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Cuburger

Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,975
MCU time travel discourse is exhausting and people are over thinking every minuscule detail.
I agree. It can be a bit fun when trying to engage with what is written and what we know about things in the MCU so far, like trying to make sense of it without jumping through too many hoops, and that could then be fun to speculate about how the rules work beyond what we have been told and what will be the outcomes in the show and in the MCU, but a lot of people don't care to engage with it on that level and believes it must be air tight to the any criticism you can lob at it and the point of discussing any of it is to test it and pick it all apart.

It's really pedantic and cynical. It's like being anti-fun.

There is some degree of thought and logic put into what they are doing and they are doing their best working across multiple projects with multiple creatives, so I choose to go along for the ride and engage with it for what it is, and not what it isn't. Maybe sometimes they aren't clear on what they assumptions are for their logic, and I think that's fair to criticize or talk about, but even that is something I feel we just have to give Marvel the benefit of the doubt at a certain point that they have a purpose and wait to see what that is before trying to pull on the loose threads to see if we can make it unravel.
 

Slayven

Never read a comic in his life
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
93,025
Slayven sorry if I missed a post but how are you feeling about Mobius's boss being freaking Ravonna the bride/Rival of Kang. Now there's a big setup

edit:

Eh cept Kang's been cast, this is more of an Agatha/Mr Scratch situation than a Mephisto one
Plus they explicitly pointed out her first and last name
I noticed that and you don't make moves like that for a cameo
 

Lump

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,959
Can we get a Disney+ series just called Judge Ravonna and she takes cases which always end in a reset
 

timedesk

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,937
I mean the person in charge is freaking Ravonna the bride(and rival) of Kang, surprised more people aren't jumping on that little fact. Also Mobius(and his duplicates) are special stock designed to be more flexible and useful than the rest of the TVA in the comics, that's why they're middle managers. Kinda teased it with the other analyst nod

That's cool. I didn't know her character had that history with Kang. I watched the little animated bit again and it's interesting that the Time Keepers have some superficial similarities to Kang. The show could take all sorts of directions, but I genuinely think the big reveal for the season is going to be that Kang usurped the Time Keepers a long time ago and has been crafting a perfect timeline for himself.
 

Maple

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,719
I'm confused on where the female Loki variant comes from on the sacred timeline, given that we've seen Loki's entire timeline in the MCU.
 

Arkeband

Banned
Nov 8, 2017
7,663
I feel like all the articles written about Loki's gender for clicks ended up kinda watering down that reveal.
 

Mandos

Member
Nov 27, 2017
30,878
That's cool. I didn't know her character had that history with Kang. I watched the little animated bit again and it's interesting that the Time Keepers have some superficial similarities to Kang. The show could take all sorts of directions, but I genuinely think the big reveal for the season is going to be that Kang usurped the Time Keepers a long time ago and has been crafting a perfect timeline for himself.
Considering he usually travels back to fight the avengers due to her well being being threatened wouldn't be too surprising. Also they are rivals in the comics and the timekeepers are generally created at the end of time too and sent to the beginning
 

Cuburger

Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,975
Eh cept Kang's been cast, this is more of an Agatha/Mr Scratch situation than a Mephisto one
Plus they explicitly pointed out her first and last name
I definitely agree that Kang has more likelihood and I'm personally holding out for a namedrop or potential cameo, but I do feel like the Agatha thing was similar but comic fan speculation was correct with a little better detective work. There was definitely a chance that that theory didn't pan out early on in Wandavision, but I feel like as we got closer to a reveal, all the clues were so obviously lining up that even people who didn't really know who Agatha was beyond hearing people constantly beating that drum were saying, "Oh yeah, of course it is her."

If the Mephisto speculation panned out, even if it was just in regards to Agatha working for (or being possessed by) demons or doing a Faustian bargain with the Darkhold, people would similarly being saying, "Of course it was, I knew that the whole time!" Marvel always reserves the right to change things up so we'll see how they use Ravonna, but I do think that they included the character for a purpose and it will be Kang related.

