After introducing fans to time travel and the Quantum realm, the Multiverse is where all the action of Marvel Phase 4 will be.
‘Loki’ is the latest Marvel Disney+ streaming series to join the likes of ‘WandaVision’, ‘Falcon and the Winter Soldier’, along with the upcoming ‘Hawkeye’, ‘She-Hulk’, and ‘Miss Marvel’.
Highlights —
- Marvel’s multiverse rules
- How Loki relates to ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’
- The secret origin of a powerful Marvel villain through Loki
LOKI: SYNOPSIS
The series follows Loki after the events of ‘Avengers: Endgame’ when he picked up the Tesseract while the Avengers were travelling back to the events of their first movie to regain the space stone.
After escaping the confinement of the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D, Loki finds himself captured by another organization, this time called the TVA. The TVA stands for Time Variance Authority. In the comics, the TVA is responsible for maintaining order in the timeline across multiple realities within the Marvel comics universe.
Now apprehended by the TVA, Loki has two options: To be punished for his crimes or to help the TVA capture a bigger threat.
The following article contains spoilers for ‘Loki’ episode one.
MULTIVERSE RULES IN THE ‘LOKI’ SERIES
The series picks up right after the events of ‘Avengers: Endgame’ when Loki escapes, almost instantly after that, he is arrested by Hunter B-15 of the TVA. Loki goes through some kind of a preliminary registration process at the TVA and is asked to stand trial before a judge. It is here that the show gives the audience a basic understanding of the multiverse rules in the ‘Loki’ series by showing the lead character a retro, 80’s style animated video about what the TVA does and how it relates to the multiverse.
In this video, Miss Minuit who is the mascot of the TVA explains that long ago there was an epic multiversal war where countless timelines fought against each other to gain supremacy. This war would lead to the destruction of everything known. To stop that, three Time Keepers joined forces to merge all the different realities into one. That one timeline being the continuity of the MCU, dubbed by the TVA as the Sacred Timeline. The video further explains that some people known as Variants possess the ability to break away from conforming to the events of the Sacred Timeline. This could lead to another multiversal war. To stop Variants, the Time Keepers created the TVA to work across time and maintain order.
This is the explanation used by the TVA to dictate the multiverse rules in the ‘Loki’ series. But on closer examination of the comics and upcoming MCU projects, it becomes clear that the TVA (and Marvel) might be lying or simply incorrect about the way things work.
SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME
One of the upcoming movies in MCU’s phase four slate is ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’. As reported by many websites on the internet, this movie will bring back characters from other, pre-MCU Spider-Man movies like Jaime Fox’s Electro and Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock.
In an interview with Variety, Alfred Molina revealed that he will be playing the same character he did from back in ‘Spider-Man 2’. The director John Watts told him that his character’s story will pick up right after it left him dead in water. This is very strong evidence that the version of Doc Ock that appears in ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ is the same one from the Sam Raimi movies. Hence implying that there is a multiverse and that both Doc Ock and Electro find themselves in the current MCU reality as a result of being transported from their respected universes. It is also worth mentioning that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield are very likely to reprise their roles as Spider-Man from their respective movie universes.
So how can the TVA claim that the Time Keepers merged all the timelines to create one Sacred Timeline when, in fact, there is proof that characters from past Marvel movies are confirmed to appear in the MCU as people from other realities?
This means Marvel is misguiding fans about multiverse rules.
KANG THE CONQUEROR
Another reason to suggest that the TVA is lying is that one of the three Time Keepers looked very similar to Kang the Conqueror in the video. In the comics, Kang is a major villain who uses time travel to carry out his nefarious schemes. He has often gone against the Fantastic Four and the Avengers and is a formidable threat to both. It is also worth mentioning that Ravonna Renslayer, who appears as a judge in the first episode is Kang’s love interest in the comics. So what if the TVA is a scheme created by Kang to execute his evil plan in the MCU?
No matter what explanation the show uses. Any viewer and comic book fan would guess that the TVA is not what it seems. The multiverse rules in the ‘Loki’ series could be wrong and the show might offer many twists and turns relating to the true purpose of this organization. Share your own theories about the MCU multiverse in the comments below.
