could hear the raw admiration in his own voice as the geriatric Owen he’d indicated revved his jet ski, bouncing over the low swells of the turquoise water.

“One of our actors. He was in the middle of filming a movie in Indonesia before he ended up here. Played an international, jet ski-riding spy in sort of a buddy comedy. Eighty-three years old and still a star.”

“What? That sounds incredible! What the heck happened?”

“Well,” Owen told him with a grimace, “the tsunami of 2051.”

“Right,” Mobius said, recalling the list of 21st-century apocalyptic events he and Loki had so recently sifted through together.

“He wasn’t supposed to survive the wave. The film crew had tethered him to the jet ski for safety while they were shooting and, as far as Owen can guess, that should’ve been enough to kill him. That’s what the TVA was counting on. They had to bring him in when he didn’t drown.”

“What a story though! That old Owen is one tough nut!”

“I know!” Owen gushed proudly.

Mobius shook his head in amazement, scanning the water. His gaze landed on something he couldn’t immediately understand.

“And what’s that?” he asked.

“That’s jet-ski Owen.”

“I thought the old guy was jet-ski Owen.”

“Nah, that one’s Owen on a jet ski. This one’s Owen as a jet ski.”

The riderless craft surged across the water until the speed had its front end lifting high off the surface. With a glorious final burst, it escaped the water entirely, executing a barrel roll in midair before touching down once more.

Mobius felt the praise leave his own lips and heard it echoed up and down the beach by all other versions of Owen Wilson in attendance: “Wow.”

[icarusinstatic]

The Mobius & Sylvie Roadtrip Fic is done.

It’ll All Come Out in the Wash

Summary: Sylvie doesn’t know what she did to deserve this (yes she does), but she’s sorry, she promises (no she’s not). The obligatory episode 5 road trip fic featuring, jealous Mobius and completely done Sylvie Laufeydottir.

Notes: Took a little longer than expected, but the road trip fic that no one asked for. For those of you who are very pro Sylvie/Loki this fic is not for you, just a heads up.

Read below or here at AO3

“I really wanted to hate you, you know.”

Sylvie looked up at Mobius meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror while the other man drove them both back towards the giant matter-eating cloud.

“Why? Because I’ve killed your fellow brainwashed TVA friends?” Sylvie didn’t much care for the answer either way, though the thought that this man didn’t hate her was curious. This was the man who went off with her fellow variant, but who hadn’t been there when she came upon Loki at the elevator for their meeting with the so-called TimeKeepers and Sylvie couldn’t stop the feeling of impotent rage from swelling up in her chest every time she thought about the moment after she had beheaded the animatronic monstrosity. But she quelled that rage with a deep sigh and thought about the variant who was as close as a brother to her.

Loki. When she had come up to him at the elevator there had been something deeply wrong with him. At the time he couldn’t say what had transpired between their last meeting and then, but seeing Mobius, as he had asked to be called, in the void Sylvie could guess.

Loki had appeared more devastated than simple questioning by TVA grunts would warrant. He’d radiated an absolute devastation Sylvie hadn’t let herself feel since just after she had escaped the TVA as a child. When she realized that she would never, could never go back to her home and to her people.

Mobius held her stare for a moment before focusing his eyes back on the road. There was an anger there that Sylvie wasn’t sure how to interpret. Yes, she had killed people that this man had known, but this — this was something entirely different. Mobius, he looked like Sylvie had taken something from him personally.

It was quiet for a couple more minutes before, “No. I’m not happy about that, but that’s not why I wanted to hate you.” Mobius eyed her for a second before continuing. “But I can’t, because you're you and I’ve never been able to bring myself to hate a Loki variant in my life.” Mobius looked up at the rearview mirror again making sure to maintain eye contact with Sylvie before continuing, “I just want to know that you won’t hurt him.”

“Hurt who? Listen TVA flunky, I don’t know what the hell you're talking about, but make yourself clear before I throw you out of this car and find my way to whoever is behind the TVA myself.” Sylvie was quickly beginning to lose patience with the conversation. She had more important things to do than listen to whatever bullshit TVA flunky had to say about hurting people.

Sylvie had hurt more people in her life than she cared to think about and the way her day was going she would hurt more people before her mission was over.

Mobius sighed deeply, then looked as if he were steeling himself, a vein jumping in his temple, before answering. “Loki, I want to know that you won’t hurt him.”

“Oh, of all the idiotic things we don’t have time for, this is the worst.” Sylvie couldn’t believe that she was getting the don’t hurt him conversation from a damn TVA agent right now. “He’s probably already dead,” and didn’t that send a stab of pain through her heart, “Why do you even care flunky?”

Sylvie expected Mobius to give her some self-righteous bullshit answer about how of course he cared because he was a good person or some such nonsense about how the TVA cared about the well-being of everyone in the Sacred Timeline and they had all been part of that timeline at some point. Sylvie had heard it all from the minutemen she ran into, though they were more likely to go straight into attempting to prune her. The thing is, she was expecting a non-answer and for them to go on with the plan after a few minutes of one-sided awkward silence — she was never awkward about anything, but her traveling companion seemed to be made up of awkwardness if the previous few minutes of conversation held up.

What Sylvie wasn’t expecting was for Mobius to suddenly slam on the breaks.

Hard.

Before she could voice her objections to this new brand of idiocy Mobius turned around in his seat after bringing the car to a stop and held up his hand for silence, finger pointed right in front of Sylvie’s nose. She considered biting it off if the next words out his mouth proved irritating enough.

Hell she might do it anyways. This was taking too much time and she could probably make up a good enough lie about not seeing the TVA agent if she ran into Loki — not that she would admit to hoping to see the other variant of herself again.

