The LOKI Paradox

Namaste my fellow geeks as well as to my friends, family, and fellow knowledge seekers. Now as you all know, or at least I believe you all to be aware, there is a new show out on Disney+ called LOKI. I'm gonna start with a little recap of the MCU and then postulate from there about the direction of the show. Also, even though today is the release of episode 2, I have not yet watched it yet... so there won't be any spoilers...

As we know from Norse mythology and it's subsequent role in the MCU over the Infinity saga, LOKI is a formidable, cunning adversary. Born LOKI Laufeyson, his father Laufey ruled over the ice/frost giants of Jotunheim. LOKI was unusually small for a frost giant and was left in a temple to die, shortly after to be found and rescued by ODIN after the war between the frost giants and the Asgardians. ODIN brought LOKI back to Asgard and used his magic to make the child look like an Asgardian; adopting and raising him as a son to be brothers with Thor, his biological child. 

We know from Thor that LOKI felt burdened with glorious purpose to rule over Midgard, Asgard, and the other realms. In the sequel, we saw LOKI fake his own death and indeed show himself as a mischievous scamp. We later find out that he messed with Odin's mind, usurp the throne of Asgard, parade around in his father's clothes, commemorate statutes in his true image, but went as far as commissioning a theatrical play of his accomplishments, featuring Liam Hemsworth, Sam Neil, and fan favorite Matt Damon. This segment was good for some laughs, to be sure. 

Unfortunately, LOKI from the first Avengers (Assemble) was bound by his pursuit of glorious purpose. The Infinity stone, the tesseract, fell into the hands on Loki due to the time travel angle he figured out by smelling the cologne of Tony Stark from the future who was dressed as an agent in combat attire. Brilliant. We saw how he was teleported to Mongolia and almost immediately was met by the Time Variance Authority or TVA. LOKI was knocked silly by a time baton and apprehended into TVA custody; TVA agents releasing something unusual that was going to reset that last part of the timeline for the locals as the agents, with LOKI,  disappeared through their temporal portal. 

After the fear tactics and humiliation, he is brought into a courtroom and ruminated about himself being the victim of conspiracy at the hands of who he deemed as the real culprits in the Avengers. LOKI very casually suggests he be allowed to return to his timeline and rectify the situation by destroying the Avengers. To his shock, he is told that their deeds of time travel are allowed, but LOKI teleporting out of Avengers tower with the tesseract was unacceptable, he was a variant, and they were going to kill him... until Agent Mobius M. Mobius stepped in with a different direction to the story. We find out just after that they are in a large city like structure before Mobius gives LOKI his "This is your life" greatest hits and misses. Followed by the revelation that this variant of LOKI was needed to hunt down an even more dangerous variant of LOKI. That catches up to the end of episode 1.

I want to rewind and go over a few details of episode 1 before I reveal my theory about the show. 

1) the Skrull when LOKI first arrives in the TVA. 

2) inside the courtroom you could see 3 panels on the wall, each with a mural of different classes of TVA employees. You could see the agent enforcement group, the civil servant group, and what look like the Judges...

3) after LOKI's brief escape, a woman is seen briefly in what looks like 1950s attire with brown hair similar to Peggy Carter...

4) the fact that LOKI laughed at his own death, but cried at his adopted mother's death showed a great deal about the character of this variant. Other variants apparently weren't this remorseful...

5) LOKI calling the 3 time keepers "Space lizards". This ironic and likely could be a plot point later on, likely linked to He Who Remains, the sole survivor of the destruction of the previous universe. 

6) if you recall the short video with Miss Minutes, she described an ancient multiversal war (madness) with a short animated video that looked exactly like the home planet of Thanos, Titan. Doubt that's a coincidence. Perhaps this will be a pivotal plot point for the Eternals?

7) I have to mention Casey's box of Infinity stones. In the TVA, we're told that the magical powers of characters and Infinity stones just flat out doesn't work there. Ironically there are more green time stones than any of the other colors, leading me to wonder how many times the Sorcerer Supreme: Dr. Strange and/or the Ancient One had been pruned by the TVA? This too could explain the variant difference in the Red Skull Johan Schmidt on Vormir...

Okay, now it's time for my personal theories about what is going on in the show. 

1) I personally believe the TVA is located inside of the quantum realm, based upon evidence from Ant Man and the Wasp. Fan theories pointed to evidence of a large city existing inside the quantum realm and this could both explain the presence of the TVA and Janet Van Dyne being able to survive for nearly 30 years. This also could explain why Scott Lang was immune from the snap of the Infinity Gauntlet, as the magical powers of the Infinity stones don't work in the quantum realm.

2) The Ancient One had a talk with Professor Hulk in Endgame about the "sacred timeline" which defined for the viewers the overview that mortals of this universe have about the timeline. It is highly likely she was aware of the TVA, albeit unaware that their existence is outside and beyond the physical bounds of their current universe.

3) It is highly likely that we've already seen the first glimpses of the Multiverse in Dr. Strange as we explored the shattered dimension as well as the realm of Dormammu, the 9 realms of Thor, and the quantum universe of Ant Man and the Wasp.

4) The TVA seems clearly upset about losing agents to another variant of LOKI, meaning there are ALREADY alternate timelines in play. I've postulated about this in other blogs on the subject and my analysis is that Disney Marvel is going to write off the other Marvel projects done by other studios like FOX and SONY, to be in different timelines and that the TVA is misleading the audience into believing there is only 1 timeline in THEIR protected SACRED TIMELINE. 

