Loki: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 1

The Time Keepers

When the history of the TVA cartoon plays as Loki waits in line for his trial, what was your reaction? Did you, like Loki, think it was some kind of colossal joke? Interesting? Or that something about it just felt wrong somehow? After all, the animated sequence seems reminiscent of those 1950’s “duck and cover” cartoons instructing schoolkids on how to survive a nuclear missile attack, in that it masks something quite horrifying with a sunny disposition.

Thing is, you’d be right to feel a bit suspicious. Because the origin of the Time Keepers as presented in that cartoon is wrong. Based on the original comics, it wasn’t the Time Keepers who created the Time Variance Authority, it was the other way around.

At the end of the universe, the last Director of the TVA, simply known as “He Who Remains,” recruited the last three surviving sentiment beings to preserve the flow of time known as the Time Twisters. Only the Time Twisters decided that the best way to preserve time was to go back to the dawn of existence and destroy everything, stopping along the way on Earth every 3,000 years. In the end, they were defeated by Thor, and He Who Remains recruited alternate versions of the Time Twisters he dubbed “the Time Keepers,” believing they would do a better job.

But although the Time Keepers didn’t set out to destroy all of reality, they were just as fanatical. First, they recruited one Nathaniel Richards, a.k.a. Immortus, who also just so happens to be a possible future version of Kang. Immortus was then tasked to eliminate the Avengers. Why? Because according to the Time Keepers, the Avengers are responsible in possible realities for helping humanity reach beyond the stars, resulting in an totalitarian intergalactic empire. In other words, the Time Keepers are pruning timelines to keep humanity stunted because of what might happen, not what will happen.

So yes, while the series may deviate from the comics, there’s definitely more than a hint of propaganda and cult-like aggrandizement at the TVA with regards to the Time Keepers and their precious “Sacred Timeline.” Perhaps what’s really going on is less about them preventing another “Multiversal War” and more about preventing a potential threat to their authority.

Oh, and here’s another interesting little detail. The cartoon also made mention that when someone strays from the Sacred Timeline, they create what is known as a “Nexus Point.” The last time we heard the term Nexus was in one the psuedo-commericals from WandaVision. Remember what we said about Nexus Beings and how that might apply to Wanda Maximoff herself?