Loki (2021)

[Talakeal]

I think we can all be confident in saying that the series decided partway through that it was bored of its own premise and is quietly ignoring it.

Likely giving the MCU TV series' a three for three record on interesting starts that fall to bits in the back half.

Absolutely agree here.

It doesn't bother me that much. The petty thing that DOES bother me is

Spoiler

Show

Cool Trailer moments being used as Throwaway Gags.

The trailers had "Loki was DB Cooper" and "Loki works for the Time Cops", kind of promising "Hey, at some point in his work with the Time Cops, Loki is going to need to be DB Cooper! That's Cool! I can't wait to see how that comes about!"

Instead we got a non-sequitur flashback of "Loki made a bet with Thor and was DB Cooper", which was fun I guess?

President Loki was a similar thing. The trailer sets it up as this cool moment, and dangles the bait of seeing how that situation came about.

And so much more agree here; it really does seem like they sold us a different premise than they delivered.

Maybe if it had been a full length season instead of six episodes we could have had all the wacky time travel shenanigans as the filler episodes while the meta-plot was slowly unfolding in the background, but as is, it really feels like they got bored with their own show really quick and just filmed some stuff that made for good trailer fodder.

[Psyren]

I do have to wonder about the efficacy of a melee attack that transports your opponent so that maybe something else will kill it for you. Maybe just stab the person instead?

Well... my guess is that they prune quite a lot of beings, including ones for whom stabbing is barely an inconvenience or even reversible. Thor himself for instance jokes about Loki stabbing him numerous times.

This is not to say that there aren't variants for whom stabbing would be an effective means of disposal but this is a Celestial Bureaucracy we're talking about, of course they wanted a one-size-fits-all execution method.

Ah yes, that conversation sure is rolling.

If like GS you don't see the difference between "millennia-old god might have a different form for some unspecified amount of time before the main events of his life" and "ha, they didn't care he has no thumbs until he ate a cat! Plot hole!" then I don't know what else to offer either of you, save perhaps derisive laughter.

[Zalabim]

So if we have three moments, the "Nexus Event" (When the TVA is alerted), the Divergence Event (Where things actually diverge) and the Intervention (Where the TVA agents show up). Those three events can be different, with the Intervention occuring at any point after the Divergence, but before the Nexus.

If you define "nexus event" as the moment the TVA is alerted, then intervention can happen any time after the nexus event up until the redline, at which point the timeline is so something (I'm gonna go with "substantially on a trajectory that does not include the eventual creation of the TVA") that they can no longer prune it. So I'd call the redline the "divergence event." It is stated in show that the TVA must respond after the nexus event. This is consistent with the time travel in Endgame, and prevents them from causing paradoxes by preventing nexus events that no longer happen.

Paradox: If you go back to before the nexus event and prevent the nexus event from happening, then you must be in the correct timeline and not the diverging timeline. In order to get into the diverging timeline, you have to either arrive after the divergence starts, or otherwise allow the divergence to happen. Once you're in the diverging timeline, you can take steps to bring it back on course, or in this case send it to the end of time so it doesn't evolve into an undesirable eventuality.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, it is absurd. Plus, it looks like reset areas and pruned variants all end up in the same place, so why even bother capturing the latter?

To find out if they're suitable to brainwash as agents.

The "trial" isn't a trial, it's a job interview.

If it's inconvenient to capture people they just don't bother, as seen when they drop an entire warship with its crew still on it.

See, that's where you lose me. There's absolutely no reason that Loki needs to be "shocked to the core of his being" for the show to be good or consistent. Even if it were true, there's absolutely no reason that the Sacred Timeline stuff has to be true for it to happen. We're gearing up to reveal the man behind the curtain in the next episode, and there's no reason their motivation can't be compelling just because it isn't the same one we were given in the first episode.

Of course there is. That's literally how drama works. The characters have to care about the revealed information. Whatever we find out about the being behind the curtain next week, Loki has to care about it, it has to change his perspective and actions from that point onwards. If he doesn't care, why should the audience who experience the narrative through our sympathy with him care about it? If it doesn't change his actions from that point on what was the point of the mystery?

