«Loki», Episode 1: «Glorious Purpose»

First off: this discussion of the series includes spoilers! So watch the premiere of «Loki» before you read on.

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Hall H, San Diego, 2013. San Diego Comic-Con International (SDCC) is in full swing. Kevin Feige, the mastermind behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is addressing the audience. He’s talking about the «Avengers» film. The crowd listens intently. Suddenly, the lights go off. Has there been a power cut? No one knows. An uneasy feeling spreads through the audience. Then, a deep, rumbling voice bursts out of the speakers.

«Humanity, look how far you’ve fallen.»

A dazzling light illuminates the stage. Then a man appears. No. A god: Loki. Cue thundering applause – the crowd goes wild. A fan favourite is born. And maybe even the idea for his own series.

But the road to «Loki» was a long one. Seven years long in fact. In the meantime, Tom Hiddleston has appeared in the MCU four more times, most recently in «Avengers: Endgame». In the film, the Avengers travel to 2012 to get the Tesseract – an Infinity Stone. Stupidly, it inadvertently ends up in Loki’s hands and he uses it to teleport away – into another timeline.

And that’s exactly where the series begins.

Introducing: the Time Variance Authority

A punch in the face. That’s what Loki’s first, well, encounter with the Time Variance Authority looks like. Or rather with one of their batons, which cause the physical effects of the punch I mentioned in a sixteenth of the time but with the same amount of pain at normal speed.

Wait, what?

The Time Variance Authority. TVA for short. In the Marvel Comics, the TVA is a cosmic power which monitors the natural flow of time and reality in the form of an infinite bureaucratic agency. Or realities, to be exact. In Marvel’s comic universe, there are multiple realities – parallel universes – which co-exist peacefully as time passes.

The reality where most events in the comics take place is the 616th, so it’s referred to as «Earth-616». As long as the realities don’t stick their noses into the others’ business, everything’s fine. But interferences – like Earth-616 Loki travelling into another reality – threaten the coherence and stability of all realities, and with them the multiverse itself.

That won’t do. Obviously.

The TVA exists to prevent transgressions such as these. It’s not clear who originally created it, but its employees are more or less all faceless bureaucrats, specifically grown, born and raised to work for the TVA. This means they all have a lifelong contract. So much for bureaucracy.

The MCU version of the TVA is no less bureaucratic. In a musty 1970s-style office, Loki has to do a load of paperwork, sign documents – a page for everything he’s ever said in his entire life, which is quite a lot – and take tickets from a machine to wait his turn. Wonderful.

Then, which I think is remarkable, there’s a nostalgic, old-fashioned animated film which explains the multiverse concept of the MCU, just like that.

Again: the multiverse. In the MCU. Finally.

Right, let’s recap. For aeons and aeons, countless timelines competed in a multiversal fight for dominance, which threatened the entire fabric of reality, space and time. Then came the Time-Keepers: all-powerful, all-knowing beings. Together, they restructured the multiverse into a single timeline – the «Sacred Timeline».

The multiverse was no more.

To protect the Sacred Timeline and its progression as determined by the Time-Keepers, they created the TVA and its whole workforce. Because, now and again, individuals – such as Loki – cause new, alternative timelines: variants. The TVA is there to arrest the instigators of such offences – Nexus events – and undo the resulting variants. This means that everything goes back to following the Sacred Timeline.

According to the TVA, if Nexus events aren’t corrected, sooner or later they’ll cause timeline chaos, which could cause the next all-consuming multiversal war.

Nexus. That rings a bell. But I’ll get to that later.

The history of the Time-Keepers

Time-Keepers are in the comics too. They were created by «He Who Remains». He Who Remains is the last living director of the TVA in a distant future, who witnessed the end of space and time – the death of the multiverse.

For the next multiversal cycle, he created the Time-Twisters – three beings from three cocoons – who were intended to survive the end and have knowledge of the past to create a better future.

The plan failed. Instead of moving into the next reality, the Time-Twisters travelled into the past of the still-existing multiverse. Spiralling back through time, they appeared every 3000 years and destroyed the earth. But before they reached the 20th century, Thor confronted them.

Thor realised that he couldn’t do anything to defeat the Time-Twisters, so he travelled to the end of time. There he met He Who Remains – the Twisters were still in their cocoons – and convinced him of the Twisters’ destructive nature. He Who Remains destroyed the Twisters before they hatched, but this created two new timelines:

one where the Twisters lived and another where they didn’t exist.

To protect both timelines, He Who Remains created new, improved versions of the Twisters: the Time-Keepers. From then on, the Time-Twisters and the Time-Keepers were locked in an eternal war.

Things went somewhat haywire with the Twisters and Keepers from there. It was exciting when the Twisters joined forces with Immortus to kill Wanda Maximoff – the Scarlet Witch.

Wanda.

