r/loki • u/pipiripicho_2005 • 5d ago
Theory I can't understand
I stopped watching Marvel after Loki and started watching Doctor Strange 2. And I'm getting confused, or maybe I'm overthinking it, but what I'm getting at is: Miss Minute says that a long time ago there was a multiversal war where basically all the timelines fought for supremacy, so in the end all the Time Keepers managed to concentrate all the timelines into one, which they called the sacred timeline. And this is where it gets confusing for me, since Miss Minute uses the word "multiverse" to explain that war of alternate timelines fighting for supremacy, but in theory there's a difference between a multiverse and variants or alternate timelines. So the Earths of Spider-Man, the X-Men, etc., would be part of the multiverse, and what we see in Loki are actually variants and alternate timelines created from a main timeline. So it wouldn't have anything to do with the true Multiverse of Madness seen in Doctor Strange 2, which does exist and has nothing to do with the Time Keepers or the TVA.
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u/Pandoratastic 5d ago
You're imagining a distinction that does not exist. In the MCU, the multiverse is entirely made up of those variant universes branching off. Loki escapes with the tesseract creates a new branch. Tobey Maguire's Spider-man was in a different branch. The X-men were yet another branch. Fantastic Four takes place in another branch. Every episode of What If? is another branch. It's all branches.
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u/Whole-Hunter-6455 5d ago
i do get where they're coming from though... like if there is only 1 sacred timeline, and tesseract loki was on the sacred timeline and everything that has been shown in the mcu sofar has been on the sacred timeline, then you would expect the sacred timeline to be made up of different parallel universes right?
If the sacred timeline's spider man is Tom holland, how could purely the branching of that timeline result in him becoming eg Toby Maguire?
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u/Nick_Wild1Ear 5d ago
Watch the TVA propaganda cartoon closely, and listen to the explanations of He Who Remains as well.
The “Sacred Timeline” is actually a braided rope of similar and parallel timelines that all run concurrently and MOSTLY share histories/events, with HWR’s TVA pruning the variant timelines that result in a Kang variant (HWR existing means he’s pruning other Kangs before they can form) this is the Loom braiding the timelines into the rope of the “sacred timeline” and avoiding nexus events which are just fancy words meaning “Kang Origins”. No nexus points means no Kang’s means no Kang multiversal war 2.0 (3.4, 4.7, 5mil.376, etc)2
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u/pipiripicho_2005 4d ago
Tell me if I understand correctly, so timelines are universes that, in this way, are joined together in the sacred timeline?
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u/Pandoratastic 5d ago
Born looking different is one of the easiest variants. It happens the same way that Tom Hiddleston, Sophia Di Martino, and Richard Grant can all be Lokis. A different sperm won the race or his parents conceived on a different day.
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u/Disastrous_Cause6333 5d ago
""Loki Season 1 takes place outside of time (in the Void / End of Time). When Sylvie kills He Who Remains at the very end of the season, the Sacred Timeline instantly shatters and explodes into infinite branches all at once. Because time happens all at once at the end of time, this explosion of the Sacred Timeline retroactively allowed the entire Multiverse to exist simultaneously across the MCU. By the time Doctor Strange 2 happens, the constraints of the Sacred Timeline are gone, and the multiverse is wide open, which is why America Chavez and Stephen can traverse completely separate Earths that were never part of He Who Remains' tidy little loop."" Gemini answered perfectly!! I think you skipped loki s2
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u/Effective-Musician57 4d ago
Remember: Miss Minutes lies: first for her own benefit, and then (if it doesn't conflict with her benefit) for Kang's/HHR's
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u/d7x_ 1d ago
I might be wrong but I don’t agree with the answers people are giving.
My headcannon has been that there is a distinction between universes (dimensions) and timelines (variants). Every universe/dimension can have infinite variants but the TVA is not pruning unique universes they are pruning variants/off-shoots of the MCU universe/dimension.
What happened in Multiverse of madness was dimension hopping, visiting other distinct & established realities. What happens in Loki is alternate timelines, a choice is made that changes the outcome and a different off-shoot of that reality occurs in the form of a branching timeline.
But there’s no way any decision made or tiny change to something is ever going to create a branched timeline where everyone is made of paint like in MoM. So paint dimension does not equal a branched timeline, that’s a different dimension.
Possibly when a branch is distinct enough it solidifies into its own universe/dimension but before that it is still a branch and that’s something the TVA can manage via pruning. Also it’s possible that if left alone to “solidify” these branches then become neighbouring dimensions and crossing between them is easier than say going from MCU dimension to one where everyone is made of paint.
So I don’t think Loki is holding the multiverse in its entirety, I think he’s holding the flow of time for his universe. It’s depicted as a tree, a tree that will grow, parts will die naturally, other parts will fall off and maybe take root, it might drop seeds that sprout into new dimensions even.
But each dimension will be its own “tree” and some might have oversight like the TVA and some might be growing freely, expanding, splitting and create new distinct realities.
The writers might say different and I’m sure there’s things I’ve forgotten that prove otherwise but this is the only way it makes sense to me personally. In one movie they’re travelling between dimensions that are clearly established and then in Loki they’re pruning anything that diverges from the sacred timeline.
Honestly at this point it’s a mess to explain. The obvious answer is there was no framework for half these movies/shows and the writers just did whatever and now they’ve got to cobble together some kind of explanation for how it all coexists. Hoping half the audience don’t care enough to question it and the other half care enough to make up their own explanations.
For me, the Fox X-Men just exist in a neighbouring dimension, they could have started as part of the MCU tree but split off into their own distinct reality when the first mutant was born. The two universes could be almost identical outside of what has happened on Earth for all we know.
He who remains tried to control something uncontrollable until it was about to explode and now Loki is acting as a conduit for time to flow through and expand naturally.
But that’s happening in every other dimension already, there may or may not be others in Loki/He who remains’ position. Maybe the MCU is distinct because HWR tried to control things and Loki’s role is unique to the MCU dimension.
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u/pipiripicho_2005 1d ago
Tell me if my question is correct or incorrect. In the first chapters, it says that he united all the alternate timelines into a single line, the sacred timeline, but those timelines should be universes. Therefore, each universe, like 616 or 838, is following the sacred timeline, because I don't think that Silvey or Child Loki are from the same universe as the Loki we know.
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u/d7x_ 1d ago
What he who remains was doing probably had some PR spin put on it, uniting the timelines sounds much better than obliterating diverging paths from existence. I do believe there was once a distinction between timelines within a universe and dimensions/universes separate from the MCU universe.
Maybe now it’s all the same thing to simplify things for the general audience.
But to answer your question variants like Sylvie and child Loki are from pruned timelines that differed from the path of the sacred timeline. Choices could have been made differently in those timelines that led to them existing instead of the Loki we have.
Left to it those timelines would become their own distinct realities rather than a branch of the MCU.
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u/pipiripicho_2005 14h ago
So what you're suggesting is that the Loki variants are from the same universe (616) and that due to circumstances, branches were created and they were born in those branches, meaning that the other Lokis are from 616 and not from other universes like 838
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u/Academic_Composer904 5d ago edited 3d ago
I think you should go back and rewatch Loki, particularly season 2. The events of MOM are definitely related to the Multiverse referred to in Loki. By your post, it just feels like you're missing some information.