She couldn’t afford to hope he was alive — couldn’t afford the disappointment.

“Three things.” Mobius’s pale face was slightly flushed his frustration with the situation so great. Sylvie wondered how he had dealt with Loki if he was this easily flustered. “One, Loki isn’t dead. I know it.”

“How” Great, Sylvie was riding with a hopeless optimist.

“I just do. After all of this, he can’t be dead. Okay?” Mobius barely gave her a chance to roll her eyes at him before continuing. “Two, of course I care. Loki is my friend and I know that he can be anything he wants to be, even if the things he chooses to do aren’t my favorite. And three, why wouldn’t you care? I thought you two were in love? I mean,” He paused seeming to pull himself together a hint of something flashing behind his eyes too quick for Sylvie to make out, “I just don’t want you to hurt him, okay. Can you promise me that?”

Sylvie didn’t say anything for a minute, her brain had shut down after Mobius had claimed that she was in love with Loki or that he may be in love with her because — “What are you talking about in love? Are you high Mobius? Or did you just hit your head too hard when you landed hear after being pruned?”

Annoyance clouded Mobius’s features, annoyance that turned into real anger the longer Sylvie spoke.

“You and Loki are in love! Don’t try to dodge the issue. It’s what caused the nexus event on Lamentis-1.” Mobius leveled her with a glower, his jaw tightening enough that Sylvie thought she could see a vein jumping in his neck.

Sylvie would be impressed by the other man’s glower if she wasn’t so busy being vaguely nauseous at the thought of being in love with a variant of herself. Loki wasn’t so bad to deal with, but god they were far to similar to ever have a chance at loving each other. Sylvie may be a hedonist, but even she had her limits.

“I have never heard someone be so wrong so fast about something in my life, and I just came from dealing with Judge Renslayer, so you know that’s saying something.”

Mobius looked like he was about to interrupt with something even more asinine than what he’d already said but Sylvie held up her hand to prematurely cut him off.

“No Mobius, you will let me finish. Now, hear me when I tell you this.” Sylvie took an unneeded breath before continuing, “I don’t know where you got the idea that Loki and I were ‘in love,’” and Sylvie couldn’t stop her self from using air quotes if she wanted to, which she didn’t. “But that’s definitely not a thing and I know that Loki wouldn’t think it’s a possibility either. I don’t know what caused the nexus event on Lamentis, but it definitely wasn’t that so your sources were wrong. Who did come up with that idea anyways?”

Instead of answering her, Mobius frowned to himself before seeming to come to a decision a hint of relief causing his features to lose some of the irritated fire behind his eyes. Sylvie wasn’t sure, but it looked like his eyes had lightened up a bit when she had denied being in love with Loki. Oh hello there.

“Well, okay then,” Mobius started, clearly trying to come to terms with what Sylvie had just told him, but before he could finish she cut him off.

“Wait, wait, wait, I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out sooner,” This day just kept getting weirder and weirder. Never before would Sylvie have thought she’d be having this conversation with a mustachioed TVA agent in her life. “You like him don’t you?”

“Who?” Mobius asked, a frown making his eyebrows scrunch in confusion.

This man had some nerve to even pretend to be confused about this right now.

Sylvie was just about done with this whole situation.

“Who? Are you kidding me right now?” She couldn’t help but hiss out in irritation. Why was she surrounded by fools all the time. First Loki and now possibly one of his princes. Though why Loki would even choose to associate with this man was beyond her. The romantic fool had terrible taste in men and in plans.

Mobius just waited for Sylvie to come to terms with the situation, or perhaps he was wondering how best to ruin her day more. Sylvie couldn’t begin to care which option it really was though.

After this, Loki owed her one and Sylvie was going to collect.

“Listen to me TVA Flunky, and listen good. I’m going to ask you a question and you will tell me the truth,” Sylvie ground out between gritted teeth.

She waited until Mobius silently nodded, eyeing her apprehensively as he did.

Good. She was getting far too tired of these juvenile games as it was.

“Loki. Are you in love with him. Yes or no?”

Sylvie thought for a moment that she would have to get creative in getting answers out of the other man, but before she could do anything other than seriously consider maiming him Mobius nodded silently and waited for her reaction.

“Have you told him about how you feel?”

Another silent answer, but this time a shake of the head. Mobius pursed his lips in quiet agitation obviously unwilling to comment further.

Well too bad. Because Sylvie had had more than enough of this nonsense and she was putting a stop to it now.

“And why the hell not? Loki is the most romantic idiot I have ever come across.” Sylvie didn’t bother to raise her eyes at Mobius in irritation when the man had the nerve to start looking jealous again. “Don’t look at me like that. I told you, it’s never going to happen between Loki and I. I just mean that within 2 hours of meeting him I could tell that he was in love with someone already. Did you know that he had the nerve to tell me love was like a dagger? Of of the ridiculous metaphors I’ve heard that one takes the cake.”

“Love is like a what now?” Mobius had an amused almost fond look on his face, as if he were remembering something.

“Oh, finally he speaks. A dagger, you idiot. He said love was like a dagger.” Here she leveled her most fearsome glare at Mobius. “Now, why would Loki ever come up with something so stupid and trite as that I ask you.”

Mobius was full on grinning now, “It’s just, before we headed to Roxxcart I tried to give Loki his daggers back so that he wouldn’t be entirely defenseless if we ran into you.”

Oh he had it bad, didn’t he?

Sylvie couldn’t stop herself from laughing if she wanted to.

“Wait, you mean to tell me that you tried to give a Loki variant a weapon? Oh, I’m sure your superiors loved you for that. Tell me, how long did they let him keep them?”