5) The variant dilema. Marvel writers could very easily use this idea of variants to explain away some of the inconsistencies of the MCU such as Terrance Howard in the original portrayal of Colonel Rhodes a.k.a. War Machine, Edward Norton as the Hulk, and surely the Tobey McGuire and Andrew Garfield Spider-man variants from Sony. This also could possibly be the catalyst to bringing the extended cast of characters in from the previous studios like the X-men and the Brotherhood, Fantastic 4, Defenders, Sinister 6, Dr. Doom, etc. 

6) Another variant dilema is the pandora's box they've opened with this concept. There could likely be variants of our favorite heroes in the MCU. Quicksilver variant could have actually been Ralph Bohner or vice versa. Will we end up seeing Captain Hydra variant where Steve Rogers joined Hydra instead of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Will we see a reboot of those characters from non-canon stories like Agent Carter or the Defenders like Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Jessica Jones? Did I just stumble onto the premise for the upcoming animated Disney+ show "What if...?"? We've already seen in the trailer for "What if..?" Peggy Carter dressed up as Captain Britain with the infamous shield from Howard Stark. T'Challa as Star Lord. Marvel Zombies... Seems like those possibilities are endless.

7)Why was the time travel done by the Avengers deemed as acceptable, but LOKI jumping out of his path on the timeline was forbidden? My theory is because the entire Infinity Saga was just a big time loop, similar to the one we saw in Dr. Strange as he entrapped Dormamu into rage quitting from boredom of killing the sorcerer supreme in an infinite loop.

Steve Rogers was the time anchor for the entire time loop, starting from his time travel into the future from being frozen in ice, "Capsicle" to Tony Stark. The TVA didn't punish the Avengers because of Steve Rogers time loop that nearly always ended with LOKI making the best versions of the titular hero characters by inducing pain, misery, and suffering, devoid of the events of the subsequent movies that humbled him to being an anti-hero rather than a villain. Steve Rogers had already gone back in time, as we can clearly see the older version of his character as a pallbearer at his late wife Peggy Carter's funeral, seen in CA: Civil War. The loop was already in progress, the Avengers just didn't figure it out yet... except Steve and Bucky. Bucky knew Steve's secret because he encountered the older version of Steve at some point in the past where he was already married to Peggy Carter at that point under his alternate identity as Roger Stevens. They had 2 children together. Bucky kept his secret and in the future for Steve, the present for the rest of the Avengers, both Bucky and Steve looked very chill and Steve opted not to relay his life story for his friend Sam Wilson. Steve got to disappear and be dead to the world, as we saw in Falcon and Winter Soldier. 

When Steve left the current timeline, he likely took his time to return the stones to their proper place in the timeline due to the fact that he was already aware of the loop he was in. As it resulted for him personally to have his dream life with Peggy Carter, I doubt he really was too concerned with the idea of any kind of sacred timeline, only to pass on the legacy of Captain America to the next worthy person he could think of in Sam Wilson: a good man with a good heart. He clearly returned all the stones because the present for Sam and Buck was seamless when the older version of Steve Rogers returned with an intact shield to pass on his legacy to Sam. 

LOKI, on the other hand, obsessed with his GLORIOUS PURPOSE, sought to use the Infinity stones for a nefarious, self-serving purpose, as opposed to the Avengers who used time travel to stop the universe from being destroyed by Thanos and his dark order. The TVA snatched the variant LOKI out of the Gobi desert in Mongolia and returned a cloned version of himself back into the timestream to keep the Sacred Timeline intact, the version where LOKI was apprehended by the Avengers and taken back to Asgard to pay for his crimes. The captured variant of LOKI learned that there was no timeline where he didn't live as an antagonist or villain existing only to bring out the better versions of others like the Avengers. Mobius gives the character a bit of hope that there can be a life beyond the preset limitations set upon him by the alleged all-knowing Time Keepers. This is likely also a point of reference for the remainder of the show as this variant audibly threatened to burn down the TVA... a different, more sinister version of this character might not have the moral compass of this LOKI, i.e. the girl pointing at the image of the devil in the cathedral in the first episode. 

The existence of the variant LOKI still alive, yet replaced in his own timeline leads the viewers to question how many different LOKI variants there could be in the story. Mobius wants to understand the psychology of this variant in hopes to find a way to stop the more deadly, likely female, variant wreaking havoc on the Sacred Timeline, likely leading us back to another multiversal war between the different timeline universes. As I said before, this is a good way to bring in more characters, possibly even more cosmic characters like the Celestials, namely Galactus and his herald, the Silver Surfer.

Another point of reference for the story is the previous Disney+ show WandaVision. In the Miss Minutes video we learn that a divergent timeline branch that spawns a variant from the Sacred Timeline is called a NEXUS event. Wanda, we had learned is a NEXUS BEING, capable of rewriting reality due to her contact with the Mind Stone in the staff of LOKI, incredibly increasing her innate Scarlet Witch magic. We've already learned that the title of the next Sorcerer Supreme movie is Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Could Wanda Maximoff be the catalyst for breaking the sacred timeline and expanding into a dangerous multiversal war? Are there other Nexus beings in the current MCU or will they be introducing more in the near future?

Well, this has been fun and a lot to think about I'm sure. I thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to read my thoughts and hope this day finds you with blessings and joy as you watch the newest episode tonight. This has been the one and only Quiet Mouse.