The Lokiverse dun Broke the MCU: A Love Story
This isn’t actually a love story, that was just a better title. But I do have a theory – and I think it’s a good one – that makes most of this shit make sense.
To state the obvious up front, Endgame really did some weird shit with time. I haven’t written my rant on Captain America yet, but there were gonna be whole paragraphs on the lunacy of him going back and playing though. After watching Loki though, I have a theory on how it could credibly (in-universe, at least) work.
To state the less-obvious, the very existence of the Loki story completely erases everything in the MCU after his first quest in New York. Because as the show establishes, the MCU is essentially the TVA-approved “official” timeline. The overlords were clear, the MCU we’ve been watching is canon. So if you pull Loki out of that sequence entirely in 2012, then nothing that he’s supposed to do after that, can be done. The Loki that’s been through the show, how does he go back to the MCU and be the guy that arrogantly – and now knowingly – gets his mother killed? My first thought was that the show would end with Loki’s memory getting erased and him dropped back in place, like one of the stones Steve was dropping back in place to prevent the warned-about timeline splits. But that’s pretty boring, isn’t it? And very self-contained. No fun at all.
It doesn’t, for example, explain how Steve could live out those years without getting pruned. Because just like Loki going AWOL breaks the MCU, Steve’s living in the now breaks Bucky. Because he would have been living through the time when the Winter Soldier was really doing his thing. Was he Captain America in that new life? Would he just let all that murder happen? Does he just let SHIELD rot? How – if Steve really lived out those years in realtime – is Bucky still standing there unaffected at the end unless Steve did some inhuman anonymous thing and let the sacred timeline stand?
So what if?
Here’s my thought- that the Lang-Stark time machine in Endgame wasn’t taking them back through time to their own universe. They were dropping back into one or more of the connected ‘variant’ universes, like Loki was dropped back into a TVA that clearly varied from his own.
Think about it.
That means Loki-Prime wasn’t pulled from the MCU, but that a variant Loki took the tesseract and blipped out, and that’s who we’ve been watching on TV. The TVA’s canon Loki is still headed back to Asgard and Dark World, while their narrative Variant Loki is just that- an actual variant. But he’s Loki so we’re still cool with it. It means Rogers can go back and do whatever without breaking Bucky or Agent Carter or anyone else. And why wasn’t he pruned? Well Loki also establishes this has been going on for almost forever. Sylvie’s reality was pruned before Loki ever existed, right? Maybe the TVA just hadn’t gotten to the universe he landed in yet- finite resources and all. Maybe Kang the Merciful just wanted Cap to live the life he could have, and then pruned it all once Rogers got old. Who knows. But it creates plausible possibilities instead of paradoxes.
Think about it!
Of course, there’s a sentimental flaw in that it means we’ve haven’t been watching Loki-Loki, but a Loki-like all along (I’m really proud of that line, not gonna lie. Like the alligator, you know? He looks nothing like Loki, but he’s a Loki-like!). Which is a slight bummer- the actual guy everyone’s invested in isn’t the actual on this adventure, and he isn’t getting the girl. That kinda sucks. Because Middleston plays Loki with such humanity that you want that for him. He’s a character who actually seems to learn, so you want him to have that chance to grow, yet Loki-Prime marches on to his end.
But it works. And the cause? Hey, rookie mistake. They’d never built a time machine before. It was just chance that they discovered the multiverse a thousand years before Kang was born.
That’s my idea, and you’re not gonna talk me out of it. It explains everything except the last minute of the show… Did he drop back to a variant universe with a variant TVA, or was the entire canon MCU (and not just the post-NY part) seriously just retconned? That I don’t know yet.
That’s theory 1 at least.
Theory 2 (thought of just now) is that this is Loki-Prime, and while in the multiverse he runs into a self-aware (she’s a witch!) edition of his mother who reassures him that playing out his part is legit for the best. Loki-Prime then goes back to his TVA script and survives Thanos by pulling the double stunt that Loki-Boomer did, and goes off to live happily ever after with Sylvie.
Which I guess would make this a love story after all.
About The Author
davetwsprocket
Dave didn't get the memo until, like, just now. He is capable with arranging words, but only just getting started at getting those words to actually do anything. He is motivated by a disrespect for authority, and towards finally doing what's right. He's good with people, but that's a learned skill- his natural inclination is to be far, far away. He's a Leo.