“I didn’t want him to be unarmed, I know how dangerous you guys can be.” Mobius had the good grace to look abashed, and he really was sort of perfect for Loki wasn’t he? “Anyways, Hunter B-15 took the daggers off Loki just as soon as I handed them to him.”

“You do know that he has magic right? I mean that couldn’t have escaped your notice?” Sylvie wasn’t trying to beat a dead horse here, but the thought of anyone with the TVA wanting a Loki armed was just too much for her.

There was a beat of silence before Mobius nodded a light flush rising to his cheeks. “I may have... forgotten that fact in the moment.”

She couldn’t believe it, they really did deserve each other.

“Okay, okay, one last thing and then we can get on with things.” Sylvie didn’t stop herself from crowing with delight in her head when Mobius reared back at the sudden emergence of her short sword just inches from his neck. Loki wasn’t the only one good with a magic trick after all.

He shot her a not all surprised look, but there was definite disappointment lurking in his eyes.

“I really thought we were having a moment there, Sylvie.”

A moment, sure.

“Calm down, Flunky”

She ignored the muttered, “It’s Mobius actually,” from the other man.

“I want you to promise me that you’ll tell Loki how you feel when we find him again. And damn you for making me think we will, by the way.”

Mobius frowned, “But what if he doesn’t feel the same way? I don’t want to scare him off, and don’t tell me Loki’s don’t get scared. I’ve studied you all, I know that you do.”

Sylvie considered setting the other man straight, for her own piece of mind. Maybe other Loki’s got scared, but she had trained herself out feeling that over a long period of living in the midst of apocalypses.

Well, okay, mostly at least.

“If there’s one think I know about our Loki, it’s that he’s a lovesick idiot. I didn’t know exactly who he was infatuated with when I first met him, but seeing him after you were pruned really opened my eyes. I’ve never seen a Loki more devastated and I never want to again.” Sylvie paused and considered her words for a moment before plunging ahead. “You know how lucky we were that being pruned wasn’t our end? This may be your only chance to tell him, so promise me that when we find Loki you’ll let him know how you feel.”

Sylvie absently brought her short sword back into it’s place at her side waiting for his answer.

“This may be the first and only pep talk I’ve ever gotten from a Loki variant,” He paused at her murderous glare, “From a Sylvie at least. But yes, you didn’t even have to threaten me with that sword. I’ll tell him.

Thank goodness for that, it would make things infinitely easier for her if she didn’t need to worry about a jealous TVA agent after her. That was all this was, after all. Just looking after her own interests.

Liar.

“Good, now that that’s out of the way, can we please go find the giant cloud monster. Knowing Loki he’s already found his way there ahead of us, and the idiot needs all the help he can get.”

“Aye, aye, captain.” Mobius turned back towards the front of the car to start it up again, just before he started driving he flashed a thankful smile at the rear view mirror at her.

[lokigodofaces]

thoughts on loki ep 2: the variant (spoilers)

under cut to not disturb your scrolling

Overall I enjoyed so that's good

Uh frick my mind blanked so sorry if things are completely out of order

I don't know, I expected the renaissance fair to be 2012 or 2021 or 2024 (Loki's time, our time, current time in the "sacred timeline"). So I was genuinely surprised when it was in 1985.

Ok, i really like the title card thing. And how the year scrolls around. It's a nice aesthetic touch there.

I wonder why the female Loki variant chooses her locations? Does she have a thing for renaissance fairs, French cathedrals, and Oklahoma?

1985 is when Back to the Future came out. And it's y'know, one of the most popular time travel movies ever. So I think they chose that year as a reference.

Again, not liking that the minutemen only have numbers, not names. It is giving me lots of Clone Wars vibes. If you don't know anything about Clone Wars, the clones are given number identifiers by the Kaminoans. Things like CT-7567. The clones would give themselves names (CT-7567, for example, names himself Rex). A really good sign throughout the series that someone is a sketchy person is if they call the clones by their numbers. The clones don't want to be known as numbers. They are people too, they deserve names, so they come up with all sorts of creative names (Rex, Fives, Cody, Tup, Hevy, Hardcase, Echo, Waxer, Boil, Wolffe, Jesse, Kix, Fox, Hunter, Wrecker, Crosshair, Omega, Tech, Matchstick, etc). The jedi respect this, and the only jedi that i can think of that called clones by their numbers is Krell, who fell to the dark side. the Kaminoans and other sketchy people all call them by their numbers and the clones don't like it. A big focus of the show is on the clone's agency (at the end, they all have brain chips that take away their agency and force them to kill jedi), and how the clones need to be respected. So for me to see in another series that people are only given numbers is bad. What's worse is that the minutemen are fine with this. They don't see it as dehumanizing or belittling. They are brainwashed into being okay with it. Which says a thing or two about the Time Keepers.

did. did the renaissance fair really have Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out for a Hero" for their renaissance themed fight? Is this normal? Was it normal in the '80's? We saw later that the female Loki can do electronic stuff. Did she rig it to play it? For the vibes?

Also the stuff before the song was about fighting for a princess, and in the end she kidnaps C-20.

Okay, btw, I'm just gonna say Lady Loki for a while because no one has explicitly said Sylvie yet, so I'm going to refer to di Martino as Loki until she or another calls her Sylvie. Cool? Cool.

I was thinking the "Holding Out for a Hero" fight would be the roomba fight or something. It is such a good song that has huge potential for this genre. Why did they use it in a lame fight as that one?

When Lady Loki did the spell on C-20, it looked similar to what Wanda and Agatha can do. As in, it had similar visuals.

