The first season of the Marvel Studios show Loki introduced audiences to the Time Variance Authority, or TVA. Loki (Tom Hiddelston) arrived at the TVA after escaping The Avengers in a scene from Avengers: Endgame, and we spent the bulk of the season learning – as he was learning – what exactly the TVA did… and how dangerous things might be if the TVA stopped doing what it does. Well, Loki is back for Season 2, and just by what we have learned, I think we are seriously undervaluing the power and importance of the TVA to the MCU as a whole. Let’s start breaking some of this down.
What Is The TVA?
Here’s a crash course. If you want a much deeper dive, I provide it for you in this complete guide to the MCU Multiverse. But basically, the TVA was created by a variant of Kang (Jonathan Majors), who went by the nickname He Who Remains. This variant emerged victorious at the end of the Multiversal War, and knew he needed a system that would prevent more Kang variants from coming back. Hence, the TVA, a “government agency” that employs Hunters to “prune” stray timelines before they can branch too far off of the Sacred Timeline, and possibly lead to the formation of a new, seemingly evil Kang variant.
Still with me? So, according to He Who Remains, the TVA and the Sacred Timeline and GOOD. But in Loki Season 1, Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) didn’t buy into Kang’s belief of a pre-determined outcome that’s forced to run along the path of a Timeline carved out by a godlike being. She thought people deserved Free Will, and was willing to kill He Who Remains to make it a reality. Now it is a reality… but there are serious consequences.
What Is Happening In The TVA?
After Sylvie killed He Who Remains, his control over the Sacred Timeline was released, and an infinite number of branches started to form. If left unchecked, they would grow into individual multiverses – caused by a Nexus Event – and possibly lead to the creation of a new and volatile Kang.
Why aren’t the new branches being Pruned? Well, some Hunters in the TVA have been shellshocked by the news that they, individually, once had lives on the Sacred Timeline. They were kidnapped off the Timeline by Kang, and placed in service of the TVA, having had their memories wiped. This is why Owen Wilson’s Mobius still fantasizes about Jet Skis. In his actual life, he’s probably a Gulf Coast beach bum who runs a Jet Ski rental shack. So there’s currently a debate happening the TVA War Room about whether the TVA should keep doing what it has always done (prune errant timelines) or adapt a change knowing that every time a branch gets pruned, millions of innocents lose their lives.
That’s A Tough Debate. Is That All?
Loki wishes. And here’s where we start to realize exactly how powerful the TVA is – and how important it will be to the MCU. Due to Sylvie’s killing of He Who Remains, and the errant branches stemming off of the Sacred Timeline, the TVA is experiencing power outages (and Loki himself is doing this freaky transition known as Time Slipping). This is because The Time Loom (a massive new item we just learned about) can’t process all of the raw timelines and weave them into a stable Sacred Timeline. The Time Loom provides stability to all of existence as the MCU knows it. But at the moment, it’s overwhelmed.
The immediate mission of Loki Season 2, episode 1 was to prevent Loki from Time Slipping, which they did when O.B. (Ke Huy Quan) lends Mobius a Temporal Aural Extractor. So Loki’s no longer time slipping, but the Time Loom still can’t process the amount of branches that are being caused by He Who Remains’s death. I’m assuming that the next mission is going to be either pruning the branches, or figuring out a way to boost power to The Time Loom. Otherwise, more Kangs are coming, as He Who Remains promised.
How Does This Make The TVA More Powerful?
Ke Huy Quan’s character, Ourboros, is a new addition to the Loki ensemble, with an incredibly important job. He wrote the official guide to the TVA, and seems up to speed on how to operate – and possibly fix – TVA elements that go wrong. How many more employees work for the TVA that serve integral roles toward keeping the Sacred Timeline intact? As Loki Time Skipped from the past to the future, we saw major changes to the TVA structure that involved Kang. There are endless stories that could be told in the TVA that would have drastic ripple effects on the MCU timeline, and the existence of Multiverses in the MCU.
Speaking with Loki executive producer Kevin Wright, he told me:
We've gotten to make nearly 12 hours of multiverse storytelling. So it does feel like we are establishing the lore, and the groundwork to continue telling interesting stories. I think the TVA is something that we really love, and we see as a glue almost. They can operate as a multiverse S.H.I.E.L.D. for us, in a way. And then there are certainly stories that we would… and characters that we would love to tell those stories for. I wouldn't want to spoil anything where this show goes, but I think that we certainly leave this series in a place where there is fertile ground for many other stories to be told.
The MCU could have S.H.I.E.L.D. on the ground, taking care of Skrull invasions. They can have S.W.O.R.D. in the atmosphere, dealing with cosmic threats. And they can have the TVA operating – well, wherever the TVA actually is – as a last line of defense for threats against the Sacred Timeline, and the possibility of another Multiversal War breaking out. Think about a future MCU movie or show that features the Avengers battling Kang variants in the TVA, where the repercussions of the actions would be deadly? I wanna see that in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. Or even sooner.
