Marvel Studios' Loki |OT| See You Soon (All of Season 1 is on Disney+)

[voodoo]

I've been catching up with my podcasts, and I don't think anyone has posted this yet, but here's a great interview with the director Kate Herron, and composer Natalie Holt for the show Loki:

Episode 256: Kate Herron & Natalie Holt On The Music Of Loki (BIG SPOILERS ALERT!!!)

Our latest guests on Soundtracking are a couple of young ladies who wowed Kevin Feige and his team at Marvel to collaborate on the studio’s latest offering on Disney+. No mean feat, given the…

edithbowman.com

Our latest guests on Soundtracking are a couple of young ladies who wowed Kevin Feige and his team at Marvel to collaborate on the studio's latest offering on Disney+. No mean feat, given the history of the franchise, and we couldn't be happier for them that they smashed it out of the park.

Director Kate Herron and composer Natalie Holt combined to magnificent effect on Loki, the mind-bending take on the Norse god of mischief, as played by recent guest on this podcast, Tom Hiddleston.

We talk Easter eggs, the theremin, Tom's pissed singing and much, much more in this thoroughly enjoyable conversation

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[Cuburger]

I don't know why I haven't ever seen this until now, especially after the two actors actually worked together on Loki.



It's essentially Mobius as a Loki variant.

 

[The Artisan]

When Loki asked "what about the Avengers" and he got a BS answer, that tells us all we need to know about why Thanos 2014 didn't get pruned. Everyone at the TVA was brainwashed and maintained their conviction even in the face of rock solid counter arguments and conflicting evidence.

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Yup. I can agree with this as well, especially the bolded. I still can't say the show's presentation's of the TVA didn't frustrate me, but the lack of clarity can definitely be seen as showing how "corrupt" they are at what they claim to do as the official management of time and timelines.

I appreciate you taking the time to level with me throughout this discussion, and I didn't mean to frustrate you or anyone else conversing about all this. I think you have been respectful about disagreeing too.

On the topic of what it means to prune a branched reality My take is this: once a branch is created, what was once a single reality is now two distict realities filled with two distinct populations. For example, there's an entire reality full of people who share an existence with Loki A who got arrested in 2012. And there's an entire reality full of people who share an existence with Loki B who escaped with the tesseract. These populations are largely identical, but are distinct in that they occupy distinct planes of existance. Left to their own devices, the branch could grow and Loki B population could have theoretically lived on to discover the multiverse and interact with population A.

Regardless of the details of how reset charges work, the outcome is that population B is no more. It's still a reality worth of people who did exist, but are no longer within multiverse. optimistic fans say Pop. B's existence prior to the point of divergence folds onto the parent reality, like nothing ever happened. Pessimistic people say the branch gets annihilated at the void. Ultimately it would be nice to have clarification, but its all the same at the macro level that our characters are observing from.

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Loki A is basically main MCU Loki who died at the hands of Thanos. Loki B is protagonist Loki of this show. I don't think B's population went kaput, what I've honestly believed is that because of Endgame onward, B has just become a full on alternate universe, but parallel to A. The events there will be different with no Loki and the tesseract present, and whatever else changed from the main MCU timeline with the Avengers meddling in this branch.

 

[Timbuktu]

I haven't followed this thread lately, but it occurred to me recent that I would really like Antman to get into the TVA/multiverse business because I want to see Paul Rudd and Michael Peña work with Owen Wilson and Tom Hiddleston.

 

[Trup1aya]

Yup. I can agree with this as well, especially the bolded. I still can't say the show's presentation's of the TVA didn't frustrate me, but the lack of clarity can definitely be seen as showing how "corrupt" they are at what they claim to do as the official management of time and timelines.

I appreciate you taking the time to level with me throughout this discussion, and I didn't mean to frustrate you or anyone else conversing about all this. I think you have been respectful about disagreeing too.

Loki A is basically main MCU Loki who died at the hands of Thanos. Loki B is protagonist Loki of this show. I don't think B's population went kaput, what I've honestly believed is that because of Endgame onward, B has just become a full on alternate universe, but parallel to A. The events there will be different with no Loki and the tesseract present, and whatever else changed from the main MCU timeline with the Avengers meddling in this branch.

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I'd say B was a full on alternate universe the moment the Avengers arrived, creating the branch.