We also just got Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine in TFatWs, which may suggest her having some kind of ties to Fury in the future, or a tie to the Secret Invasion story, but in regards to her connections to SHIELD or HYDRA or Leviathan, she's going to be different. Also, Sharon Carter is the Power Broker, which is like, wut?
 

Slayven

Never read a comic in his life
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
93,025
Especially using her specific last name even as ridiculous hers. Question is she pre or post meeting Kang considering she was a conquerer in her own right even before meeting him
I want to put money on her or Mobius being the true villain. They said she was the only direct line to the Timekeepers. What if she is working with the evil beta versions?
 

Mandos

Member
Nov 27, 2017
30,878

RebelDeux

Member
Nov 20, 2017
180
MCU time travel discourse is exhausting and people are over thinking every minuscule detail.

This, I feel kinda lost and overwhelmed, for example Dark (German Netflix show) managed to pull time travel and alternate realities/universes well without sounding confusing but this show I just don't understand how the She-Loki is out there and what TVA does/serves, I will keep watching but the whole show is brainy and meta, nice production tho.
 

darkazcura

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,884
Chicken and egg. You can't have one without the other.

But if Loki hadnt stolen the stone... Cap would never go back to 73. You can't have Loki stealing the stone and not stealing the stone at the same time, especially if the claim is the branch is deleted. If its deleted Loki goes back to Asgard and the time heist is a success. And .....Steve had to return to 1973 to return the space stone. Not 2012. And he only has one. The TVA has the other.

I won't phrase it as well, but the Hulk speech in End Game matters a lot here.

"If you travel back into your own past, that destination becomes your future, and your former present becomes the past, which can't now be changed by your new future."

- Cap and team lose site of stone.

Because

- Loki takes stone (creates variant), branch is created

- TVA deleted branch

Cap's future is now in 1973. He traveled back to 1973 before the branch was made/at same time. Regardless, the TVA has shown an ability to move time back in an isolated manner.
 

Burt

Fight Sephiroth or end video games
Member
Oct 28, 2017
8,134
This, I feel kinda lost and overwhelmed, for example Dark (German Netflix show) managed to pull time travel and alternate realities/universes well without sounding confusing but this show I just don't understand how the She-Loki is out there and what TVA does/serves, I will keep watching but the whole show is brainy and meta, nice production tho.
Mother of god

This is the first time in human history someone has ever held up Dark as the comparatively simple side of things in a comparison of time travel mechanics

It might just be the case that MCU time travel makes zero sense and that doesn't actually bother any of the creatives and people really should just pump the brakes on it rather than let ponderings on power levels and canon rot their brain
 

Kewlmyc

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
26,683
So, are we in agreement that the Time Keepers are actually dead and have been dead for quite a while?
 

whiteninja

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
1,794
How is a Hurricane on Earth a bigger apocalypse than the complete destruction of Asgard? Or does the class of Apocalypse go the other way, like the lower the number the worse it is?
 

MadLaughter

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
13,090
If I were making episode 3, it would start with a montage of bombs going off in different time periods and then do a SMASHCUT to Miss Minutes looking with wide eyes at the branch TV going crazy and saying

"Welll.....fuck!"

Cue opening credits
 

jph139

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,365
I kind of think they never existed at all, just a convenient fiction.

But I kinda hope they're real, if only to see what they look like in live-action, because they're some cartoon-puppet-looking motherfuckers.
 

The Artisan

"Angels are singing in monasteries..."
Moderator
Oct 27, 2017
8,096
eacc0eea348dae78c31b28c19dbaca48.jpg

fb2abc560a1a380a770bf5b1d92e719a.jpg

They did show it, unless I'm missing something? They reset the timeline back to what it was.
No they didn't. They showed B-15 put the resetter in the sand in the screenshots you shared, but they didn't show the effects of the resetter. What happens back in Stark tower once the resetter's countdown is completed? Does it turn back time 10 minutes and create a clone of Loki & the tesseract? We don't see the 2012 universe ever again.
I think the show is absolutely inviting the idea of thinking too hard AND dropping hints that the TVA can't be trusted. Not only do some things not make sense, but the entire Timekeepers thing with the corny retro cartoons and all the hints that most of the characters have never even seen them, certainly imply something! :)

It's certainly setting up for a reveal that the Timekeepers are absolutely not what they are presented as, and possibly don't even exist in that form.
Hmm have the Timekeepers said they haven't seen all of the infovideos/cartoons presented? Casey does seem a big ignorant (not knowing what a fish is) but to be honest I don't remember seeing them doing something immoral...at least not yet.
The TVA absolutely is sinister. They vaporize people for being late to work or not taking a queue ticket when there's no one else in the waiting room.