Loki reading a random magazine he finds while sitting with his feet on the desk bored out of his mind because he has to learn sh*t is a MOOD.

What is Miss Minutes? She can jump around anywhere, and pop into computers. But she can't be just a projection. She took the effort to dodge Loki swatting at her, so that may mean she was corporeal. She also could be something similar to the Kree's Supreme Intelligence?

So, did Mobius give Loki the shirt, tie, and slacks, but really didn't give him the jacket until they had to call him in? What? That makes no sense? Did the TVA not have any jackets with the variant label? Did someone have to custom design a jacket for Loki?

What is up with this show giving me things I wanted to see only in holographic form? First we saw Coulson's death, and now Loki in his Jotun form in a holograph of another variant.

Okay, Loki being someone the TVA has to constantly deal with is very on brand. Loki is a creature of chaos, of course he's going to unknowingly rebel against the sacred timeline.

Also, headcanon that the Jotun Loki we see is king of Jotunheim because that would be epic.

Also, for personal reasons I choose to believe there is a Loki variant that defeated the Avengers and immediately went queer rights.

Loki's reaction to there being many Loki variants. He's seen what his life is supposed to be. I think he is even more upset that the TVA often deals with him, that there are so many things that could have been instead if it weren't for the TVA and the "sacred timeline."

Also, I totally think Mobius was waiting for another Loki to show up to help him defeat Lady Loki. They get them so often, it makes sense.

Loki explaining the difference between illusion projection and duplication was great. And very helpful to me personally understanding lore. Also, Mobius, get your crap together. If you're a Loki expert, figure this stuff out.

Loki calling the TVA out on propaganda, we love that.

The wolf quote is actually very nice, I quite like it.

Okay, the TVA doesn't even bury or cremate or do any sort of ritual for their fallen minutemen, they just reset the timeline. Which to me seems like another way to show how little the TVA actually care for their workers.

There are statues of the Time Keepers in Ravonna's office. The camera pays extra attention to it. Keep reading for more about Time Keepers and cinematography choices.

What. What sort of relationship does Ravonna and Mobius have? What is going on there? I am really confused.

Who is this "analyst on the side?" What is going on there?

Ravonna is MEGA SUS. Along with that, the Time Keepers are mega sus.

She signs R. Slayer. Yeah. Slayer. Not at all subtle, Marvel. Letting us know that she'll do the deed if needed.

Mobius you are sending me mixed signals. What do you want?

Okay, Mobius saying Loki was a "cold, scared boy" and an "ice runt" and stuff was totally a jab at Loki being Jotun.

Mobius saying Loki is insecure because of Lady Loki is...probably true.

With the elevator, the camera stops and focuses on the Time Keepers.

The Creation of the TVA, the beginning of time, the end of time, all classified. That is sus.

Loki almost crying over Ragnarok was good. Let him cry over the destruction of his home.

Loki being the one to discover something the TVA had no idea about after a day is on brand for Loki. And it shows how the TVA really are vulnerable.

Mobius: Really? In front of my salad?

No but the object lesson was well done and actually did help me understand what Loki was talking about.

Casey! Casey drinks grape juice! Imagine how confusing this is for Casey though. Loki is captured, threatens to gut you like a fish (whatever that means), and now he's dressed like an analysist, stealing your juice box. Does Loki get Casey more juice?

Honestly, Loki looking at everything logically and scientifically is fantastic. Adds to the science = magic thing Marvel's got going on, since Loki is a sorcerer.

Loki saying volcanoes are cool is fun. I agree. Volcanoes mean the planet is geologically active, which means we won't die. Also, there is a volcano named Loki on one of Jupiter's moons. I wonder if the creators knew that and put Loki in Pompeii because he is already linked with volcanoes.

Mobius telling Loki to start off small and Loki completely disregarding that felt very personal to me.

Loki being absolutely chaotic and telling everyone they were going to die while speaking perfect Latin was iconic. I want more of that content. Let the man be buckwild.

Again, Loki finding something out after a day that the TVA never knew about is on brand.

"Be free, my horned friends, be free!" I love that way too much.

Mobius being obsessed with jet skis wasn't something I expected, but I'm down for it. Heck, even Loki admitted they were cool.

The discussion on beliefs is going to lead to saying the Time Keepers are bullcrap. Hopefully.

Grapes and nuts are "candy" on Asgard. So, when Loki was eating grapes in Ragnarok, we can interpret that as him eating M&Ms. Second, this might add to something I've seen around here. I've seen things about a book somewhere with Loki saying chocolate fountains are mythical (which is really funny to me). So, I guess Asgard really doesn't have chocolate.

Oh my gosh, so many apocalypses between 2047 and 2051...hopefully none of those happen in real life.

Roxxcart is probably part of Roxxon, something that has been around in Iron Man movies.

Lady Loki got the shovel thing from Roxxcart that she left in Oklahoma! The minutemen said it was from the early third millenia, which is where we are now! 2050 also fits that category!

I saw something about the file saying Class 8 hurricane...there are only 5 classes...which means this is a crazy storm.

Does B-15 want Loki dead? This is a legitimate question, because I think she does. Dead or pruned.

Loki looking around at the storm, I love it. This could be him loving science, or him missing Thor, since Thor creates storms. Also, at this point Loki probably things Thor dies shortly after him in the sacred timeline, so Loki would be particularly sentimental about Thor.

I love Loki drying himself off and not anyone else. And B-15 yelling about his magic. And Loki's motions are so fluid, it's so aesthetically pleasing, I love it.

Dudes, I thought B-15 was going to try to prune Loki when they were alone.