Unfortunately, the foundations have crumbled.

The first couple of episodes presented the TVA as thorough (being late for work in contradiction to the sacred timeline makes you a variant), uncompromising (they prune the guy at the start just for his objections), and from the perspective of everything we know in the MCU all-powerful (these guys use infinity stones as paperweights), and they are in service to an exceptionally rigid version of one invariant timeline. So rigid they call it sacred. Apparently in service to some kind of greater good.

And literally none of that means **** any more, the "sacred" timeline is apparently just "acceptable within a ludicrously broad range", so the TVA's actions in service to it can't make any kind of sense the audience can grasp onto, and so whatever is revealed as the real and presumably sinister reason they're actually doing the only reaction to it is going to be no more than "that's nice dear, now **** off us Lokis wanna bang".

There's no sense in which Loki's personal rebellion against being pruned can meaningfully turn into a cause greater than himself now, because the only reason he's an unacceptable variant now is a cosmic joke at his expense, what's "supposed" to happen is meaningless and random, because the alligator would have been fine if it had eaten the right cat, and Sylvie just played with dolls wrong, they were within the broadly acceptable ranges of the "just kinda neat I guess" timeline.

[Zalabim]

I do have to wonder about the efficacy of a melee attack that transports your opponent so that maybe something else will kill it for you. Maybe just stab the person instead?

To use an example, in Nox, death ray cost 100 mana and has to be aimed directly at the target. It does a fixed amount of damage. Teleport target to marker 1 (marker 1 is full of lava) cost only 10 mana, targets automatically, and then the lava does an unlimited amount of damage. Other spellcasters can quickly escape, but they're still usually surprised enough that they don't.

Ah yes, that conversation sure is rolling.

Yeah, it is absurd. Plus, it looks like reset areas and pruned variants all end up in the same place, so why even bother capturing the latter?

All of the TVA agents are variants, so there needn't be any more point to capturing the variant alive than bringing in recruits sometimes. Maybe recruiting is the actual point of the whole thing, and Loki and Sylvie are in line to be the other two Time Keepers, alongside whoever started the TVA.

If like GS you don't see the difference between "millennia-old god might have a different form for some unspecified amount of time before the main events of his life" and "ha, they didn't care he has no thumbs until he ate a cat! Plot hole!" then I don't know what else to offer either of you, save perhaps derisive laughter.

If Loki's purpose is as Mobius described - bring misery, death, destruction, and chaos so that others can become better - then he hardly needs opposable thumbs at all. Since he never wins, it doesn't matter how he challenges the heroes, only that he does challenge the heroes. Maybe in that universe, the Battle for New York was on track to be the Avengers versus Megagator.

Now I have a proposal: "The loki-gator ate the wrong cat" story is actually a downplayed version of Loki taking the Tesseract from the Flerken from Captain Marvel.

[GloatingSwine]

If Loki's purpose is as Mobius described - bring misery, death, destruction, and chaos so that others can become better - then he hardly needs opposable thumbs at all. Since he never wins, it doesn't matter how he challenges the heroes, only that he does challenge the heroes. Maybe in that universe, the Battle for New York was on track to be the Avengers versus Megagator.

The whole point of the Sacred Timeline is that there are no parallel universes. That's the single overriding goal of the TVA, to prevent specifically that.

I mean I guess I can forgive you for forgetting the entire premise of the antagonists, because the show has....

[Zalabim]

The whole point of the Sacred Timeline is that there are no parallel universes. That's the single overriding goal of the TVA, to prevent specifically that.

I mean I guess I can forgive you for forgetting the entire premise of the antagonists, because the show has....