They reset timelines and vaporize people for doing anything they deem against the "correct" timeline, which appears to be completely arbitrary. They didn't bring up Loki's spiel about free will being the greatest lie in the first episode for no reason. The TVA exists to remove free will. Every time they prune a branch or vaporize someone, the only consistent factor is that the TVA thinks someone chose wrongly. The show is forcing Loki to confront his belief that free will is a burden.
Wait a minute they vaporized their own people? I don't remember seeing that happen anywhere but if that is something they do then yeah the higher powers are too extreme with their punishments. But as for vaporizing timelines, throughout the conversations I've been having so far I've been hearing the sentiment that they reset timelines, and that they get rid of timelines. Neither one makes sense to me and both are also problematic from a storytelling standpoint. For the former, it doesn't make sense from what point the reset happens and for the latter, it would be impossible for Steve to return the stones.
Given that the show has said that the reset charge "heals the timeline" and it's not just by deletion, it presumable can create as well as destroy in order to reset things to the proper timeline. The way I think of it now (since we have seen they have a limit window in time before the nexus event hits the redline and branches permanently) is that the reset charge effects an area that is effected by the nexus event (be that a person or action) and everything that person would have been able to interact with during that window. Maybe that makes the area of influence of a charge as big as a city, as big as a planet, or as big as a galaxy.

The redline suggest that their hard deadline could be due to the range of the charge since there is a relationship between time and space, so if they have a few minutes of real time until it's too late to heal the timeline, perhaps that is the maximum range that a person could feasibly travel and interact with other people and objects before they are out of range to reset everything necessary to maintain the sacred timeline.
But even then as I said I said before, if this is what "healing the timeline" means, then they need to show us this unfolding in the show. Not through expositional dialogue, not through an informational cartoon, but through the 2012 universe getting reset and undoing what Loki attempted to do in the 2012 Endgame scene. Trying to make this much of the show make sense by just assuming means that the show relies too heavily on the audience just accepting it at face value and making assumptions to role with the narrative. I guess it works for some of the audience but it isn't really working for me so far.
 

chrisPjelly

Avenger
Oct 29, 2017
10,491
Fun episode! Love that score at the end, and I hope we get more future settings. I have a feeling all this exposition will fly over the heads of a lot of people and make others overthink things like they did with WandaVision. I'm gonna keep my expectations for the ending of this in check after the safe and straightforward endings of the previous Marvel shows.
 

DarthSpider

The Fallen
Nov 15, 2017
2,954
Hiroshima, Japan
How is a Hurricane on Earth a bigger apocalypse than the complete destruction of Asgard? Or does the class of Apocalypse go the other way, like the lower the number the worse it is?

I was thinking that too. Number of people killed? Property destruction? It said nearly 10,000 people died in Ragnarok, right? Well, more people than that were killed in the 3/11 tsunami in Japan. Or what you said might also be possible. The lower the number, the greater the calamity.
 

Nacho

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,108
NYC
Totally on board for this.the limitations for a series budget are definitely showing with their limited location/effect budgets as far as a tv show about travelling through time, but it's really fun otherwise.
 

Kewlmyc

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
26,683
I kind of think they never existed at all, just a convenient fiction.

But I kinda hope they're real, if only to see what they look like in live-action, because they're some cartoon-puppet-looking motherfuckers.
Yeah, they're either are dead or never existed. At least in the MCU.

Getting a bunch of Nier Automata vibes from this. Or any fiction that features an organization doing the bidding of an unseen force/being.
 

