Loki (1x02) “The Variant”
Showing a brilliant understanding of how timelines work.
Preamble
This episode presents a comprehension that stands as a shining understanding of how you can travel through time and timelines will not branch. It also shows that the TVA monitors multiple universes, not just our own.
Events
Note: As much of this episode takes place inside the TVA, any events taking place in that location will be considered inside their own universe and thus won’t affect the timeline in these critiques.
ↀ Universe A; ◷ Timeline A; Pompeii, Italy; 79 AD
This. Was. Brilliant.
Loki has brought Mobius here to demonstrate just one thing, a concept that left me grinning when I realised it because it makes complete sense!
One thing that has mystified the TVA is how the Loki they are chasing doesn’t show up on any branching timelines. Surely if an Asgardian was appearing in the past and raising a fuss, they would be detected, yes?
But not if there was nobody alive to report it!
I admit, this episode is one reason I included the phrase “if any changes are observable” in my First Theory of Time. Quite simply, if you go back into the past and do a thing, but that action is kept from the historical record accessible in the future, then as far as the timeline is concerned, you were never there.
As Loki demonstrated, what does it matter if you cause a public ruckus in the marketplace, if the entire town and all observers are going to be destroyed and killed in a volcanic eruption anyway?
With this knowledge, they figure out that the Loki variant is hiding in apocalypses — places where all history records is complete and utter destruction and loss of life.
LOKI: Nexus events happen when someone does something they’re not supposed to do. And then that thing they’re not supposed to do, cascades into a whole range of other things that aren’t supposed to happen, and so on and so forth, until eventually a new timeline branches, yes?
MOBIUS: Chaotic alterations of a predetermined outcome.
LOKI: (demonstrating with Mobius’ lunch) Exactly! I could go down to Asgard, before Ragnarok causes its complete destruction, and I could do anything I wanted. I could, let’s say, push the Hulk off the Rainbow Bridge. And I could also set fire to the palace. I can do whatever I want to do, and it would never matter. It wouldn’t go against the dictates of the timeline because the Apocalypse is coming. Ragnarok, Surtur will destroy Asgard no matter what I do.
MOBIUS: What am I looking at?
LOKI: It doesn’t matter. It could be any apocalypse. It could be a tidal wave. It could be a meteor. It could be a volcano, a supernova. If everything and everyone around you is destined for imminent destruction, then nothing that I say or do will matter, because the timeline’s not gonna branch. Because it gets destroyed.
By cross-referencing apocalypses and the Kablooie gum Mobius found in France, they narrow down the rogue Loki’s hideout to Alabama, 2050.
ↀ Universe A; ◷ Timeline A; Haven Hills, Alabama; 15 March, 2050
In this timeline, which doesn’t get a timeline number because it’s not a branch, the TVA find Hunter C-20 and Loki finds the rogue Loki they’ve been tracking down.
Except it isn’t Loki. This is a female variant of Loki, one we find out later is named Sylvie.
Sylvie uses a TemPad to open dozens of small doorways through time, activating all of the reset charges she stole, and dropping them off throughout the timelines to cause havok and distract the TVA, at which point she’ll break into the TVA and kill the Timekeepers.
TVA OPERATOR: Somebody just bombed the Sacred Timeline!
… Wait a minute. How do the reset charges disrupt the timeline? They’re explicitly designed to prune anything that doesn’t belong in the Sacred Timeline.
Let me check what was said earlier in the episode:
GUARD: (holding reset charges) And what do these do?
LOKI: Reset charges prune the affected radius of a branched timeline, allowing time to heal all its wounds.
If the charge randomly appears at a point in the timeline, then wouldn’t that timeline reset to… itself?
As I write this there is a possibility that occurs to me. When a reset charge is activated, it seems to mix together some kind of energy in a chamber which then “spreads out”, affecting everything as it expands. It almost seems like a “copy and paste” from the Sacred Timeline into the branching timeline, effectively restoring the Sacred Timeline at that point.
If the “mixing” of energy is some kind of calibration, then it is possible that when the dozens of charges were activated in 2050, they calibrated themselves to the environment of 2050 (“copying”). Then they are dropped through to various points up and down the timeline, where they expand their energies to reset each point in the timeline to become 2050 (“pasting”).
