arc

Thor is very, very tough. As far as I dimly understand it — I still have never watched Thor 1 & 2 — all Asgardian are superhumanly strong and durable, but some like Thor are much more so than the average Asgardian. (Remember Hela mowed down Asgardian armies by herself.) There’s an unrelated sci fi book series “Jumper” where one guy can teleport and then people who’ve ridden along enough times will spontaneously develop the power themselves. Maybe Loki’s time slipping -> consciously controlled time travel worked the same way. Thanos is extremely tough. He soloed Cap, Iron Man, and Thor with two hammers. Just cause Loki is Frost Giant tough doesn’t mean he’s impervious to all harm. Also, I believe Loki has a lot more magical training than Thor. As far as I know, Thor mostly performs magic through his hammers, and mostly just to change outfits.

Plus, Vellani is great as a dancer. I mean, I don't know about technical skill, but she was so watchable and clearly having fun during the little bits of dance in Ms Marvel. I figured when I first saw the singing and dancing planet in the trailers that they put it in there to play to one of her strengths.

Ah. TBH I kinda glossed over some of that HWR monologuing the first time. Whoops =)

My understanding was that under HWR's system, the loom was necessary for even the Sacred Timeline to exist, and when it broke, it destroyed the entire multiverse (including the ST) and the TVA. You'd think this would end all timelines/alt universes from start to finish such that they never existed at all, but the show got really loose with the rules here, because once the loom exploded at the end of episode 4 ("Heart of the TVA") Loki time slipped away, and then eventually time slipped back to the TVA, which he and OB/Doug agreed no longer existed at all. (As Doug said in ep 5, there is no time in the TVA, which kinda squares with the TVA sitting outside time altogether while also contradicting the fact that time clearly passes in a linear fashion within the TVA, though most TVA employees don't really know that since they get periodically memory wiped). So HWR's 'failsafe' was that anyone who killed him would thus allow infinite branching to destroy the loom and thus all universes, and he believed no one could accept that tradeoff. Loki wouldn't either, but he found an alternate path to just killing Sylvie to save HWR. OB said the loom processes 'raw time' into the sacred timeline. Without it, (handwaving fan speculation starts here) I guess raw time has too much 'temporal radiation' so the timelines break down, spaghettifying the way Timely did at the end of ep 4.

Many Ricks have a nihilistic view of humanity, and the show too a lot of times. So it's nice to see that instead of birthing another endless cycle of revenge (as Evil Morty suggested would happen to him if he used the cross-universe nullifier weapon), the widow Mobius moved on.

Personally, I'm tickled that Lashana Lynch's character was killed offscreen (in Wandavision) after her first Marvel movie and then Lynch has been in two more MCU projects since (Doctor Strange 2 and this one) with a pretty good chance to be in at least one more.

And an outside chance they add Miles Morales if the MCU kinda merges Young Avengers with Champions plus if they can swing the deal with Sony. Honestly, now that I say it, I think it might happen but not for a first Young Avengers movie because I can’t imagine Sony introducing Miles in time.

Well, diehard MCU fans know Scott Lang wrote a book (which Disney actually made into a real thing). But also, if Carol is famous all over the universe, she's probably famous on Earth. The Ms Marvel show actually had an "AvengerCon" where it was heavily implied the whole world knows a lot about the events of Infinity War and Endgame. Actually, I gotta say, Kamala was also created in the comics as a fan of Carol Danvers' Captain Marvel, but I don't think in the comics Captain Marvel dropped an enormous capital ship on New Jersey, which I would think might have sapped some of her approval rating, at least in NJ. This reminds me of a science nitpick I had. As Tarnax is getting destroyed, Carol smashes some falling concrete. This is not a great way to save people underneath from getting crushed! A block of concrete that large is many tons. Even if she smashed it so hard it completely turned to dust, you know how much all that dust weighs in aggregate? The same amount of tons! To be fair, it probably spreads out a little more and slows down more thanks to atmospheric drag, but probably not enough to not flatten the people underneath. (Then again, I guess Skrulls are superhuman, with enhanced durability plus the ability to shapeshift, possibly into crush-resistant forms?) Anyways, this is a common occurrence in superhero comics and every writer seems to think a big falling thing getting smashed just disappears like videogame detritus. My other science nitpick is treating interstellar distances -- or intergalactic!!! -- as so meaningless that everything more or less happens at the same time. Hell, Carol has a live audio call with Fury from many light years away. Again, I know this happens a lot in genre fiction and in the MCU. It was just announced that Disney would be hitting a major pause button on most of their MCU output. Deadpool is now the only MCU movie scheduled for 2024; many others have moved to 2025.