That is the single fact that you are most misunderstanding. There are only parallel timelines. That is what has been shown in every explanation. Just look at how the Time Keepers are portrayed by Miss Minutes in episode 1. The different strands all run together. The sacred timeline twists, bends, and flows like a river. It has eddies or gaps in the middle, and hazy spots on the edges, like water splashing on the riverbank. When a line starts to get too not parallel, it gets pruned. We know now they aren't diverting it back into the main timeline. They're just cutting it off. They can cut off "bad" timelines because it isn't just one single universe that they're editing until it's right. It's a multitude of parallel universes and they only have to intervene when they're wrong. Normally, that is really wrong. There is some amount of wiggle room in the sacred timeline. We even have this reinforced in episode 4, 8 minutes 35 seconds in, when Mobius comments that the magnified nexus threshold they're using "should be setting off alarms if someone steps on the wrong leaf," meaning they have a adjustable range of allowed variance energy.

[Millstone85]

If like GS you don't see the difference between "millennia-old god might have a different form for some unspecified amount of time before the main events of his life" and "ha, they didn't care he has no thumbs until he ate a cat! Plot hole!" then I don't know what else to offer either of you, save perhaps derisive laughter.

It is the difference between post-BoNY Loki saying something like "Oh yeah, those were relaxing days" and him being utterly astonished by the existence of gator Loki.

Now, yes, through the awesome powers of imagination and doing the writers' job for them, we could find a reason why Loki wouldn't remember ever becoming an alligator. Maybe frost giants don't have the memory to match their long life span. Or maybe Sif once slapped Loki so hard he got partial amnesia. Etc.

Edit: Ah right, we just want the timelines to match during the "main events". Nevermind then.

[Rakaydos]

The whole point of the Sacred Timeline is that there are no parallel universes. That's the single overriding goal of the TVA, to prevent specifically that.

I mean I guess I can forgive you for forgetting the entire premise of the antagonists, because the show has....

{Scrubbed}

The propaganda video we see of the timekeepers creating the sacred timeline, shows them weaving different threads into a single cable.

The sacred timeline is not a universe. The sacred timeline is a set of events that all universes must follow. It doesn't matter if it's frog Thor and gator Loki doing those events, not anymore than it matters that rocket raccoon is a goddamn raccoon. All that matters is that the broad strokes lead the universe along the timeline as plotted.

We've been trying to explain this to you since episode 2. {Scrubbed}

[GloatingSwine]

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

The propaganda video we see of the timekeepers creating the sacred timeline, shows them weaving different threads into a single cable.

The sacred timeline is not a universe. The sacred timeline is a set of events that all universes must follow. It doesn't matter if it's frog Thor and gator Loki doing those events, not anymore than it matters that rocket raccoon is a goddamn raccoon. All that matters is that the broad strokes lead the universe along the timeline as plotted.

We've been trying to explain this to you since episode 2.{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

The TVA's internal justification for its actions is specifically the prevention of a multiverse. It's not the management of a multiverse along general guidelines, it's the prevention of a multiverse.

Even if that's ultimately not true, that's what they believe to be true and so if their actions are not actually doing that then why should we take them seriously at all? They believe they're preventing a multiverse but can't for some reason notice that they're looking at one all the time?

And if we can't take the TVA seriously, why do we take Loki's struggle against them seriously?

I've understood the show just fine {Scrubbed} I'm just not cutting it any slack when it decides not to follow up on its own premise (or events, apparently Sylvie "bombing the sacred timeline" and creating dozens of branches at the end of episode 2 got tidied up off screen with no effort, because they're all gone now, guess the TVA could have just ignored her all along eh?) or doing the work of writing it in my own head, I'm expecting the writers to do that.

[Rakaydos]

The TVA's internal justification for its actions is specifically the prevention of a multiverse. It's not the management of a multiverse along general guidelines, it's the prevention of a multiverse.

Clearly the TVA does not consider universes following the sacred timeline to be a multiverse. Note that the propaganda video did not throw the M-word around until things were completely out of control.

[GloatingSwine]

Clearly the TVA does not consider universes following the sacred timeline to be a multiverse. Note that the propaganda video did not throw the M-word around until things were completely out of control.