And of course, portions of a large shopping center from 2050 suddenly appearing throughout the timeline would result in the sudden branches forming everything along the timeline.
ↀ Universe A; ◷ Timeline B; Oshkosh, Wisconsin; 12 April, 1985
At a medieval fair, Hunter C-20’s team responds to the rogue Loki’s presence. As per usual, the operatives are attacked and their reset charge stolen, but this time C-20 herself is kidnapped.
At the TVA, Loki and us, the audience, are told why the branched timelines are pruned.
MISS MINUTES: What happens when a Nexus event branches past redline?
LOKI: It’s when the TVA can no longer reset a Nexus event.
MISS MINUTES: And that would lead to the destruction of the timeline and the collapse of reality as we know it.
Later, then Loki and Mobius are in 1985 to investigate C-20’s disappearance, but the investigation goes nowhere. They have a brief conversation about how time travel works in this series, though.
LOKI: Why don’t we just travel back to before the attack, when the variant first arrives?
MOBIUS: Nexus events destabilise the time flow. This branch is still changing and growing, so you gotta show up in real time.
GUARD: (holding reset charges) And what do these do?
LOKI: Reset charges prune the affected radius of a branched timeline, allowing time to heal all its wounds.
Additional Timelines
There is a brief scene where Loki is being briefed, and he sees some instances of other versions of himself. The branching events for a lot of these are unknown.
ↀ Universe A; ◷ Timeline C: Loki remains a frost giant.
ↀ Universe A; ◷ Timeline D: Loki becomes an athlete.
ↀ Universe A; ◷ Timeline E: Loki becomes heavily muscled.
ↀ Universe A; ◷ Timeline F: Loki grows a beard and wears sunglasses.
ↀ Universe A; ◷ Timeline G: Loki styles himself as a Viking.
More than One Universe?
The reveal of Sophie at the end of the episode presents a new angle to the multiverse in this show — not all Loki variants are branched from the same Loki (portrayed by Tom Hiddleston).
For there to be biologically different Loki’s (portrayed by people other than Tom Hiddleston) there have to be either one of two conditions fulfilled:
- the initial conditions of the universe have to be different, even slightly so, so that the resulting chain of cause-and-effect results in a different individual identifying as a Loki; or
- an unseen temporal event would have to change the circumstances under which Loki was conceived or adopted, resulting in a different individual.
If Sylvie is a result of the first condition, then that would mean that the TVA can access timelines that exist outside our universe (travelling along five dimensions, not just four).
If she’s a result of the second, then we’ve just got a different timeline, not a new universe. However, this raises the question of why the TVA wouldn’t have intervened at the moment the timeline would have branched, rather than waiting for several years to pass.
There’s also the fact that Sylvie has been creating multiple branching timelines, so as to get the attention of the TVA and steal their reset charges. She’s able to bring all these reset charges, one at a time, to her hideout in Haven Hills. To be able to repeatedly access the same mall in the same timeline, she would have to be able to access multiple universes from her TemPad.
I do think, therefore, that Sylvie represents a different universe altogether. Sylvie, within her native timeline, was always supposed to be Sylvie and not Loki. However, she experienced a branching event that brings her to the attention of the TVA, and this leads to her being on the run.
Analysis and Ranking
When I watched the pilot, I thought that the series would end up being poorly thought-out when it came to handling timelines. This episode, though, has been the complete opposite. There are no paradoxes that I can see. Timelines branch with clear causation.
I gladly give this episode a ranking of:
Visual Timelines
References
Afternotes
Accuracy: Reasonable efforts have been taken to maintain the accuracy of any information presented, mainly by relying primarily on the source material. However, for the sake of brevity and fair use, quotations from the movie that I have included have been edited to only include the relevant sections of dialogue. Also, I’ve added dithering to screenshots to both reduce bandwidth and for visual effect, so don’t conclude that the episode itself has a dithered image.
Effective Theories of Time: I base this temporal analysis on my “theories of time”, which at the time of publishing (06 June 2024) there are presently three (3).
Copyright Disclaimer: This article and any attached images are claimed as acceptable uses of the copyrighted source content. I consider this as permissible, without requiring prior authorisation, under the following laws: the United States Copyright Act, Section 107, for purposes of criticism or comment; and the Australian Copyright Act of 1968, Section 41, for purposes of criticism or review.