Even before Loki B escapes, universe B was intrinsically different:

1)Captain America B got beat up by a future version of himself.
2) Hydra believes that Cap is one of them..
3)The Ancient One B learned things about Strange's future that TAO A wouldn't have been able to forsee.


The B universe was already shaping up to be very different from A. But when Loki B escaped with the tesseract, the path of the future of universe B became so deviant that the TVA took notice. In their eyes, this meant the universe needed a reset charge. Miss Minutes first suggested that they would just "reset it"... revert universe B back to as Loki B didn't escape, and put the Loki B variant back on the right path. But we later learn that is not how the reset charges work or prune sticks actually work.

 

[RadzPrower]

I'd say B was a full on alternate universe the moment the Avengers arrived, creating the branch.

Even before Loki B escapes, universe B was intrinsically different:

1)Captain America B got beat up by a future version of himself.
2) Hydra believes that Cap is one of them..
3)The Ancient One B learned things about Strange's future that TAO A wouldn't have been able to forsee.


The B universe was already shaping up to be very different from A. But when Loki B escaped with the tesseract, the path of the future of universe B became so deviant that the TVA took notice. In their eyes, this meant the universe needed a reset charge. Miss Minutes first suggested that they would just "reset it"... revert universe B back to as Loki B didn't escape, and put the Loki B variant back on the right path. But we later learn that is not how the reset charges work or prune sticks actually work.

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By even appearing on the moon completely without seeing or interfering with anyone, you'd still be creating a parallel timeline. Due to the lack of impact, that parallel timeline would likely collapse into a single waveform after you left, but for that period of time there would have to be two timelines: one with nobody on the moon and one with you on the moon.

Even with that example though, you run the risk of butterfly effects. Say future visitors to the moon notice that there's some footprints that aren't from the Apollo missions. That's something unassuming that could have long-term repercussions.

 

[Trup1aya]

By even appearing on the moon completely without seeing or interfering with anyone, you'd still be creating a parallel timeline. Due to the lack of impact, that parallel timeline would likely collapse into a single waveform after you left, but for that period of time there would have to be two timelines: one with nobody on the moon and one with you on the moon.

Even with that example though, you run the risk of butterfly effects. Say future visitors to the moon notice that there's some footprints that aren't from the Apollo missions. That's something unassuming that could have long-term repercussions.

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What you believe would "collapse into a parallel waveform" I believe would just exist perpetually as a nearly identical universe that the TVA doesn't care about.

Like if some time traveler left footprints on the moon, the TVA wouldn't take interest until someone came along later and discovered them... if that discovery would lead to undesirable variance. Similar to how they didn't take interest in old man Loki when he escaped Thanos... only when he tried to return to society.

 

[RadzPrower]

What you believe would "collapse into a parallel waveform" I believe would just exist perpetually as a nearly identical universe that the TVA doesn't care about.

Like if some time traveler left footprints on the moon, the TVA wouldn't take interest until someone came along later and discovered them... if that discovery would lead to undesirable variance. Similar to how they didn't take interest in old man Loki when he escaped Thanos... only when he tried to return to society.

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Yeah, that wasn't directly related to Loki and the TVA, but just a general time travel mechanics thing. My own personal take on time travel mechanics from a narrative perspective is that (unless stated otherwise by the story itself), most changes to the timeline will eventually end up back at the same place as all other timelines and at that point they reintegrate as they are identical. On a universal scale, you could say that the heat death of the universe would be a point where all timelines end up in essentially the same state as an example. For other changes, the scale could be much shorter than that, but you get the picture.

This is largely a narrative outlook though because it allows for constraining the scope of the multiverse. It means that there's not hundreds of thousands of identical timelines where the only difference is what I decided to have for breakfast. Most days, my breakfast makes zero difference in the outcome of events, so it's an irrelevant point in time that could almost be considered in a state of quantum flux when looked at in the broader picture. It's both answers at the same time and neither.

As far as the TVA is concerned, unless the footprints left on the moon actually changed the course of history, how the timelines react in terms of their long-term viability would actually make a difference. If they simply coalesce as I posit, it's essentially a self-pruning timeline and there's no issue there. If however, it runs in perpetuity, the fact that it's an exactly identical timeline to the original means that everything is effectively doubled in the multiverse and that means that eventually those two timelines will collide as their future time travel and/or multiversal interactions would result in both timelines interfering in the same events at the same time. The reality is that certain alternate timelines are actually MORE stable and safe in terms of the Sacred Timeline than exact copies are. Those differences are what sets them on a path that does NOT lead to HWR or a potentially worse Kang variant.