Right, but there are clearly also no standards for what something can be whilst "following the sacred timeline".

Remember, Sylvie is an invalid variant just for existing.

Whereas all the other Loki variants, despite being just as different, and all clearly having done very different things because some of them have literally different sets of limbs and so absolutely every action they must have taken in their entire lives having been different, are not.

And without that, without something that preserves understandable conflict and character motivations on both sides, the audience has no reason to care.

When we find out who's really behind it and what they really wanted next week, I expect it to change nothing and feel like nothing, because I already can't be bothered to care about what one side in the conflict is doing because it's so random and nonsensical.

[Millstone85]

The propaganda video we see of the timekeepers creating the sacred timeline, shows them weaving different threads into a single cable.

Hmm, so maybe I only just now got it.

What has been escaping me is that, by 2012 and likely eons to come, the Sacred Timeline is still going through the weaving process.

The ancient multiverse hasn't collapsed to be replaced by a single timeline or a smaller set of timelines. The original timelines are still here, i.e. the current timelines all have the multiversal war in their distant past. But the events within them are being made to converge toward identical futures, for example by attributing the role of "Loki, God of Mischief" to an individual within each of them. All the world's a stage, indeed.

If that was obvious, I am sorry.

[Rakaydos]

Right, but there are clearly also no standards for what something can be whilst "following the sacred timeline".

Remember, Sylvie is an invalid variant just for existing.

Whereas all the other Loki variants, despite being just as different, and all clearly having done very different things because some of them have literally different sets of limbs and so absolutely every action they must have taken in their entire lives having been different, are not.

And without that, without something that preserves understandable conflict and character motivations on both sides, the audience has no reason to care.

When we find out who's really behind it and what they really wanted next week, I expect it to change nothing and feel like nothing, because I already can't be bothered to care about what one side in the conflict is doing because it's so random and nonsensical.

There's a difference between the person who brought sylvie in not knowing what her nexus was, and "being an invalid variant just for existing." {Scrubbed}

And if you cant take being tricked in the first episode, a show about Loki might not be for you. Though is sounds like the whole marvel TV lineup hasnt been to your taste either. Perhaps you should stop giving them money?

[GloatingSwine]

There's a difference between the person who brought sylvie in not knowing what her nexus was, and "being an invalid variant just for existing." {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

And if you cant take being tricked in the first episode, a show about Loki might not be for you. Though is sounds like the whole marvel TV lineup hasnt been to your taste either. Perhaps you should stop giving them money?

I can handle being tricked (though I am somewhat tired of being condescended to by you...), but the trick has to make the show more interesting not less.

[Rakaydos]

Hmm, so maybe I only just now got it.

What has been escaping me is that, by 2012 and likely eons to come, the Sacred Timeline is still going through the weaving process.

The ancient multiverse hasn't collapsed to be replaced by a single timeline or a smaller set of timelines. The original timelines are still here, i.e. the current timelines all have the multiversal war in their distant past. But the events within them are being made to converge toward identical futures, for example by attributing the role of "Loki, God of Mischief" to an individual within each of them. All the world's a stage, indeed.

If that was obvious, I am sorry.

Bearing in mind that we do get that from a propaganda video, which is going to be slanted in the timekeepers TVA's favor. There could be wrongs by the TVA that could be covered up, but so far, the show has supported that view.

[Rakaydos]

(though I am somewhat tired of being condescended to by you...)

{Scrubbed}

[Kareeah_Indaga]

To find out if they're suitable to brainwash as agents.

The "trial" isn't a trial, it's a job interview.

If it's inconvenient to capture people they just don't bother, as seen when they drop an entire warship with its crew still on it.

I like this theory; that had been bothering me too.

[Anteros]

To find out if they're suitable to brainwash as agents.

The "trial" isn't a trial, it's a job interview.

If it's inconvenient to capture people they just don't bother, as seen when they drop an entire warship with its crew still on it.



