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Do you agree with Sylvie's decision? [Loki Spoilers]
- Thread starter jman1954goat
- Start date
You can't have someone deciding the fate of everything and everyone, even if it is to keep a bazillion bogeymen behind lock and key.
Plus the Avengers will win in the end so it doesn't matter 🤷♂️
Plus the Avengers will win in the end so it doesn't matter 🤷♂️
We as viewers know that he who remains was telling the truth because we know Kang is coming in a future project. Sylvie doesn't have that headline. He reveals 3 major lies in that conversation alone. Utterly untrustworthy.
- He's telling Loki and silvi the truth about the first lie. A lie he made up aeons ago so as NOT to be an emperor, but just a hermit. Very Thanos-like. And not a lie to Loki and silvi but the TVA.
- He's telling them the truth about paving their road. There was never any lie there. Paving the road is not lying.
- The last lie, or fib, as he calls it, is not even a real lie either but a convenience, like saying the earth is round despite it being ever so so so slightly flattened at the poles. He said he knew everything that was going to happen until the end and the truth was until like..2 or 3 minutes from the end.
Kang told Loki and Silvi the truth when they met him. When you are Immortus, part of your privilege is not having to lie to others* because your power is absolute. The only ones who lie are the weak. Thanos also didn't lie for the same reason.
* You can definitely still lie to yourself tho.
Even with the added potential that he may be lying she still made the wrong choice. Plunge every multiverse into chaos and watch them all destroy each other or humanely prune a few branches here and there.
What I don't like about the writing, the viewers know WHR's warning will hold true for the sake of drama and story, but Loki and Sylvie shouldn't believe this monster and should want him to fuck off, the disconnection means I couldn't relate to their choice.
I think the best option was to rule & find some other path in that time. It's the only option that gives you more time, tbh.
I'm willing to believe they make it Tony instead
Why Reed got to catch a stray?
I'm willing to believe they make it Tony instead
well either choice has consequences for everyone. Just that keeping things as they are you perhaps aren't aware of them
Sylvie's decision made sense for her character. I was more in agreement with Loki, but I couldn't see her ruling over the timelime or reconciling with He Who Remains.
Maybe eventually, but reality survived anything up until the Kangs were born, so we're all safe until a specific time period at least. TVA could just readjust to investigate jumps from one multiverse to another, which I'm sure there's a way to detect if they can detect branches (and there'd be far fewer cross overs than branches anyways).
It wouldn't make sense for her or Loki to take on a role that involved killing countless innocents because they strayed from their predetermined path. Loki's whole thing was moving away from that and hers was killing the person who did that to her, preventing it happening to others.
So yeah it was the right decision. If there was a way to do his job and run the TVA without deleting whole realities he would have done it himself.
So yeah it was the right decision. If there was a way to do his job and run the TVA without deleting whole realities he would have done it himself.
Humanely? The dude sent his monster to eat all the other timelines. He continues to use said monster to prune his current timeline. That means he's killed countless people. Honestly, Kang would probably blush at that death count.
Like, it's amazing how people just believe this literal mass murdering dictator that has made himself God is making the best choices for everybody and only has one motive. Of course we know that's not completely true because of the missing statue.
He's a mass murderer only keeping things "secure" for a select group of people that were lucky enough to be "born" in the right timeline. He's also dictating and controlling the lives and actions of absolutely everybody. Nobody can do anything that this man doesn't agree with.
Sounds kind of familiar to me. Somebody else said it in this thread, it's like the end game of Conservatism.
Ultimate Conservatism.
I look forward to the hot takes later on when Kang is killing Avengers that "they were right and Slyvie was wrong" while conveniently ignoring that kazillions of people are now alive thanks to the multiverse being reborn.
I think she made the right decision from her perspective.
A lot of speculation is ignoring what Kang would do if they let him live. Even if he leaves the citadel he still has the knolwedge and ability to create the tech that gave him the ability to become Immortus. Killing him and stopping any of his variants from existing will not be easy.
A lot of speculation is ignoring what Kang would do if they let him live. Even if he leaves the citadel he still has the knolwedge and ability to create the tech that gave him the ability to become Immortus. Killing him and stopping any of his variants from existing will not be easy.
