Loki (2021)

[GloatingSwine]

they're only alerted to nexus events though. they don't know what's happening everywhere at all times, they only know when something goes wrong that might end up creating a parallels universe.

But they do. Because they are watching time from the outside. It doesn't matter when a nexus event occurs relative to them getting off their asses to do something about it, they can arrive exactly at the nexus event.

Consider the Time Heist in Endgame. those interactions with the Avengers in the Past clearly created or happened in alternate realities, as they did NOT happen in the actual past of the movies. but because everything was put back right where it belonged and nothing major changed, it's all still on course.

So in "Our" timeline Tony's dad never talked to his grown-up son in what was it, Nevada? And in the timeline where Tony stole the Tesseract, he did. But nothing major changed from that event. Stark Sr. will still die, Thanos will still get the stone, and red skull will still be teleported away. so it gets to keep on running, even though it's clearly not the same as the one we've come from.

But of course they did happen. They're part of the sacred timeline, they were always meant to happen. They were off screen in the original versions we saw, but they always happened.

It doesn't matter if you walk to the store or skip to the store, so long as you show up at the store

Unless it does, because now nexus events are random nonsense and nobody can say what is or isn't one because Loki can be an alligator and that isn't a nexus event at all, but playing with dolls wrong is for Sylvie.

Which means that no plan based on "preserving the sacred timeline" is coherent any more no matter its goal, because clearly nothing matters a damn about the contents of the timeline.