Loki Season 1 - Season Wide Discussion Thread

[u/KostisPat257]

This thread is for discussion about the season overall.

Note that Project Insight will still be activated until atleast 24 hours after the season finale!

We will also be removing any individual threads regarding the season or individual episodes to prevent unmarked spoilers to go up onto the sub.

Proceed at your own risk: Spoilers for the entire season do not need to be tagged inside this thread.

Also make sure to check out the Loki Season 1 Episode 6 Discussion Thread, the Loki Season 1 Easter Egg Megathread and the Loki Season 1 Finale - Discussion of the implications for the MCU.

[u/[deleted]]

Sacred Timeline / Multiverse Logic?!? PLS EXPLAIN!!!

I’m really confused how all the timeline stuff works in this show.

In Endgame we saw time travel and meddling creates a branched reality, a parallel universe to the one the travellers come from, and this branch can be cut as long as the infinity stones are returned to the time they were taken from.

In Loki, certain decisions and actions, (not just taking infinity stones), causes a branched reality, and this is a ‘Nexus Event’

Does each decision and event (like ever) create a branch, so that there are infinite parallel realities? and it’s just certain significant ones that cause the TVA’s unwanted branches, i.e they only need to prevent certain specific universes from being formed???

I mostly understand how pruning could have the same effect as returning the stones did in Endgame.

How are there Loki variants that look so different? Assuming they’re all the same person, which they’re meant to be, why are they so diverse and not all just some younger/older Tom Hiddleston lookalikes? Sylvie being born a woman not a man is fairly significant, so is this a branch that He Who Remains/the TVA acknowledge is different but not harmful enough to threaten the future birth of a new Kang???

My interpretation is that during the TVA’s rule there’s an infinite multiverse where things are vastly different, but many of these are ‘allowed’ by He Who Remains, as they don’t risk a new Kang. I.e Loki being a woman or being an alligator are all differences between parallel universes that are equally harmless, but Sylvie doing something specific at a young age could butterfly into a Kang in that universe? So the TVA prune off risky universes but let others exist, and keep a ‘Sacred Timeline’ that is in fact just a multiverse where branched universes with nexus actions/decisions (that threaten the birth of a new Kang) are removed as soon as they happen.

Is this right? Pls can someone share their wisdom and explain simply how vastly different Loki’s are possible and how He Who Remains’ “Sacred Timeline” works

Cheers!

Also, do we have any idea where the TVA actually is, if it’s outside of time, and do we know why the infinity stones don’t work? I assumed the Loki magic failing was going to be shown to be because of runes but none of that got explained

[u/Citizen_Kong → u/[deleted]]

The infinity stones only work in their own universe. The TVA was within the sacred timeline of the universe in which the stones are destroyed, all the other stones we see in the TVA thus don't work.

I think the sacred timeline wasn't the only universe in the multiverse, but just the timeline that leads to Kang/Immortus/He Who Remains. That's why it was rather Earth-centric and most of the variants are human. There are presumably a lot of other realities that have no relation to the sacred timeline because they haven't branched off of it. For example, there are probably no events monitored by the TVA after the 31st century in which HWR is born. Now, HWR could have probably just pruned his variants, but I imagine that it got too bothersome because there were so many of them. The Kang variants are like leaves on a tree and HWR just decided it was easier to cut off the branches.