I think of it kind of like this:
Imagine if there was a World War 3, or hell, let's just say it's World War 2. All of these countries are fighting amongst each other. Countless amounts of people are dying, it's millions or more. One country comes to a conclusion. It's best that their country survives, even if it means all other countries no longer exist. They have the ability to make that happen, and they do. So now, only that one country exists on Earth and the people in this one country are safe. Every other country and all the people that lived in them are now gone and dead.
But, that's not all! To ensure that the other countries never come back, one person gets to completely decide the fate of every single soul that lives in that country. If any of them step out of line, they are instantly murdered.
Some of y'all are really voting for that shit?
Imagine if there was a World War 3, or hell, let's just say it's World War 2. All of these countries are fighting amongst each other. Countless amounts of people are dying, it's millions or more. One country comes to a conclusion. It's best that their country survives, even if it means all other countries no longer exist. They have the ability to make that happen, and they do. So now, only that one country exists on Earth and the people in this one country are safe. Every other country and all the people that lived in them are now gone and dead.
But, that's not all! To ensure that the other countries never come back, one person gets to completely decide the fate of every single soul that lives in that country. If any of them step out of line, they are instantly murdered.
Some of y'all are really voting for that shit?
Not exactly. As I understand it, he has erased absolutely every timeline that will ever get any Nathaniel Richards at all. Which seems to be pretty much all of them?
My impression was he made it into a single timeline/universe and that any branch from that was pruned except where necessarily, but I could be wrong. It still prevented Conquerer Kang, but it did so by limiting it to a single verse to begin with.
This is a WILD stretch.
And there's no reason not to take Kang at his word, either the TVA exists or you risk ending all life everywhere, forever.
I have to imagine that on some level HWR knew this was how things would play out. He probably knows Sylphie better than Sylphie knows Sylphie. He's been dictating and directing her whole life.
Where she was wrong was not at least listening to Loki about them getting additional information and talking to Mobius and others. She has potentially doomed ALL realities over an aggression from her childhood. I get it. I do, but that is where the true error happened.
That's not what HWR said as far as I recall. He said that a lot of people were dying, more or less. His solution was to just end all lives except the lives in his own universe. He's a selfish prick.
The best option was bailing on Immortus and going back to the tva with proof of his scheme to push a reform. You don't need to wipe entire timelines to stop one individual from becoming a time dictator when you have one enchantress and a trickster. You just need to convince the Nathaniel Richardses to leave other universes be.
Neither option is great :/ Free will is the way but I'd wanna keep Majors alive until I could find some way to stop the other Kangs
No because this is a disingenuous comparison.
Kang didn't setup the TVA to save a few million lives. He didn't even set it up to save a few billion lives. He set it up to prevent the annihilations of ALL LIFE in the entire multi-verse. Those are the stakes. Either prune timelines or let EVERYONE in the entire mutiverse, in every dimension, ever, to most likely die with no hope of life ever coming back again.
And his control of life within the timeline is unknowing to everyone involved. Everyone believes they have free will, they just don't know that they don't. And honestly the existence of free will cannot even be proven in our own world as a number of scientific studies have shown that are neurochemistry determines our decisions such that we actually do not have free will. Every decision is already determined in our brains and we are powerless to stop it. But, that's another topic.
The point is that your analogy is in no way equal to the dilemma. At its face, it's a choice between letting some life live or letting ALL LIFE die.
It's exactly what he said.
HWR:
"This was almost the end, ladies and gentleman of everything and everyone."
actually I think my analogy is spot on. I'm sure the people in my hypothetical country could come to the same conclusion. It's better that they live rather than a nuclear war that annihilates the entire human species. So, they decided that them, and only them will live, and it's for the best of the human species.
There is so much information we don't know, and you're just assuming HWR is some kind of protector, when in reality, maybe he just wanted to win. He said as much that he won. It could be as simple as that. I have no reason to believe he's completely being honest about that it would be the end of all life, and certainly these two characters wouldn't either.
Maybe HE just wanted to be the only dictator. And it worked.