 

[Trup1aya]

Yeah, that wasn't directly related to Loki and the TVA, but just a general time travel mechanics thing. My own personal take on time travel mechanics from a narrative perspective is that (unless stated otherwise by the story itself), most changes to the timeline will eventually end up back at the same place as all other timelines and at that point they reintegrate as they are identical. On a universal scale, you could say that the heat death of the universe would be a point where all timelines end up in essentially the same state as an example. For other changes, the scale could be much shorter than that, but you get the picture.

This is largely a narrative outlook though because it allows for constraining the scope of the multiverse. It means that there's not hundreds of thousands of identical timelines where the only difference is what I decided to have for breakfast. Most days, my breakfast makes zero difference in the outcome of events, so it's an irrelevant point in time that could almost be considered in a state of quantum flux when looked at in the broader picture. It's both answers at the same time and neither.

As far as the TVA is concerned, unless the footprints left on the moon actually changed the course of history, how the timelines react in terms of their long-term viability would actually make a difference. If they simply coalesce as I posit, it's essentially a self-pruning timeline and there's no issue there. If however, it runs in perpetuity, the fact that it's an exactly identical timeline to the original means that everything is effectively doubled in the multiverse and that means that eventually those two timelines will collide as their future time travel and/or multiversal interactions would result in both timelines interfering in the same events at the same time. The reality is that certain alternate timelines are actually MORE stable and safe in terms of the Sacred Timeline than exact copies are. Those differences are what sets them on a path that does NOT lead to HWR or a potentially worse Kang variant.

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yeah I fully understand your position and I think it works just fine.

I'm of the position that there are, naturally, infinite universes, stacked on top of each other- the differences between one universe and the next are so minor that they can functionally be viewed as being the same universe- but since infinity is, infinite, if you had a macro view, you'd see some wild variations across the spectrum. This is why we can have so many different Loki's that live vastly different lives for thousands of years before getting pruned.

HWR was disrupting the natural order by only allowing subsets of these infinite universes to persist- selectively pruning them so that the don't branch to the point the spectrum is complete- because that would mean every possibility would actually occur, allowing his time traveling variants to exist.

so while your theory avoids the multiple universes that only differ by what you had for breakfast, I embrace the breakfast-verse… I just think it is so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that the TVA wouldn't care about it. Ultimately I think the end result of either theory is functionally the same. There are only a handful of universes worth diving into.

 

[Tathanen]

Yes, though at least we have writer confirmation of multiple timelines within the sacred timeline.

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Oh nice, got a link to this? I've argued about this show enough, but happy to read some word-of-god about it.

 

[RadzPrower]

Oh nice, got a link to this? I've argued about this show enough, but happy to read some word-of-god about it.

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Marvel Studios' Loki |OT| See You Soon (All of Season 1 is on Disney+) Entertainment - Comics - OT

https://thedirect.com/article/loki-sacred-timeline-confusion-finale From the writer's mouth. The Sacred Timeline is not necessarily a straight line and would look more like an intertwined rope with strands and fluctuations and spikes. The Sacred Timeline is NOT a single timeline.

www.resetera.com

That post really should be threadmarked actually.

 

[Trup1aya]

Marvel Studios' Loki |OT| See You Soon (All of Season 1 is on Disney+) Entertainment - Comics - OT

https://thedirect.com/article/loki-sacred-timeline-confusion-finale From the writer's mouth. The Sacred Timeline is not necessarily a straight line and would look more like an intertwined rope with strands and fluctuations and spikes. The Sacred Timeline is NOT a single timeline.

www.resetera.com

That post really should be threadmarked actually.

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This pretty much confirms the theory I posted above. Breakfast-verse it is!

Okay, The best I can explain it is our approach with time travel was the philosophy basically that time is always happening. So there are infinite instances of time always occurring at once. So you and I are having this conversation right now. There's another instance of us having this conversation 10 seconds ago. There's another instance of time of us having this conversation 10 seconds in the future. Generally, those three instances — you could literally say they're all different universes in a way different timelines — are all the same. There are minute little fluctuations in each instance of time. So in you and I's conversation, five times out of ten, I pick up and I say, 'Hello.' And four times out of ten, I say, 'Hey, nice to meet you.' And then maybe one time out of ten, I'd say, 'Hey man, f— you. I don't want to do this interview.'"

