Marvel Media (Spoiler Thread)

I get the impression that the TVA is an eventuality. One of the Kangs will eventually "win" and form the TVA to preserve their timeline. They are all different versions of the same person, after all, so if one thought of it, another one will as well.

So the TVA as we saw it in Loki was overwritten by the new, dominate Kang's TVA.

That’s my take as well. The moment Kang died the entire multiversal war played out, another Kang came out on top, and a new TVA was established that is having another nexus crisis that Loki was dropped into.

That's was why HWR said "See you soon" to Sylvie after she stabbed him.

I sort of think that Kang’s loss of omnipotence and the nexus crisis will be revealed to have been caused by something the Avenger’s have been doing, most likely Strange or Wanda’s reality warping, Lang’s quantum realm meddling, or the time travel stuff in Endgame. Kang new it was coming and may even have known the Avengers are causing it, but just decided to abdicate and choose a successor. The new Kang will attempt to regain control.

ruhk wrote:

It’s not a different timeline because the TVA exists outside of time. Either there’s an infinite amount of competing TVA’s now existing in the same liminal space outside of time, each created by a different Kang, or the original TVA has been overwritten.

That's probably true as long as they protect that sacred timeline.

Which they didn't.

IMAGE(https://bgr.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/loki-episode-6-sacred-timeline-1.jpg)

MannishBoy wrote:
ruhk wrote:

It’s not a different timeline because the TVA exists outside of time. Either there’s an infinite amount of competing TVA’s now existing in the same liminal space outside of time, each created by a different Kang, or the original TVA has been overwritten.

That's probably true as long as they protect that sacred timeline.

Which they didn't.

IMAGE(https://bgr.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/loki-episode-6-sacred-timeline-1.jpg)

The TVA is outside the timeline so it doesn’t matter how many branches or alternate timelines there are. It’s not part of it.

How long has Disney+ had "Skip Credits" to skip to the mid/end credits scenes for MCU movies?

mudbunny wrote:

How long has Disney+ had "Skip Credits" to skip to the mid/end credits scenes for MCU movies?

They did not have it in July-Aug 2020 when I did my full MCU rewatch.

But a few months ago when I watched Captain Marvel for fun one day it was there.

DSGamer wrote:

It does provide a convenient loophole to bring back characters or swap out actors. I can see mainstream fans who aren't traditional comic fans to get tired of that quickly, though.

As someone who was an avid 'X-Men' reader at the time, I can assure you that even traditional comic fans get tired of that nonsense. When they 'dug up' Jean Grey in the mid-80s, the letters pages of 'The Uncanny X-men' were full of outrage (and kudos to Marvel for actually printing them).

IIRC, the common themes were that:

- the preceding 5 years of the comic had been defined by the long shadow Jean Grey's death. How the main characters handled the event internally. How they related to each other? And even whether they remained part of the 'X-men' at all.
- what was the point of readers making any emotional investment in the characters and story if it could all be undone with a stroke of a pen. (I'm old enough to remember the impact that Bobby Ewing's 'resurrection' had on Dallas all those years ago.)

As I've said previously on this thread, I gave up reading comics shortly after.

And I'm with hbi2k on that long final scene. It wasn't a conversation. It was a very long expository monologue intended to set up the 'Multiverse of Madness'. I understand why the writers had to do it, but it jarred with the rest of the show... and I just didn't like it.

What was up with Kang/He Who Remains acting it out with what were basically CGI handpuppets? Well, of course, that's not for the benefit of the Lokis, (or even for us - the older viewers). It was for the 14 year-olds on whom the success of the next installment of MCU stories depends and who were sitting at home wondering what the hell was going on.

I find it interesting that so many of us are working hard to find logical explanations for the details of this show. I have a fairly confident suspicion that Disney's writers aren't going to bother. They're going to keep things moving quickly enough that viewers don't have time to stop and think until they leave the movie theater. And if there are obvious inconsistencies, failures of logic or plot-holes then it will be hand-waved away with Disney's equivalent of "A big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff."

My final thought was on the Kang/He Who Remains Statue we saw at the end of the episode. Wasn't that a direct lift from one of the ending in one of the Planet of the Apes remakes?

ruhk wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:
ruhk wrote:

It’s not a different timeline because the TVA exists outside of time. Either there’s an infinite amount of competing TVA’s now existing in the same liminal space outside of time, each created by a different Kang, or the original TVA has been overwritten.

That's probably true as long as they protect that sacred timeline.

Which they didn't.

IMAGE(https://bgr.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/loki-episode-6-sacred-timeline-1.jpg)

The TVA is outside the timeline so it doesn’t matter how many branches or alternate timelines there are. It’s not part of it.

Not if they're all variants. The fractured timelines would change the variants who the TVA is made up of.

mudbunny wrote:

How long has Disney+ had "Skip Credits" to skip to the mid/end credits scenes for MCU movies?

Months. Maybe back into last year?

And it's not always consistent. I've seen it not work on some movies.

EDIT: Looks like since August 2020...

https://www.disneyplusinformer.com/d...

MannishBoy wrote:
ruhk wrote:

The TVA is outside the timeline so it doesn’t matter how many branches or alternate timelines there are. It’s not part of it.

Not if they're all variants. The fractured timelines would change the variants who the TVA is made up of.

...they existed before the timelines started branching though. Even the scene at the end makes a point of Mobius and B-15 complaining about all the new branches and being incredulous that "He" is just letting it happen. The reason the TVA is different is because it was founded and run by a different Kang, or at least the same Kang who decided not to use the sock puppet Timekeepers.

Also, while in "reality" different timelines would quickly mean completely different people, that is hard to show and requires a ton of casting differences. Much easier to imply same people, but different lives/experiences.