Okay, was Lady Loki bsing about the azalea sale, or does Roxxcart actually do that? I want to know.

Wunmi Mosaku did a really good job as Lady Loki, I loved it.

Loki being annoyed at Lady Loki and saying he understood how Thor felt, does that insinuate Loki can do what Lady Loki was doing?

B-15 and C-20 were both very shaken after being possessed by Lady Loki. I wonder how that felt for them? We've had different explanations of mind control/brainwashing/similar from Clint, Bucky, Daisy, Mack, Fitz, and Monica in the MCU (including AoS). I wonder what is specific to Lady Loki's possession.

C-20 kept going on about something being real. What was that about?

C-20 revealed the location of the Time Keepers to Lady Loki!

Lady Loki not wanting to be called Loki could be a sign she is Sylvie.

There's something weird where Loki's voice echoed around while the camera focused on Lady Loki. Maybe she's telepathic?

Someone needs to keep a tracker on people telling Loki this isn't his story in a show literally about him.

But, that does add to themes for his life, and how everything was always about someone else in his life. He was always a supporting character for Thor, for Odin, for Thanos. Now, even in his own story, everyone insists he doesn't matter.

I was wondering what the reset charges would be used for. I wasn't expecting a massive bombing of the sacred timeline! Wow! That was unexpected and I loved it!

Okay, this isn't from me, this is from New Rockstars. But to list all the places mentioned on chronomonitors, either bombed or not: Knowhere, Barcelona, Niflheim, Dartford, Phong Nha, Lisbon, Vormir, Thorton, Cookeville, Asgard, Rome, Sakaar, Barichara, Porvoo, Ego, Titan, New York City, Tokyo, Hala, Kingsport, Xandar, Beijing, Madrid, Portland, Jotunheim. Bolded are other planets. Those are almost all the planets visited in the MCU. So fun easter eggs there!

I like Lady Loki's aesthetic. The fingerless gloves, the cloak, I love it. And YES SHE ISN'T SEXUALIZED. So many genderbent characters are excuses to sexualize women. But Lady Loki is just as covered as the male Lokis.

Lady Loki just...left the time door open for Loki to follow...for a really long time...I'm worried he's running into a trap.

What is Loki going to do now?

Theory time y'alls: Lady Loki bombed the sacred timeline to flush the minutemen out of the TVA, leaving it defenseless. And she's gonna go after the Time Keepers themselves. We know she gets into the TVA from trailer footage, and that's what I think we're gonna see next episode. I think she (like the Loki we are following) is upset over the lack of free will, and she plans to change that. That's why she wasn't interested in helping Loki "take over" the TVA, because she doesn't want to become the leader of a new TVA, she wants it destroyed.

Alright, back to the Time Keepers stuff. They keep focusing on the middle Time Keeper. Even in the end credits they have a weird cut to focus directly on his face. I'm not 100% on this, but I like this theory. That face is similar to Jonathan Major's, the actor confirmed to be Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Kang is a well known time travelling villain in Marvel. Maybe he is Kang, and is using variant versions of himself (that's a Kang thing in the comics) to mess with the timeline, and no one expects that from him. Also, Renslayer was his S/O for a bit in the comics, and they keep framing her in front of that one Time Keeper's face. I feel like this would be a good way to set up Quantumania and to show how sus the Time Keepers are.

Also, Loki was absolutely adorable the entire episode. And he got to sleep! Yay for him!

Again, I enjoyed, and can't wait for next week!

[alorenawrites]

Thoughts on Loki, Gender, Sex, and Identity

So...I've seen a few posts on transphobia embedded in Loki and I wanted to examine my own thoughts on this a bit. I'm not going to dig too deeply, just hit on a few of my thoughts on the matter regarding my own positionality as a demisexual, demiromantic, bisexual, nonbinary, gender funky human.

To begin, my own relationship to sex and gender is complicated, based on my own experiences. I'm fine with people not having this same interpretation because of differences in experience and I'm not going to sit around and listen to anyone bombarding me with statements about how wrong they think I am. Go write a post with relevance to your own experience and please don't shit on mine. The purpose of this is to share my own thoughts on this matter, not to get into an argument. I have enough real-world stress regarding these things and don't need them on Tumblr as well.

I've seen the argument that Loki is gender fluid and it is wrong to say he is sex fluid or that sex fluidity is a way to undercut or deny the validity of gender fluidity. I don't see it this way. To begin, we don't actually see Loki display gender fluidity, even though shape-shifting is clearly within his skill set. MCU Loki shifts into Sif once in The Dark World, but other than that, there is little evidence outside of his word at this. I know those creating this story did refer to him as gender fluid, but I question whether those who stand outside that fluidity might not be as well-versed in how gender fluidity comes in a myriad of experiences. I am fine with the idea that perhaps Loki still uses traditionally male pronouns while in other shapes. I am not considering comic interpretations of Loki in this, as there are so many different storylines that I think they would be hard to sum up into this character. And it is fine if you don't see this the same way.

In myth, when Loki transforms into a maiden during the marriage of "Freya" (Thor in disguise) to Thrym, the book I reference (Neil Gaiman's retellings of the myths) does, at one point, refer to Loki as "he." When the mythological Loki transforms into the mare to lure the horse Svadilfari away from the builder of their wall, the references to the mare indicate "she" (and it is worth noting that in this retelling, the mare is never referred to as Loki by name), but when Loki returns he is referred to using male pronouns yet still as Sleipnir's mother.