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[totofogo]

Finally got around to watching this and woof, what a disappointment after Wandavision. Wasn't for me.

 

[Dremorak]

Finally got around to watching this and woof, what a disappointment after Wandavision. Wasn't for me.

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I think it benefitted a lot from the weekly release format, if you watch it all one of the other theres no time for hype to build between episodes and I could see it feeling a little short. But played out over weeks with all the discussion and time between episodes I actually ended up liking it a lot more than Wandavision. Also the soundtrack is the most killer in a marvel property ever

 

[FrakEarth]

I loved it, soundtrack is incredible as you say, the scenario is brilliant - I do think the He Who Remains encounter and the fact it's a bit of a setup for S2 and phase 4 kind of robbed it of having a proper resolution/ending of it's own - which Wandavision and Cap & Winter Soldier do have - but I'm definitely excited to see (and hear!) more.

Do we think Mobius and Hunter B-15 at the end the same ones we know, and time has changed around them, or were we looking at Loki in an alternate reality where Kang already controls the TVA again?

 

[The Bookerman]

Finally got around to watching this and woof, what a disappointment after Wandavision. Wasn't for me.

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I'm the complete opposite. Wandavision was the worst show and couldn't wait for it to stop. 9 episodes way too much and the gimmick wore thin.

 

[Keym]

I liked the show overall, even though the last episode was not the resolution I was hoping for, it was all setup for more things to come. Loved the soundtrack as well.

What concerns me the most is that if Kang is the next big bad, I hope he doesn't play his part like a comedy bit as he did here in Loki.

 

[JaseC64]

I liked the show overall, even though the last episode was not the resolution I was hoping for, it was all setup for more things to come. Loved the soundtrack as well.

What concerns me the most is that if Kang is the next big bad, I hope he doesn't play his part like a comedy bit as he did here in Loki.

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Not sure if spoiler but....

Spoiler

I think its more to differentiate him from his other evil versions. The one we saw is the one that remained, won and basically had nothing else to do. So he seemed pretty upbeat.

 

[RadzPrower]

I liked the show overall, even though the last episode was not the resolution I was hoping for, it was all setup for more things to come. Loved the soundtrack as well.

What concerns me the most is that if Kang is the next big bad, I hope he doesn't play his part like a comedy bit as he did here in Loki.

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I mean, he pretty clearly said the new versions of him would most definitely not be "nice", so I think it's a pretty safe bet that the new Kang will be more of a conquerer than a comedian.

 

[Cipherr]

What concerns me the most is that if Kang is the next big bad, I hope he doesn't play his part like a comedy bit as he did here in Loki.

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They definitely won't be. I believe this is the most friendly version of him that we will see. The whole "Wait until you see my variants" thing really hints at that.

 

[Keym]

Yeah, I know he was a variant, but ehhhhh, I can see him being somewhat similar while doing evil things, which wouldn't be the best thing ever for me. Hopefully the actual Kang is completely different.

 

[Solo]

I feel like I have to eat some crow here. I did not like this at all when I first watched it week to week. Perhaps the stench of FATWS still clouded my vision. I dunno.

Either way I rewatched it over a couple days this week and absolutely loved it this time. This is easily the best of the 4 MCU D+ shows so far and it's really not even close. The production design and cinematography alone are several steps above the rest and really craft such an incredible aesthetic for the world. You know that old, often true meme about the MCU looking like TV shows? Well WV and FATWS absolutely look like TV shows compared to how filmic Loki is. Then throw in a great character in Loki (and Sophie!!), fun timey narrative stuff and some thematic depth and you've got a winner. Loved it.

 

[Mandos]

They definitely won't be. I believe this is the most friendly version of him that we will see. The whole "Wait until you see my variants" thing really hints at that.

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We'll unless we get iron lad

 

[Pai Pai Master]

What concerns me the most is that if Kang is the next big bad, I hope he doesn't play his part like a comedy bit as he did here in Loki.

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The Kang you will see the most of is essentially an entirely different character. They took Immortus, not Kang, and added another layer of insanity to him when introducing He Who Remains. Kang's personality as it is could not be more different from Immortus.