Of course there is. That's literally how drama works. The characters have to care about the revealed information. Whatever we find out about the being behind the curtain next week, Loki has to care about it, it has to change his perspective and actions from that point onwards. If he doesn't care, why should the audience who experience the narrative through our sympathy with him care about it? If it doesn't change his actions from that point on what was the point of the mystery?

Unfortunately, the foundations have crumbled.

The first couple of episodes presented the TVA as thorough (being late for work in contradiction to the sacred timeline makes you a variant), uncompromising (they prune the guy at the start just for his objections), and from the perspective of everything we know in the MCU all-powerful (these guys use infinity stones as paperweights), and they are in service to an exceptionally rigid version of one invariant timeline. So rigid they call it sacred. Apparently in service to some kind of greater good.

And literally none of that means **** any more, the "sacred" timeline is apparently just "acceptable within a ludicrously broad range", so the TVA's actions in service to it can't make any kind of sense the audience can grasp onto, and so whatever is revealed as the real and presumably sinister reason they're actually doing the only reaction to it is going to be no more than "that's nice dear, now **** off us Lokis wanna bang".

There's no sense in which Loki's personal rebellion against being pruned can meaningfully turn into a cause greater than himself now, because the only reason he's an unacceptable variant now is a cosmic joke at his expense, what's "supposed" to happen is meaningless and random, because the alligator would have been fine if it had eaten the right cat, and Sylvie just played with dolls wrong, they were within the broadly acceptable ranges of the "just kinda neat I guess" timeline.

It's really baffling to me that you think Loki would care any less about the person trying to murder him if some random exposition about a Sacred Timeline wasn't true. Loki doesn't give a **** about any of that. It's literally never been any part of his motivation at any point in the show. You're the one that's hung up on it, not the characters.

The whole point of the Sacred Timeline is that there are no parallel universes. That's the single overriding goal of the TVA, to prevent specifically that.

I mean I guess I can forgive you for forgetting the entire premise of the antagonists, because the show has....

No one has forgotten anything. {Scrubbed} You're so obsessed with this sacred timeline thing that at this point I'm starting to wonder if you worked for the TVA yourself.

[DigoDragon]

Spoiler: Mobius

Show

That could be very gtrippy. He sneaks back to his office only to find the next, freshly brainwashed Mobius already there to start working.

That would be the perfect point for a double Owen Wilson "Wow".

If you're into that kind of premise, I recommend the movie "Moon" if you haven't seen it already. I found it very interesting.

Speaking off, kinda surprised that mass-bombing of the sacred timeline didn't really go anywhere. what was even the point of that? just to get the TVA agents out of the TVA? Really thought we were going somewhere with that.

Yeah, I believe it was just a diversion so Sylvie can get into the TVA with the fewest agents there to stop her.

[GloatingSwine]

It's really baffling to me that you think Loki would care any less about the person trying to murder him if some random exposition about a Sacred Timeline wasn't true. Loki doesn't give a **** about any of that. It's literally never been any part of his motivation at any point in the show. You're the one that's hung up on it, not the characters.

What I'm saying is that for a dramatically interesting mystery built around what the TVA is "really about", he should. Because if the characters don't care about seeing the mystery revealed, why should the audience?

This is the same thin JJ Abrams always does. Sets up mysteries the characters have no reason to care about.

No one has forgotten anything. {Scrub the post, scrub the quote} You're so obsessed with this sacred timeline thing that at this point I'm starting to wonder if you worked for the TVA yourself.

But that's the thing. I don't trust the writers to come up with something that makes that lie interesting. Because they've already demonstrated that they'll rapidly jettison major plot points when they get distracted by something else (Sylvie bombing the timeline, apparently significant with how it was treated whilst it was happening and it being the stakes for the first two episodes, did nothing, changed nothing, never got mentioned ever again but weren't Sylvie and Loki cute together in episode 3? That's the plot now!).

The show lying to the audience requires intent to resolve the lie in an interesting way later. I don't see that coming.