I think maybe people are getting confused because the show breezed past the time travel rules since it’s not really the focus of the story, but it does make it pretty clear that once someone is removed from the timeline they are immune to changes and branches in the timeline, even if those changes and branches retroactively happen in a part of the timeline prior to their removal. The TVA is functionally a separate plane of existence.

ruhk wrote:

I think maybe people are getting confused because the show breezed past the time travel rules since it’s not really the focus of the story, but it does make it pretty clear that once someone is removed from the timeline they are immune to changes and branches in the timeline, even if those changes and branches retroactively happen in a part of the timeline prior to their removal. The TVA is functionally a separate plane of existence.

I'm still not convinced that if you look out the windows at the TVA, you can't see another variant version of the TVA. So for all we know Loki is just on the wrong floor.

There’s speculation that the TVA is the briefly-glimpsed domed city in the quantum realm from Ant Man & The Wasp, but there’s no real evidence beyond the repeated mantras of “time moves differently in the___” from both properties and that Kang is supposed to appear in the next Ant Man movie.

Douglas Adams wrote:

It is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.

In other words - and this is the rock solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.

This is the principle that Marvel has adapted for their storytelling. The viewer gets such a sense of accomplishment from the mental gymnastics required to make the obtuse plot make sense-- putting far more thought into it than the writers did-- that they forget to think about whether there was a satisfying character arc or a solid emotional core to the story.

Hey, entertainment is entertainment. There’s no granularity to it.

I'm just disappointed that they didn't slip Stan Lee in that intro somewhere.

hbi2k wrote:
Douglas Adams wrote:

It is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.

In other words - and this is the rock solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.

This is the principle that Marvel has adapted for their storytelling. The viewer gets such a sense of accomplishment from the mental gymnastics required to make the obtuse plot make sense-- putting far more thought into it than the writers did-- that they forget to think about whether there was a satisfying character arc or a solid emotional core to the story.

Loki is the first show that has had a fairly convoluted plot. All of the other movies have very simple plots that don't require much mental gymnastics to figure out.

mudbunny wrote:
hbi2k wrote:
Douglas Adams wrote:

It is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.

In other words - and this is the rock solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.

This is the principle that Marvel has adapted for their storytelling. The viewer gets such a sense of accomplishment from the mental gymnastics required to make the obtuse plot make sense-- putting far more thought into it than the writers did-- that they forget to think about whether there was a satisfying character arc or a solid emotional core to the story.

Loki is the first show that has had a fairly convoluted plot. All of the other movies have very simple plots that don't require much mental gymnastics to figure out.

... in hindsight. We were looking for a deeper plot in WandaVision in the first episodes.

But that is us looking for things that weren't there. That's different from them deliberately making the plot complicated.

They did fill it full of red herrings though. Remember Dottie? No? Neither did the writers after Episode 2.

Filling things with red herrings and easter eggs to make those who like digging into things like that is different from making it overly complicated.

It's the same principle. Keep the audience too distracted with minutiae to see the forest for the trees.

Nice trick when it works, or when it's there in addition to (as opposed to instead of) a satisfying story.

With Loki, though, they had some good setup in the first couple episodes with the Loki / Mobius dynamic and the stuff about what makes a Loki a Loki, and then turned in a half-assed love story and a trailer for Phase IV instead of paying any of it off.

ruhk wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:
ruhk wrote:

The TVA is outside the timeline so it doesn’t matter how many branches or alternate timelines there are. It’s not part of it.

Not if they're all variants. The fractured timelines would change the variants who the TVA is made up of.

...they existed before the timelines started branching though. Even the scene at the end makes a point of Mobius and B-15 complaining about all the new branches and being incredulous that "He" is just letting it happen. The reason the TVA is different is because it was founded and run by a different Kang, or at least the same Kang who decided not to use the sock puppet Timekeepers.

But who's to say that Silvie doesn't jump back even further after killing Kang and messing with the creation of the TVA and change how they operate, changing how they intake the Variants all along? Lots of ways to write this to cover for the change. They've given themselves a built in retcon button.

Dug the series, loved the character arc, and it feels more "consequential" in the MCU than the other two series. WandaVision was phenomenal, but was really just a very personal story about grief and loss, and, sure, it'll make Scarlet Witch more important in future MCU stuff, but it was really focused on that one character. FatWS basically felt like a longer than usual so-so Marvel movie that set up other TV series, probably a Dark Avengers thing, and a new Captain America. Loki feels like it's basically setting up everything for the future, creating a multiverse, introducing the big bad of the next several phases, and "matters" in MCU terms.

Loved Jonathan Majors in this, and introducing Kang without really introducing Kang was a nice way to do it, and I dug the babbling exposition, particularly how the multiversal war bit the TVA talked about wasn't actually bullsh*t, and liked that callback.

ruhk wrote:

The TVA is outside the timeline so it doesn’t matter how many branches or alternate timelines there are. It’s not part of it.

A couple people mentioned this and I think it is in the series but I also think it doesn't make sense. They had to go find Kang's base because it was hidden outside time behind the heavy smoker. So they were both outside time (the TVA and Kang's crib)? But they needed to get past the beastie to get the Kang but can enter the TVA freely - so areas outside time are not all in the same place? Different areas outside time are in different realities?

That is just so convoluted I have a hard time wrapping it all up. It feels like a big "wizard did it" thing so they can muck with time but still have an out.

I think it’s more along the lines of “the TVA is your local police station” and “the land of discarded variants is the county prison”.

They both exist outside of time, just in different places and with different types of security protocols; one of which being a giant, all-devouring, smoke creature.