Loki S1E1... (spoilers, probably)

And if you consider many of the variant timelines are uh... illegal, you can do anything with any characters because the timeline is a variant and can be erased. The series (sort of) lies outside the MCU.

Even though I hate time travel, I'm really hoping they take a realistic approach to it. It could be quite good.

I also really like the fact Loki will probably be a different character than in the movies. He was always such a dick in so many ways, but did redeem himself a few times. Now that he's finally seen his future and realized he's not a god (I have to keep reminding myself this is Loki right after the first Avengers movie), he might be just as fun without having to prove anything to anyone.

Wonder if this is going to be an ongoing tale, or whether story arcs are seasonal, or even shorter.

Oh, and I don't buy the Avenger's time travel was legit, lol.  Loki was able to grab the tesseract because the Avengers screwed up. If what the Avengers did was legit, then Loki's escape was legit, too. 

One thing I really am happy about, is this first episode seems to confirm my own feelings on the timeline logic in the MCU. The splinters seem to "self-heal". The main timeline looks more like a rope than a string - i.e. several timelines that are super close together. The "variant" logic and the little iPhones they use to check them all seem to point to strands that won't self-heal and need to be pruned. It's actually almost like gardening. If you have branches where you want them, you leave them, but if you have strays or less healthy ones you prune them.

So the whole joke about how Cap would have had to inject Jane with the reality goo is pointless. I've always maintained that he could have basically showed up at or near the point they stole the reality stone and just chuck it in a corner somewhere and that branch probably re-heals. Or to be safe he can basically give it to Jane in stone form and the timeline would have had the dark elves still steal it, Thor still ultimately stop them etc.

Loki's a variant because when the time heist saw him (a formidable being if not a god) escape capture with the space stone, that was a branch that wasn't going to heal on its own. Too much of the timeline at that point relied on Loki being in Asgard and the space stone as well.

In theory, if they time cops had shown up in the desert with Loki and their iPhone had said the branch was already healing (i.e. maybe Nick Fury had already radioed Stark to tell him where they had detected the gamma signature of the tesseract so the 2012 Avengers could go catch Loki again) they may have just left it.

It's fun to think about Cap meeting Red Skull on Vormir or wonder about how he'd have to liquify the reality stone again - but I don't think any of that is literally necessary. Just return the stones to the right part of the timeline in a way that it can self-heal.

Finally got to watch and WOW! So impressed so far and can’t wait to see where they are going with this!

I really liked it!

Also i watched a decent amount of videos about it and i think the condition to become a variant and create a branching timeline is to move an infinity stone out of her intended place.

It would really be coherent with the Ancient One talk with Banner in Endgame that shows that removing a stone create a branch.

Also there were deleted footages about that scene that tie even more with that theory (speaking of clipping the branchs) also one of the video reminded of Cap in ending saying the same thing that can be easily seen multiple times in the TVA on posters.

Time will tell its correct.

Also another theory why the infinity stones are useless in TVA and that add weight to the previous :

When they confiscate the Stone moved by a variant in a Nexus event, they prune the timeline with that device, destroying like it never existed.

So like they said multiple time the stones are tied to the creation of the universe or something so its not too far fetched to think if their timeline is gone, they become just pretty rocks (or Paper Weights )

Also that individual killing Minutemen might very be Lady Loki, maybe she's stealing the charge that prune timelines to make a stable alternative one? Or something else?

Despite the fact that I completely adore the character, I was actually a bit wary about Loki at first, because the trailer seemed a bit too "wacky" for my liking, and I didn't really get where they were going with the plot. In the end I have to say that I really liked it, though. 

Tom Hiddleston is on point as always, Owen Wilson is a likable "one-sane-man" in the crazy time agency they introduced, and the rest of the cast seems to be solid, although - after just one episode - I reserve final judgement at this point. 


Funnily enough, I had a bit of a "sigh" moment in the beginning of the show, when I fully realised that this version of Loki would be based pretty much entirely on his incarnation in The Avengers. Of course that was obvious before, what with the set-up in Endgame, and yet it only really sank in for me was when I watched it play out on screen. Now, my problem with that is the following: Avengers-Loki was insane!!! Yeah, sure, the movie was totally awesome and Loki made for a very fun villain, and yet the character had rather little to do with how he was established in Thor 1 and even the future Thor movies as well as Infinity War. Joss Whedon himself admitted that he had no idea how to write Loki when he did The Avengers.

I was always fine with handwaving the descrepencies in the character and to chalk them up to whatever happened after Loki's fall from the Bifrost Bridge at the end of Thor and to his time with Thanos. And to assume that he came back to his senses during the time of his imprisonment in Asgard. But to have them now reset the character to his fullblow insane-god-phase?! Oh, boy... 
But they addressed it! Sure, they didn't just say "Hey, Loki, ever noticed that your bahaviour and actions in the last few days were pretty out-of-character for you?", but they actually gave him a psych-eval and a future-character-development crashcourse and I could not have been happier about it!!  


So, yeah, lots of doors now open for the character to go through, lots of ways for the plot to develop. And I'm happy to be along for the ride!!  



I guess the one thing that kind of annoys me is the "been there, done that. Like a million times" feeling I now have whenever time travel 'agencies' or whatever are involved. Doctor Who has the Timelords. DC's Legends of Tomorrow had the Time Masters. The Umbrella Academy has the Temps Commission. Star Trek has the Department of Temporal Investigations. And I bet there are like a dozen others I can't think of right now. It still is a cool concept - if done right - but just not something that feels fresh anymore. The Umbrella Academy's Temps Commission in particular feels like a veeeery close relative of the TVA, what with the insanely advanced technology that still looks ridiculously old-school. 

But, well, great minds think alike, I guess. Still looking forward to see where Loki goes with all this. 



Btw, does anyone have a list of all the easter eggs that were in the drawer at the TVA next to the infinity stones?