Yeah, I believe it was just a diversion so Sylvie can get into the TVA with the fewest agents there to stop her.

The TVA can time travel, why wouldn't they return to the TVA at the same instant they left it?

[Millstone85]

The TVA can time travel, why wouldn't they return to the TVA at the same instant they left it?

I think that "time works differently in the TVA" was meant to shut down any idea of applying time travel to the TVA itself.

What's more, I wouldn't be surprised if Sylvie and Ravonna had somehow experienced the exact same amount of time between the former's escape and recapture, despite both having done a lot of time travel.

[Rakaydos]

Bearing in mind that between "Sylvie bombs the timeline" and "We found the variants hiding in an apocalipse!" Sylvie got half a nights sleep on a train, and the two of them hiked the other half the night to try and catch a shuttle off the planet.

Thats a lot of time for the TVA to deal with the timeline situation, get it done, and move back to the long term mission, finding the perpetrator.

[Rakaydos]

What's more, I wouldn't be surprised if Sylvie and Ravonna had somehow experienced the exact same amount of time between the former's escape and recapture, despite both having done a lot of time travel.

there's a more technical (sounding) explanation for this in an early episode- new timelines have to be joined in "real time", presumably to avoid splintering the timeline further.

[Starbuck_II]

If Loki's purpose is as Mobius described - bring misery, death, destruction, and chaos so that others can become better - then he hardly needs opposable thumbs at all. Since he never wins, it doesn't matter how he challenges the heroes, only that he does challenge the heroes. Maybe in that universe, the Battle for New York was on track to be the Avengers versus Megagator.

Now I have a proposal: "The loki-gator ate the wrong cat" story is actually a downplayed version of Loki taking the Tesseract from the Flerken from Captain Marvel.

Oh, snap, I forgot they had that alien cat in Captain Marvel that ate the Tesseract.

[Rodin]

On Sylvie getting purged "just for existing" - I think we've already established in this thread what the reason was. She was playing out heroic fantasies, which indicates a fundamental change in her nature from what it's supposed to be. In other words, she had made the decision (consciously or subconsciously) to not be the back-stabbing Loki from the other timelines. This meant that from that point she could no longer fulfill her role in her timeline and the TVA got alerted.

The evidence for this is Old/Classic Loki. He didn't get pruned when he left his planet, he got pruned when he decided to leave the planet. His thinking changed, ergo the TVA was alerted.

[Rakaydos]

Oh, snap, I forgot they had that alien cat in Captain Marvel that ate the Tesseract.

...and lokigator ate THAT?

[The Glyphstone]

It would certainly qualify as a nexus event.

[Keltest]

On Sylvie getting purged "just for existing" - I think we've already established in this thread what the reason was. She was playing out heroic fantasies, which indicates a fundamental change in her nature from what it's supposed to be. In other words, she had made the decision (consciously or subconsciously) to not be the back-stabbing Loki from the other timelines. This meant that from that point she could no longer fulfill her role in her timeline and the TVA got alerted.

The evidence for this is Old/Classic Loki. He didn't get pruned when he left his planet, he got pruned when he decided to leave the planet. His thinking changed, ergo the TVA was alerted.

Ehhh... I dont know about that. Loki in Thor had aspirations of heroism as well. Its just that as a trickster, what that meant to him was different. His original goal was to prove himself a worthy king by eliminating the frost giants, remember?

[Serenity]

1) If you can't accept explanations of Gator Loki having been transformed into an alligator, or has magic, how about the possibility that he just matured *in* the void after being pruned?

2) The fact that the actions of the TVA are almost certainly someone's arbitrary, petty power trip being propagandized as 'glorious purpose' are, in fact, *exactly* what makes it dramatic for Loki to be standing against them.

3) Sylvie was pretty explicitly *not* a Variant for 'just existing'. Re slayer doesn't remember why Sylvie was taken, and if it was the fact that she's not Tom Hiddleston, that would have been pretty trivially obvious.