* Spoiler Alert! read with caution *
Loki premiered on Disney plus on June 9th and it is full of wacky timelines and introduces the MCU audience to a new agency called the TVA, which stands for Time-Variant Authority. I like to think of the TVA as Jean Claude Van Damme in Time Cop. If you haven't seen that movie, rent it or find it on your local streaming devices. The TVA monitors the "sacred timeline" of all our Marvel heroes. Do you remember Marvel's Endgame? According to the Loki series, all the wacky time heists and changes were approved by the TVA, head up by three ancient Time Lords or Loki calls them "Lizards." Long ago, these Lords or 'Lizards" took charge of multiple chaotic timelines to form one balanced one. Whenever a person or "variant" messes up that timeline, the TVA and their SWAT team captures the variant and put them on trial before the judge, who is called Revonna Renslayer. This judge represents the Time Lords' final judgment as she is their earpiece. So you may be wondering why I brought up Avengers Endgame and what Loki has to do with all this. Well, allow me to explain or cut to the chase of a complicated story.
Loki promotion poster - Marvel Studios
In Avengers Endgame, our heroes decided to travel back in time to where they located the infinity stones. This time travel consisted of going back to past scenes from all the Avengers movies since the beginning. The time heist was formed to reset and save the world from Thanos's destruction of the population on earth -19999, the current universe we find our heroes in. In one scene of Endgame, our heroes go back to 2012, where Loki is captured, and the tesseract holding the space stone is found. But our heroes encounter a mishap and lose the tesseract which 2012 Loki takes and is transported to a desert in Mongolia? Loki tries to subjugate the locals and enforce his power until a group of SWAT team-looking cops come out of a teleported square and arrest him. Now you may wonder why Loki got detained by traveling back in time but not the Avengers. This question was raised by Loki himself as he was taken to the TVA, which looks like a 1960's version of the DMV or some bureaucratic office with pale yellow and orange colors.
According to Judge Renslayer, Loki is a time-variant and was not meant to take the terreseact and travel in time. Still, the Avengers' time heist was supposed to happen to save the world. So if you are traveling back in time to save the world, this is ok with the TVA? Anyway, episode 1 gave a general overview of why Loki was captured by the TVA and how he can redeem himself as a variant. First, Mobius M. Mobius, a TVA agent, pleads on Loki's behalf to make him an informant on a case he is working on. This case consists of another possible Loki who is causing mischief and stealing the TVA's time devices. Next, Mobius gets Loki to cooperate by giving him a new purpose in his life, or so he thinks? I mean, this is Loki, so maybe he has something up his sleeve.
In Episode 2- We see the destruction caused by the "other Loki" who casts a distributing mind spell; it is like what Wanda did to Hawkeye in the first Avengers movie. Anyway, she gets TVA cops to turn on one another and takes one captive into a similar teleportation square like the TVA uses. Now we have a missing cop and more TVA time devices missing. With time running against Mobius with Loki on the case, he pleads with Renslayer for another chance to catch this new variant.
Renslayer seems suspicious whenever Mobius asks about the Time Lords? which makes me wonder, are there Time Lords? or is this a giant conspiracy? Anyway, Loki locates the variant through chaos theory from past catastrophe events. It is all complicated and twisted to explain. Still, mostly, no matter what happens in the past, as it regards a coming natural disaster, they (Mobius and Loki, who travel to these places) can do anything. It won't mess up the timeline. This theory proved the variant could be hiding in plain sight through such catastrophes.
So the TVA and Loki find the new variant in Alabama 2050, where a category eight hurricane comes ashore a beach city that ROXXCART supermarket houses evacuees. Loki meets the new variant through a series of teleportation spells from one person to the next until the real person appears. We don't have a name, per se, but it is a female version of Loki. So we call her "Lady Loki" for now. Please read the Loki comic series to read about the history of "Lady Loki" and the TVA.
"Lady Loki" reveals herself and lets Loki know her disruptions are not about him. After she vaguely explains, she blows up the scared timeline using the TVA time devices. All the timelines are now in mass chaos as they were before the Time Lords took control of them. As she disappears into that majestic teleportation square, Loki follows her to the behest of Mobius, who calls out to him.
Well, only two episodes have been streamed on Disney plus, and the suspense is maddening! Who is this "Lady Loki," and what does she want with the TVA? What were Loki's actual plans by working with the TVA? Has Loki changed? or is he our loveable god of mischief forever? Will this bring an end to the TVA? Is Mobius fired? Will we see the Time Lords? And what is Renslayer hiding? Who can be trusted? There are many more complexities I did not address in this article. So I decided to give a general overview of the two episodes so far. But feel free to watch our Loki reviews on the Movie Lovers Unite Youtube Channel. Also, stay tuned for more articles!
(Librarian Ninja Girl)