In the television show, Loki's file lists his sex as fluid. As gender and sex are entirely separate, I took this into consideration as a part of what defines a Loki- they may change physical sex. I did not see an entry for gender on the file. I may have missed it. But to me, the lack of listing gender and the inclusion instead of sex leads me to believe that the TVA doesn't much care for the gender of a variant, but rather the body in which they are most likely to inhabit. In this case, it would seem that knowing if a Loki is more likely to appear as a physical type without regard to pronouns or gender might be considered more important data than gender identity and pronouns. I examine this as someone who has to handle grant data that requires a sex marker in the demographics- not a gender identity, but an assigned-at-birth or otherwise legally documented sex.

I don't see these two things as mutually exclusive or an erasure of one another. I would see it as a way for the TVA to try to classify a variant without regards to any sort of identity. After all, if Lokis are destined for pruning, who cares how they see themselves? It's not like they are going to have an extended conversation with them- process them, judge them, prune them.

In the context of the Lokis we meet, and the note that they haven't met a female Loki, I do wonder why they haven't met one yet. Is it because they don't catch every Loki that comes through? Is it because they themselves have only ever experienced being Loki as men and and haven't assumed otherwise? I don't know. But I don't see it as impossible to explain, either. How many Loki variants have come through? And how many haven't survived? We don't see every variant in the Void that we see in Mobius' briefing holograms. Who didn't make it, and who is missing? Yes, the comment that she "sounds terrifying" could be read as incredibly sexist, but at the same time...Lokis grew up with stories of the Valkyrie, powerful warrior women who they likely looked at with awe, wondering why these towers of strength were no longer with them. The Valkyrie predate them and are mythic figures- we see how Thor reacts to meeting one of these warriors in Ragnarok. Given that this line comes from Loki the Elder, someone who leans into the power of sorcery and the capabilities of magic, wouldn't it make sense that the combination of these skills would seem terrifying? A warrior of the legendary capabilities of the Valkyrie combined with the might of a Loki sorcery? I mean, I'd probably think the same thing, and I think this is possibly one reason why the variant Loki we come to know would agree with him- she has been jumping through time, surviving apocalypses that likely terrify him, enchanting anyone she needs to use, and she can run circles around him. Given the tonal shift in the delivery of the line "and she needs me," I interpret this as the blustering Loki does when he wants to feel more important than he really is- he's trying to justify why he needs to find her to someone else (and possibly to himself) instead of just saying it's because he cares deeply about her and wants to know what the hell that means. Sylvie can clearly take care of herself and doesn't really need rescue. He wants to feel important enough to go back and to convince the others he is as well. That she could render him irrelevant is something that would be terrifying to someone who craves attention and affirmation.

Mobius says that the most common iterations of Lokis look like the one standing before him, yet Loki does encounter a variant file from California in the early 20th century that refers to Sylvie. So the TVA knows that there is a rare chance that a sex fluid Loki could exist (and they have, presumably, pruned them). While I wish this had been explored further, I don't necessarily see it as a transphobic intent. Did it resonate that way with some people? Yes. And that's fine. Their feelings on the matter are valid.

Another element of my interpretation of this comes from my own experiences of gender expression. Most of the time during which I have been out as nonbinary, people have read my gender as a woman. I like my long dresses and I have an extensive collection of vintage women's clothing. I also have a decent collection of corsets and well-tailored suits that fit my body type. I don't bind my chest. My hair varies from very short to as long as it will grow (not far past my shoulders). I occasionally wear eyeshadow, regardless of what gender I am on any given day. I very rarely read masculine and when I feel neutral, I still don't bother to alter my body shape, only sometimes choosing a bra or bra tank top that decentuates my curves (which, granted, aren't dramatic). So the concept of a gender fluid individual choosing gendered pronouns and reading as male during the (relatively short) time in his lifespan during which the audience knows him doesn't seem odd to me, as it is how I've existed (and I, too, used gendered pronouns for a few years on my nonbinary journey- they were a default while I searched for something that suited me better). But I have known nonbinary people who have exclusively used gendered pronouns and it does not invalidate their gender identity, nor does gendered expressions of that identity. The concept that we would only see a male presenting Loki doesn't seem very odd because I have lived a stretch of my life during which I, too, presented a very femme gender expression and used traditionally female pronouns. But that did not make me less nonbinary.

And, of course, this is assuming that gender fluidity is part of his identity, which we are never told in the text of the story. I reject that everything a creator says must be added to the text of a piece of media simply because the piece also has to stand on its own and be interpreted on that level as well. We do know that Loki shifts sex, which makes sense for someone who shifts bodies, as sex is tied more to bodies than gender is.

The point in this is that we can't assume the gender of a fictional character, just as we can't assume from appearance the gender of a living human. I may read as a woman, but this is not my gender identity and no one should be assuming that my clothes are meant to project gender. Reducing gender to an outward and bodily expression of sex is not something with which I am comfortable, and it seems that some people are conflating the two in their interpretation. Again, your experiences may differ from mine and it's fine to see this in another way.

But here's another very important thing this show can demonstrate. Allow an anecdote. My children watched this show with me. My son is nearly 7, my daughter a few months from being 10. She is very femme- loves makeup, frilly dresses, dolls, princesses, My Little Pony, the whole shebang of activities stereotypically associated with the childhood of girls. At this point in her life, she very much asserts that she is a girl. The same goes for my son- he very much asserts himself as a boy. When we were watching together, we talked about Loki being gender fluid, just like their Mum. We talked about Loki being bisexual, just like their Mum. They understood that just because Loki looks one way, it doesn't mean he is that way...again, just like their Mum. There is power in the idea that some of us are in this same position- we are assumed to be cisgender based on our appearances, but our identities are more complex than that. I thought this was a good window for my children to see through and one I could turn into a teachable moment about all the different sorts of people there are in this world. This is the blessing of imperfect media- we can find ways to learn from it and to share opportunities in it for open interpretation with those around us. And the lesson of not jumping to conclusions about gender or sex based on appearance is a deeply important one for young children to understand.