No, I get it but her killing HWR is kinda pointless as he said he'll be back via reincarnation or another version of himself takes that spot anyway, and now has opened the "sacred timeline" to multiverse level threats now.
Ultimately, I agree with Sylvie. If we look at the fact that Kang had to corral all of the multiverse potentialities into one consistent vision, and yet had finite awareness of all potentialities, then it stands to reason that at some point, either another would rise to take over, or destroy. As such, Kang's efforts are at best meaningless and at worst just an opportunity to indulge in wanton slaughter in the temporary pursuit of his own vanity (regardless of how altruistic he may perceive his intent to be)..
My issue comes with the nature of the multiverse itself.
I get that each 'timeline' is not actually a variation in time within a universe but is a variation on the expression of space-time across multiverses. As such, each universe is fundamentally unique and separated from all other universes in the multiverse and Kang, the Void and the TVA exist outside of the multiverse structure completely. I assume that the variants in the TVA are typically those that are least likely to be variants across the multiverse (thus never having to purge another variation of one of their own). In my mind, the multiverse is like a stack of plates in a cupboard. All of the plates look alike but are intrinsically different. Kang ensures that the plates are functionally identical on a molecular level. But, by the difference in their nature they are prone to variation from each other, and from the influence of one who tries to bind them all too one vision. As such, the Loki in the show is and never was the Loki killed by Thanos. He was a Loki that existed in a parallel universe that up until the events of the first Avengers movie was identical to the universe of the 'MCU'. The titular Loki is thus not part of the MCU proper, but another Universe and Stark did not build a time machine, but rather a machine capable of bridging the multiverse.
This brings into question: Why did Stark not realize what had been created (or Banner) and why was it another 1,000 years before Kang came upon the same tech? And how did the infinity gauntlet work? The stones must have been taken from multiple different universes and we know from the comics (which are themselves part of this multiverse) that stones from one won't work in another. Additionally, the Sorcerer Supreme shows Banner an illustration of deviant time. Was she aware of the sacred timeline and wished to uphold it? Does Dormammu exist in each universe in a dimension void of time - or is he in a place like Kang? Avengers Endgame introduced a pretty shaky take on time travel, and now the introduction of the multiverse just seems to undermine a lot of what that set up.
My issue comes with the nature of the multiverse itself.
I get that each 'timeline' is not actually a variation in time within a universe but is a variation on the expression of space-time across multiverses. As such, each universe is fundamentally unique and separated from all other universes in the multiverse and Kang, the Void and the TVA exist outside of the multiverse structure completely. I assume that the variants in the TVA are typically those that are least likely to be variants across the multiverse (thus never having to purge another variation of one of their own). In my mind, the multiverse is like a stack of plates in a cupboard. All of the plates look alike but are intrinsically different. Kang ensures that the plates are functionally identical on a molecular level. But, by the difference in their nature they are prone to variation from each other, and from the influence of one who tries to bind them all too one vision. As such, the Loki in the show is and never was the Loki killed by Thanos. He was a Loki that existed in a parallel universe that up until the events of the first Avengers movie was identical to the universe of the 'MCU'. The titular Loki is thus not part of the MCU proper, but another Universe and Stark did not build a time machine, but rather a machine capable of bridging the multiverse.
This brings into question: Why did Stark not realize what had been created (or Banner) and why was it another 1,000 years before Kang came upon the same tech? And how did the infinity gauntlet work? The stones must have been taken from multiple different universes and we know from the comics (which are themselves part of this multiverse) that stones from one won't work in another. Additionally, the Sorcerer Supreme shows Banner an illustration of deviant time. Was she aware of the sacred timeline and wished to uphold it? Does Dormammu exist in each universe in a dimension void of time - or is he in a place like Kang? Avengers Endgame introduced a pretty shaky take on time travel, and now the introduction of the multiverse just seems to undermine a lot of what that set up.
It was a brash, emotion driven decision on her part.
Like all things of this nature, it would have been infinitely better to let cooler heads prevail. They could've take a step back and created a huge multiuniversal plan to fix the timelines forever. The 2 greatest Lokis working together could've done anything given enough time, and they would have had an infinite amount to plot and scheme.