Cuburger

Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,975
But even then as I said I said before, if this is what "healing the timeline" means, then they need to show us this unfolding in the show. Not through expositional dialogue, not through an informational cartoon, but through the 2012 universe getting reset and undoing what Loki attempted to do in the 2012 Endgame scene. Trying to make this much of the show make sense by just assuming means that the show relies too heavily on the audience just accepting it at face value and making assumptions to role with the narrative. I guess it works for some of the audience but it isn't really working for me so far.
Given how they've been slowly showing and telling us how it all works, including addressing things in this episode that people felt were plot holes and poor writing by not immediately being addressed in full in the first episode, maybe we just need to wait a bit.

Those are details that aren't even crucial to the plot right now, just to people picking apart the logic.
 

The Artisan

"Angels are singing in monasteries..."
Moderator
Oct 27, 2017
8,096
Given how they've been slowly showing and telling us how it all works, including addressing things in this episode that people felt were plot holes and poor writing by not immediately being addressed in full in the first episode, maybe we just need to wait a bit.

Those are details that aren't even crucial to the plot right now, just to people picking apart the logic.
That is what I'm hoping for. Two episodes in, I feel like we won't get more depth on the TVA - beyond maybe a flashback of the creators. But I do think the show needs it.
 

MadLaughter

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
13,090
probably not, but I do think there will be an action set piece featuring one or more jet skis.

otherwise what are we even doing.

I did assume we'd get a jetski scene but I didn't consider that it could be an action scene

They should have saved holding out for a hero for the jetski scene

Kang/Evil Loki/The True Villain™ opens some TVA portal between an ocean and the TVA city and it starts to flood but mobius is racing through the city dodging falling whales and cruise liners and coral reefs, ramps off the rusted steel hull of the titanic and jumps off his jetski in midair to tackle the villain
 

The Artisan

"Angels are singing in monasteries..."
Moderator
Oct 27, 2017
8,096
MCU time travel discourse is exhausting and people are over thinking every minuscule detail.
it was fine how time travel was introduced in Endgame, but they have made time travel discourse much more complicated with with everything they've introduced in Loki so they are pretty much asking for people to overthink things
 

MuteMap

Member
Apr 22, 2021
125
Trying to make this much of the show make sense by just assuming means that the show relies too heavily on the audience just accepting it at face value and making assumptions to role with the narrative. I guess it works for some of the audience but it isn't really working for me so far.

I don't why you say you don't accept the show's explanation at face value, when the show gives you plenty of implications that the TVA may not be telling the truth about things anyway.

Besides, everything about time travel is meant to just fit conveniently into the plot. There's never going to be a fool proof explanation for freaking time travel.

The show even conveniently says that they can't travel back before the Variant attacks and have to catch her in real time, because the Nexus event would be unstable. Does that actually make any sense? Couldn't you just throw a reset bomb behind a time door and activate it remotely so nothing winds up changing anything?

Who knows, you just have to take that rule at face value and just go along with the show.
 

Surakian

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
10,816
Yeah, they're either are dead or never existed. At least in the MCU.

Getting a bunch of Nier Automata vibes from this. Or any fiction that features an organization doing the bidding of an unseen force/being.
"For all time." "Always."

Yeah, it is absolutely bordering Nier Automata levels of propaganda for beings who are already dead.

At the very least I doubt the two Time Keepers depicted on the outer sides of the trio are alive. Or this is perhaps a situation where they are dead but it is through the actions of the TVA that they can be brought back to life. The sacred timeline must follow a certain chain of events so they can live similar to the comics.

Or at the very least this will show Kang is/will be alive. He's absolutely the Time Keeper usually shown in the middle, and it would make sense that Ravonna is following things to his will.
 

Alucrid

Chicken Photographer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,413
i'm not a marvel expert but

the "true" timeline has loki and the tesseract being handed over to thor, right? and when they go back to get the tesseract this doesn't change what happened in their "true" timeline because when loki escapes that's a new timeline branching off the true one. so loki disappearing is only a problem for this new splinter timeline and not the one the avengers jump back to. of course since presumably the TVA erase the timeline where loki disappears what happens in it doesn't matter. so they erase A 2012 timeline not THE 2012 timeline, no? this (not the 2012 NY scene, but a form of it occuring) is shown by the splinter on the monitor in the TVA control area receding until it's back into the "true" timeline. is this correct, at least insofar as with what we currently know?