Is this an area in which I have a problem with the show? No. Does this mean the show couldn't have done more or better? Also no. We do need a variety of types of representation. But seeing the possibilities of this being someone a little more like me (though alas, I can't shift shape)? That was nice.

Hopefully we can see more of this in the future, but if we don't, we can create transformative works to fill in the gaps. It's what fan communities have always done and will continue to do. When I fell into fandom years ago with Harry Potter, long before the movies were all out, so many works were there to add queerness, racial diversity, language diversity, disability representation, all of it, into the series. It didn't stop us from still enjoying what it meant to us in those times and places and I don't think we have to outright reject this show for the imperfections we see in it. It can still thrill us and speak to something in us we've been lacking.

And in my case, that is the affirmation of wearing traditionally gender coded clothes while still asserting my pronouns are ze/zir/zirs and my gender is nonbinary, though also gender fluid, gender optional, or gender funky and that my oft-assumed-to-be-hetero relationship makes me no less bi or any other piece of my complex relationship to sexual orientation (and sharing that affirmation with my kids).

[aion-rsa]

Marvel’s Loki: Making Sense of the MCU’s Time Travel Rules

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This article contains spoilers for Loki episode 1, Avengers: Endgame, and perhaps the very fabric of reality itself.

Nobody said time travel was easy. When Marvel Studios officially introduced temporal shenanigans into its cinematic canon in Avengers: Endgame, it did so with noble intentions. Our Avengers had to save the universe and recapture the 50% of the population that Thanos dusted away. The easiest way to do so was with a dash of Pym particles and an entanglement within the Quantum Realm. 

Unfortunately, however, engaging with time travel means engaging with its rules. Now that the studio’s third Disney+ series Loki has brought the God of Mischief into contact with the Time Variance Authority and the Time Keepers’ Sacred Timeline, the Marvel Cinematic Universe faces the unenviable task of making sense of the impossible.

Through one episode, Loki has done a solid job of explaining the rules and stakes of time travel as it applies to Loki, itself. Still, some questions remain about how the rules of time established in Loki apply to Avengers: Endgame’s time heist and the rest of the MCU at large. For a proper example, take a look at these very astute questions raised by Brit in the comment section of our Loki Episode 1 Easter eggs article. 

“Please can we have a Q&A article on this. Aren’t there already two timelines? One with Steve Rogers in the Avengers and one where he stayed in Peggy? (Editor’s Note: Phrasing) And a third where Thanos left? Either way, aren’t there already multiple? And shouldn’t Steve Rogers be classed as a variant as he went rogue?”

The simple answer to all of these questions is that, despite its interconnected nature, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is made up of individual films (and now TV shows) written by individual writers. So the events of Avengers: Endgame may not make perfect canonical sense in Loki. We know for a fact that Loki’s TVA adventure was not conceived of until Avengers: Endgame had already been written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. In an interview with EW, Marvel head Kevin Feige revealed that Loki stealing the Tesseract was never designed to lead into another time travel story.

“[That scene] was really more of a wrinkle so that one of the missions that the Avengers went on in Endgame could get screwed up and not go well, which is what required Cap and Tony to go further back in time to the ’70s,” Feige said.

If the time travel rules of Loki are to be consistent with the time travel rules of Avengers: Endgame it will be only because the later show retrofitted itself to work within them. For what it’s worth, Loki head writer Michael Waldron (who previously wrote for the timey wimey Rick and Morty) claims that the show’s approach to time travel rules are bulletproof.

“I was always very acutely aware of the fact that there’s a week between each of our episodes and these fans are going to do exactly what I would do, which is pick this apart. We wanted to create a time-travel logic that was so airtight it could sustain over six hours. There’s some time-travel sci-fi concepts here that I’m eager for my Rick and Morty colleagues to see,” Waldron told Vanity Fair.

In that same interview, Waldron notes that Avengers: Endgame presents the rules of time travel as The Avengers understand them. Perhaps this means that Loki will correct the Avengers in some areas and clarify the rules in future episodes. If that’s the case, Loki will have a lot of work to do. As we understand all the rules now, the time travel of Endgame does appear to be at odds with the time travel of Loki in several respects.

Hopefully, the show will explain away those inconsistencies. In case it doesn’t, however, let’s try to do it ourselves. 

Why Were the Events of Endgame Sanctioned?

Thanks to Loki episode 1 “Glorious Purpose” we have one bit of useful canonical information when it comes to the time travel in Avengers: Endgame. When Loki stands trial for his timecrimes, he tries to pass blame onto the Avengers. But the judge presiding over his case, Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), tells Loki that everything the Avengers did was supposed to happen. 

How can that be the case though? Just about everything that The Avengers did appears to fly in the face of the Time Keepers’ mission of maintaining the Sacred Timeline. Tony and Steve’s team sent no fewer than 11 individuals back in time to three distinct time periods. They then removed sacred objects from those time streams, brought them back to the present, used them, then returned them to their appropriate locations in time. How on Earth did that not create dozens if not hundreds of new timelines that threaten the singular supremacy of the Sacred Timeline?

I’ve got two potential explanations for that, both of which are imperfect and flawed. But absent further information from Loki, they might be the best we can do for now. 

The first option is that perhaps the TVA is oversimplifying how neat and tidy the Sacred Timeline looks. Within the TVA offices, the visual representation of the Sacred Timeline is a single straight line on their computer monitors, with potentially dangerous new timelines being represented by jagged fresh lines branching off from the main line. While this is a helpful visual for the TVA office drones to keep an eye on things, it might not represent the full reality of the Sacred Timeline.