Like all things of this nature, it would have been infinitely better to let cooler heads prevail. They could've take a step back and created a huge multiuniversal plan to fix the timelines forever. The 2 greatest Lokis working together could've done anything given enough time, and they would have had an infinite amount to plot and scheme.
He wanted to be the only dictator yet we see at the end he neither cares if he lives, dies, or someone else takes over the dictatorship? It's not an apt analogy because even nuclear war that wipes out the human species doesn't wipe out all life on Earth and doesn't wipe out all life in the entire universe and all other universes. It's not just human life we're talking about, we're talking ALL LIFE EVERYHWERE. All life in the universe. In every other universe. In every other dimension. The end of everything, forever. This is what he explicitly states is the result of a multiversal war.
Remember, Oliath is born as a result of all this extradimensional war. So you can imagine that if the war continues unchecked a number of Oliaths are born which literally eat Space and Time leading to the end of all life in all universes. So yeah, there is zero reason to believe he's bullshitting. He even states that he's been through a million difference scenarios and this is the only option that works.
Yet another thread where the poll options don't match the answers in the main post. How hard is this!?
He's apparently been doing this for time immemorial. He's basically gone crazy. And even he admits that in the end, if he dies it doesn't matter, he'll just be back anyway. There is very little at stake for him personally. He probably just got bored and decided to try something different.
Even with the reasoning you presented, it's still the exact same thing. Mass murder of everybody, so that a few can live. One man gets to decide that.I agree with you that this isn't just a human consequence, it's a consequence of absolute everything. But again, we don't know that what HWR has done is the best solution, or even the only solution. For all we know, HWR created the monster in some way by the shit he was up to.
See that's the problem when there is only one man that controls everything. He gets to set the narrative. He gets to decide what information to bring to the table. We have to assume he is telling the truth because, what else choice is there?
But in reality, maybe he's the bad guy all along. He even called himself a "conqueror". Maybe he wasn't referring to other variants, but to himself. He could very well be a Kang like figure, and, we just met what happens to a figure like that after eons of isolation due to spending eternity making sure that he and only he gets to be at the top.
Agreeing with her or not (although the more I think about it, the more I sympathize due to reasons i'll explain) because the choice in itself was so nonsense and shit to begin with. She was basically faced with two sorts of oblivions. Either kill him and fuck up the timeline, or ultimately become him but still be tied to the same puppet-like fate (yeah she'd be in "control", but considering where He-Who-Remains was, it looks like a shit job mate). At least in the context of what the show proposes.
if we want to be nitpicky, we could suggest a third option that is to take over, but then just...i dunno, kill Him at the source ? Since apparently he's the sole responsible for current fuckery. If we want to be very rational and cool minded, she was wrong. But honestly, considering what both Lokis were shown as just this utterly meaningless choice, I think killing him really can be justified and hell, at least you get something out of it
if we want to be nitpicky, we could suggest a third option that is to take over, but then just...i dunno, kill Him at the source ? Since apparently he's the sole responsible for current fuckery. If we want to be very rational and cool minded, she was wrong. But honestly, considering what both Lokis were shown as just this utterly meaningless choice, I think killing him really can be justified and hell, at least you get something out of it
I think this whole debate is dumb for many reasons, but an additional wrench in this argument that I don't think anyone is considering is that life and death don't carry the same meaning in a temporal context.
Okay, so if you assume that I normal, monogamous dude and I don't cheat on my wife, if she is the only person I have children with, then I am effectively eliminating all the various versions of reality where I have children with other women and thus make other children. Hell, even with regards to my only wife, if she and I decide to have children next year as opposed to this year, then I am eliminating the children I'd have that year from reality. And in some other timeline, I made different choices and those children exist.
The question is, if I eliminate a timeline, then are those kids being killed? Can they be killed if they were never actually born? Because in the sense of what HWR does, what we see of Loki's are remnants of destroyed realities, so they experience the loss of their universes in a traditional human sense of having had a familiarity with something and then it being gone, but that's because they are being who were in that timeline who had those things and lost them. In our world, if someone gets murdered, then the world around them, be it family or friends or even just the funeral director that has to take care of things deal with the loss.
