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.
Well most of the issues I've been taking so far is how they're addressing past installments of the MCU, namely Endgame and the time heist. The last thing we see in that movie regarding the 2012 universe is Loki taking the tesseract and leaving. That is exactly where this show picks up.
Now, I was fine with however much they explained time travel in that movie, and I was fine with it so far in watching Loki, it actually wasn't until I've read explanations here about either the 2012 timeline getting reset to before Loki takes the tesseract or the timeline just getting deleted where I think it falls apart.
I didn't say their vaporize their own people. I was referring with the "late to work" to one of the variant examples in the cartoon. But it doesn't matter if that applies to their own people or not. It's absurdly cruel regardless.
We're only two episodes in; I've just been assuming there would be some more explanation coming on how the timeline manipulation works.
Oh were you referring to that scene in the first episode where Loki has to print a ticket? I assumed the variant that got vaporized wasn't actually killed but teleported to another department. I don't know if I agree that the TVA is cruel though. I can't remember if I saw them doing anything immoral, or implied to be.
I mean they pretty much tell you not to overthink it when they said The Avengers going back and messing with time to get the stones was simply supposed to happen. I'm willing to accept that and just enjoy this ride as it happens. Not everyone is looking to dissect every plot/timeline detail of the MCU and piece it all together nicely for the sake of Loki.
For the record, that's fine if you are. I don't mean for this to turn into any kind of argument. I'm just saying, I'm taking what they're giving me and enjoying this as its own thing.
I didn't overthink the time traveling aspect in Endgame, and I didn't really think too much about it while watching Loki either. Like, when B-15 put down the time resetter, I didn't even care what it meant because I didn't
see what a time reset looks like. It actually wasn't even until I had discussions in this thread, where I heard arguments for
a) the 2012 universe getting deleted, or
b) getting reset to literally mean the 10 minutes of Loki's divulsion is undone to go back to the main 2012 events of MCU canon
that I started to feel like the explanations of time travel by the TVA starts to fall apart. Both options seem problematic to me. I wasn't looking to dissect every detail of this show, but...this show is all about time travel and multiple universes, so how as an audience member I don't see why I shouldn't be dissecting those plot points.
I don't agree that the rules have become more complicated. Endgame established that time travel doesn't change the past but creates branch timelines. Loki establishes that the Time Keepers have determined a single timeline as the 'proper' one and anything that deviates from it gets clipped. So, based on those rules:
1) The Avengers were supposed to get the infinity stones from the past, stop Thanos and return the stones to the moment that they got them from. No branch timelines created, no reason for the TVA to interfere.
2) The Avengers failed to get the Tesseract and they leave, Loki did get the tesseract but he wasn't supposed to. A branch timeline was created, the TVA interferes and resets the timeline to the events we saw in 2012. Regular Loki gets transported to an asgardian jail cell, variant Loki is apprehended by the TVA.
3) The Avengers get the Tesseract from another point in time, return it to the same point in time. No branch timeline, no reason for the TVA to interfere.
4) The Old Man Steve issue can be answered in two ways, the Russos way or the Markus and McFeely way. Either Old Man Steve was part of the sacred timeline anyway or he created a branch, lived there for a while and returned to the sacred timeline a few seconds after he left, thus negating that branch. I prefer the first version as the second would mean that Cap's family in that branch essentially disappeared. Maybe there is a third explanation if the show specifically addresses it.
1) So were the Avengers supposed to recover the tesseract in the 2012 universe? Because they didn't, and if they did, then Endgame the movie would have been different. Steve and Tony wouldn't have travelled further back in time.
2) If the Avengers were meant to go back to 2012 and from there go back to 1970, then why was Loki not meant to get away with the tesseract?
3) But what about the 2012 timeline? The tesseract is still missing from that universe. Unless the "time reset" means restoring 10 minutes of that universe which undoes Loki getting away, but if that's the case then it is a very important detail and it is something that the viewer should have seen unfold AND that would also mean Endgame would be different, if Tony never loses the suitcase. But even besides the tesseract, there is also Loki's scepter. In the 2012 universe, when 2023 Steve returns, he presumably puts the scepter next to his 2012 self who is knocked out on a floor of Stark tower. This event is completely different than the main MCU universe, where at that point in time all of the Avengers just met up for shawarma. Also earlier on, 2023 Steve deceived the undercover Hydra agents as well. Undoubtedly this would cause some sort of riff in that universe diverting from the main universe's events.
4) Old man Steve has nothing to do with this, except of course the fact that he's arguably a variant. Honestly I don't think the show will bother to explain anything regarding his appearance at the end of Endgame.
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