In the comics, Wanda’s a Nexus Being – mostly just called a Nexus. These are rare beings that can alter reality and, accordingly, the flow of time. We also know from the comics that Nexus Beings act as pillars of the multiverse, ensuring coherence and stability. The laws of physics dictate that there may therefore never be more than one Nexus per multiverse at any given moment. Comic book physics, that is.

No wonder the Twisters fear Nexi. But Immortus began to work against the Twisters. When the Twisters were finally defeated, he tried to make himself the ruler of the multiverse. He was ultimately defeated by the combined forces of the Watchers – whom we’ve already seen – and the TVA. In the resulting power vacuum, the Time-Twisters returned one more time before the Time-Keepers destroyed them once and for all.

So now I’m asking myself whether a Nexus breach such as this one has something to do with the Nexus Beings in the comic. In episode 7 of «WandaVision», there was a commercial for Nexus capsules. Who knows whether or not this was a clue that what happened in «WandaVision» – just such a Nexus breach – disturbed the Sacred Timeline?

It’s ultimately to do with the prophecy about the Scarlet Witch, who returns to destroy the world.

Agent Mobius’ interrogation

Right, back to Loki. In front of a TVA judge, he’s given a choice: be reset or work with the TVA’s Agent Mobius – spectacularly played by MCU newcomer Owen Wilson – to track down another fugitive variant of Loki who’s killing other TVA agents throughout the Sacred Timeline.

Obviously, Loki will choose any option which doesn’t get him killed.

Agent Mobius, of course, also appears in the comics. He was featured for the first time in 1991 in the 353rd issue of the first «Fantastic Four» volumes. In it, he’s initially in junior management at the Time Variance Authority, but his meticulous love of detail later got him promoted to Senior Management Executive.

In the «Fantastic Four» comic, he hunts down heroes for illegal use of time, continuity theft and other temporal offences. When the Fantastic Four escape his surveillance, he’s threatened with being taken off the case. But, later on, he proves himself with the Fantastic Four’s help. It’s why he gets promoted.

In «Loki», Agent Mobius is shrewd and quick-witted. But his main job is to monitor potentially dangerous individuals that could turn into variants.

«Like me,» says Loki.

«No, really dangerous variants. You’re just a pussycat,» replies Mobius, outlining the seriousness of the threat we’re going to be dealing with in «Loki».

Mobius only took notice of Loki because a frightened French girl in 1549 had led him to him. In a church – one of six known crime scenes caused by the fugitive variant – the girl shows Mobius a horned devil stained glass window.

Ready? Here it comes. Mephisto. BAM.

Muahaha – Luca’s wild theory

Mephisto. There, I said it. I can’t help it. Not after my «WandaVision» episode discussions. Every week, I confidently predicted that Mephisto would appear. But nope. He never turned up. And he probably never will.

Unless…

OK, let’s go back to the beginning. In the Marvel comics, Mephisto is one of the most dangerous, immortal demonic beings around. Maybe even the devil himself. After all, he does rule over a dimension that some would say is the biblical hell itself. What’s more, Mephisto is also an excellent liar, constantly on the hunt for souls, and powerful enough to bend the past and present to his will.

Doesn’t that sound suspiciously like Loki?

OK, so Loki can’t control the timeline. Not yet, anyway. Who knows? In the meantime, Loki escapes Mobius’ interrogation, stumbling across a drawer full of Infinity Stones in one of the offices. I love how Loki has a mini existential crisis in this scene. If employees casually use a few surplus Infinity Stones from reset timelines as paperweights, exactly how powerful is the TVA?

Admitting defeat, Loki agrees to work under Mobius’ supervision. Then he finally tells him who the fugitive variant is: Loki himself.

But not the same Loki sitting in the interrogation room. A Loki from a different timeline. My theory: the MCU is known for taking inspiration from the comics but not staying true to every detail. So, the new Loki variant could be the MCU’s version of Mephisto.

I mean, did you see the blood-red runes on the shovel in the final scene? And how the evil Loki used fire to kill the agents? It all has a distinctly satanic feel to it. Maybe this is a Loki who’s acquired the powers and abilities that Mephisto has in the comics. Voilà: an MCU Mephisto!

What’s more, it could explain why Mobius was talking about a «really dangerous» variant, which isn’t the Loki sitting in front of him. Why else is Mobius so intent on finding out more about Loki’s true nature? What drives him. Is it simply a quest for power? Wanting to watch others suffer? Loki comes to his own conclusion; that fear and suffering are part of an illusion that he uses to push his insecurity onto others and dominate them.

Wise man.

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But I have a different theory. One that joins up with the series finale of «WandaVision». But I’ll keep it to myself for the next episode discussion. Who knows, maybe you’ve worked it out. Let me know in the comments.

Hint: it’s got something to do with the Darkhold.