The Sacred Timeline may be a gnarled, ugly beast with one long branch spreading out into infinity and smaller twigs doubling back on themselves along the big branch. This would mean that it’s possible for time travel within the Sacred Timeline as long as it’s occurring on the Sacred’s Timeline main branch and with the Time Keepers’ blessing. Why would the Time Keepers sanction some time travels and deem others as unacceptable Nexus events? That’s anyone’s guess. 

The other possibility comes from a theory within Endgame itself. The closest that Marvel’s Infinity Saga conclusion gets to addressing the “rules” of time travel is via a conversation among Scott Lang, James “Rhodey” Rhodes, and Bruce Banner. All three men have their opinions on time travel, but the film gives Bruce the final word, subtly suggesting that it’s his interpretation that’s correct. Here is what he has to say:

“Time doesn’t work that way. Changing the past doesn’t change the future. Think about it, if you travel to the past, that past becomes your future and your former present becomes the past, which can’t now be changed by your new future.”

Let’s call this the Subjective Theory of MCU Time Travel. A certain kind of time travel is allowed and effective as long as the time traveller understands that the nature of time comes down to their subjective experience of it. Bruce Banner can’t create a new timeline when traveling to the past because he’s aware that the past is now a part of his own subjective future. As long as his story ends up where it’s supposed to be, which is to say activating the Infinity Gauntlet in 2023, then everything will be ok.

And that brings us to a certain time traveling lothario…

Why Didn’t Steve Rogers Create A New Timeline?

The idea that Steve Rogers didn’t create a new, unsanctioned timeline by living out an entirely new life with his lost love Peggy Carter is truly baffling. If Loki can create a Nexus event by picking up the Tesseract, how can Steve Rogers abandoning Captaining America in favor of smooching Peggy for 50+ years not?

Well, maybe we can make sense of this by combining our two theories above. For starters, the Sacred Timeline has to accommodate for other smaller, sanctioned timelines within itself – it just has to! Any decision you do or do not make creates new possibilities and new universes. When you choose to wear a blue shirt in the morning as opposed to a red shirt, you are creating an entirely new unseen universe in which you wore that red shirt (and probably won the lottery or something, I don’t know).

Going back to that gnarled branch analogy from before: perhaps the Sacred Timeline isn’t so much of a single line but a series of lines contained within a larger line – fiber optic cable-style. Steve Rogers going back in time and living out a new life is just part of one of the smaller, sanctioned lines clinging onto the main one.

There’s also the reality that Steve did what he was required to do at the end of the day. Having delivered all of the Stones back to their respective places he returned to the present an aged man (and looking like Joe Biden). He then presumably passed away peacefully of natural causes in the timeline that he was supposed to die in at the precisely correct point. 

Read more

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That new past was Steve’s future like Bruce said it would be. Therefore it affected only him. What of all the people Steve interacted with in his new life though? It’s possible that they just dissipated away once Steve returned to the present or their lives carried on normally inside a pocket universe contained within the Sacred Timeline. There’s also a darker possibility that the TVA had to go in and liquidate that whole timeline once Steve had exited it. Sharp-eyed viewers have spotted what looks to be Peggy Carter in Variant prison garb in the background of Loki’s first episode.

That would be a pretty upsetting conclusion to Steve and Peggy’s character arcs, but it would resolve the temporal headaches created by his time travels in the ruthlessly unsentimental way that only the TVA can pull off.

Why Are Variants Allowed on the Sacred Timeline? 

At the conclusion of Avengers: Endgame, there is at least one Variant from a separate timeline existing within the Sacred Timeline. That is, of course, the Guardians of the Galaxy’s Gamora. Thanks to the Avengers’ meddling, she arrived in the Sacred Timeline alongside Variant versions of her “father” Thanos and her “sister” Nebula. Variant Thanos and Variant Nebula are eventually dispatched by the Avengers but Gamora remains behind as a curious sideways world version of herself in a new reality. How is this allowed?

The answer to this is a very well-reasoned “because the Time Keepers said so.” As far as we understand it, the Time Keepers only goal is to maintain the sanctity of the Sacred Timeline. If that means bringing in reinforcements from other timelines, then so be it.

But wait a minute, Alec, you just said “other timelines.” How could Variant versions of Thanos and Gamora even exist on a separate timeline to join the Sacred Timeline if the TVA is so adamant on stamping out other timelines? I don’t know, man. My head hurts. It likely goes back once again to that “big branch” or “fiber optic” cable analogy though. It’s quite simply not possible for there to not be alternate timelines once time travel comes into play. So those timelines have to exist as appropriate branches attached to the main branch. Those Variant Gamoras, Nebulas, and Thanos were therefore never Variants to begin with. They were merely different aspects of the same character from different parts of the same timeline.

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Is this all complicated? Yep. Does it  make perfect sense to me? Absolutely not. That doesn’t change the fact, however, that there is one unshakable tenet of the Marvel Cinematic Universe canon when it comes to time travel now thanks to Loki. And that’s that the events of Avengers: Endgame happened exactly as the time stream needed them to. Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Natasha Romanov, and company are not Variants. No one went “rogue.” That reality makes it harder to fully understand and explain away why dozens of Nexus events weren’t created by their actions. But explain it away we must, because the Time Keepers say so.

Loki airs new episodes Wednesdays on Disney+. 

The post Marvel’s Loki: Making Sense of the MCU’s Time Travel Rules appeared first on Den of Geek.

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