But if they are eliminating an entire alternate timeline, no one does. Those people aren't killed because they never lived. They never existed at all. And I think if this were a smarter show, it would tackle that part of it, that these pruned timelines aren't aren't beings who get murdered. If this were a smarter show, it would bring this up since it's an interesting aspect of viewing time from a nonlinear perspective.
This is what Peaceful Kang thought, but he never considered other options. With people like the Avengers, and especially Dr. Strange around, there has to be another way than what he was doing, which is genocide.
Thanos thought he was doing the right thing but was clearly insane and self righteous and had a savior complex. This Kang is a bit different because he comes off as desperate and truly does feel like he is taking the most peaceful solution, while also being extremely level-headed and rational. He just gave up on exploring other options, which you can sympathize with to an extent, but is also clearly his biggest flaw and mistake which Sylvie wasn't having any of.
Good point, good point.
I mean, it's hard to differentiate between the two here, HWR and Thanos. Both beings that took it upon themselves to do what was "right" in their minds to save life. Even if it means the sacrifice of countless others to get there.
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So a big part of the problem, is that nobody knows how the multiverse war would have gone had that guy not won it. Even he doesn't know, because he of course stopped it. In fact, we know he has killed trillions to make sure he kept his victory, so maybe he's the worst one of the bunch. Regardless, I think there's a better solution: take the job, get in charge, and then use his beast to *only* remove versions of him from the timeline. He was the scientist who caused the whole mess, so get rid of him anytime he pops up. No need to remove entire branches of the timeline, just remove....the guy who started the war. Sure, there are going to be a huge number of timelines to keep track of, but you have an entire business entity working full time on that, one that was previously proved to be capable of watching all of existence for nexus events. If someone else shows up with that technology, just make sure you communicate to them the risks (and your ability to take them out should things go awry).
I get what you are saying. It's all just incoherent when you really think about it and I say goodluck to the writers trying to make sense of this mess, especially for the casual audience.
I will say though that at least on some level, we are supposed to symphazise with the variants that are getting sacrificed by HWR. We got to spend some time with some of them in episode 5, and we were even made to like some of them like classic Loki or Alligater Loki. All individuals that are not meant to exist with HWR's way of doing things.Nevermind our own variant Loki and even Sylphie!
I mean, you're basically just going Sylvie's emotional route of ignoring all the data present and just choosing to believe he's lying as opposed to grappling with the actual choice presented under the given facts. Sure he could be lying, but what if he's not?
I don't necessarily think a "smarter" show would engage with that line of thinking. It's basically the equivalent of if a universe is pruned but no one is there to hear it, did it actually get pruned? I think the fact that we see these people from these universes are real and suffer lost means that every pruned universe is a real loss. We could assuage our conscience by saying they never really existed in the first place, but the reality is that these people are dying. They lived and then they were wiped out. They didn't hypothetically exist. They actually existed. They were born, lived, and then had their entire existence snuffed out.
He literally states he's tried a "million" different scenarios and the TVA is the only solution he's managed to find so far that works. All other options led to the same result. And he would obviously had access to knowledge of the Avengers and Dr. Strange.
It's hard to even understand how he "gave up" looking for other options when he has access to all time and all variations of it. Like, he can apparently see the end of every timeline. So, is it even possible for him to keep "trying?" What does an "attempt" look like when you have access to all the data there can be? The only way it could make sense is that each new branching timeline is unique, not something he's previously seen. Thus, every new branch is an attempt to implement a new result. In this way, there are an infinite amount of times Kang could attempt a new solution.
But, after millions of years of witnessing the same result with each branch, he just got tired and gave up. That's the only way you could say there is hope. Because otherwise all data to determine a solution is already present and unchanging. And Kang has tried a million different solutions over countless "years" and found nothing but the TVA.
Kang is a god in a sense of the word. Free will is what he dictates and no one knows any different. It's layers and layers of debate on different topics, but at it's core it's basically: Kill me and you unleash mass chaos spread across time and space or take over and keep order.
It's a comic dude. The sacred timeline even had half the universe wiped out at one point, because it's less a threat than other Kangs showing up.