Technically, the Mobius that we know of with a regular life is on a branched timeline, according to episode 5. Who knows what sacred timeline Mobius is doing <shrug>. (For my own headcanon, I'm going to say that actual TVA staffers are outside the timelines altogether.) It seemed to me like TVA Mobius has accepted that his role in the (multi)universe is to work at the TVA. It is a little bleak that it doesn't seem like they have personal lives though. The s1 TVA probably didn't have vacations, or else Mobius would have just gone jetskiing on his own. Ravonna's just an ordinary human though. Loki and Sylvie only made it through to HWR thanks to the heroic interventions of Old Loki and his magic. And also, apparently per this episode, because HWR had intended them to get there.

Oh, indeed, but it dimmed visibly. (I mean if you really want to get into the science of it, siphoning off the surface of the sun just gets you some hot plasma; the fusion happens much deeper inside and at much hotter temperatures.) The peace talks planet was also where the Skrulls set up their refugee camp. As the Skrull leader said, they had nowhere else to go. It certainly looked destroyed. But who knows, maybe Hala didn't need all of the water world's water. I dunno how Pakistanis do it, but in the slice of Chinese-Canadian culture I know, we almost never say "aunt" in English. We say "auntie" in English all the time, for non-family aunties. But somehow "aunt" would be reserved for family relations. (But a brief websearch suggests this distinction is common usage in many cultures and countries.)

I liked it. Call it an 8/10. Something made a bunch of lines feel forced... Probably a victim of severe cutting for time? As with the first Captain Marvel movie, I'm both extremely amused and disappointed with the toothlessness of the central metaphor for imperialism and colonialism. There was so much potential in the first movie about a displaced population, refugees from Kree wars of conquest. And here, how very on the nose that a colonial power now faces self inflicted ecological catastrophe and proposes to fix it by stealing resources. Speaking of which, they fixed the hole in reality that Dar-Benn caused, and Carol fixed Gala's sun and presumably Earth's as well, but what about the stolen water and air? Was the Skrull refugee planet fully destroyed? Are they being hosted by the Asgardians in exile on Earth? I did like the leads a lot. And the joyful cheesiness of Kamala stealing Nick Fury's recruiting bit. And it was nice to see Kate Bishop again. But, and I realize Marvel has had its pedal to the metal debuting new series and movies, it still feels like there's a legit chance it could be another five years before the studio actually launches a Young Avengers/Champions film.

If Loki had hundreds of years to learn time science, couldn't he have worked with OB to make the gangway shorter? Or install a moving sidewalk? Or a catapult? It's kind of super BS that the suit is attached by a huge hose but there's not even a retrieval system. Even if the wearer has to run all the way out there under their own power, there should be a winch to pull them back. The mid-episode conversation with HWR is actually quite reminiscent of an old issue of Legion of Super-Heroes (from DC). In it, the Time Trapper, a villain who controls time and lives at the end of time himself, told the hero Mon-El that he had orchestrated their reality to create the Legion, etc, and thus was the author of Mon-El's entire life. And when Mon-El decided he'd still be willing to kill the Trapper, the Trapper told him that doing so would retroactively erase the Time Trapper from the timeline altogether, completely resetting the universe. (Then the next episode was with a weird alt universe where some other villain had taken over the universe by the 30th century, and then that reality was rewritten when they recruited someone to step into the vacant role of the former Time Trapper.) Bonus: the Time Trapper even wears a purple robe too. Meanwhile, Loki sitting on the throne reminded me of the DC/Vertigo comic Lucifer, wherein the throne of heaven (the "Primum Mobile") is vacated by God and so reality itself begins to unravel, until a suitable heir can be found to sit upon it again and take up the role. OK, anyways. So now Loki's fixed the timestream by sitting on the throne, HWR is dead, Sylvie's alive, and the TVA's main job is tracking down HWR variants? I think that's a decent enough season finale. Or even series finale, though I hope we'll see Loki one more time. Ahahahaha, the MCU continues its streak of having the TV shows debut new costumes. (I guess Loki S1 kinda didn't?)

Over the seasons, the show has gradually tried to put some soft limits on Rick. But I still feel like if Rick could genetically engineer torsos from the Planet Spaghettians, he could have synthesized a molecule for molecule replacement. Separately, it strikes me now that modern vacuums are largely bagless, to the point that many stores that sell vacuum cleaners don’t even sell bags anymore. Maybe the sentient vacuum cleaners have eliminated bagless vacuum mutations. I wonder if Morty’s promise was a promise from the writers to stop doing the “Morty raises an ethical objection and then doing it more ethically blows up on him” plot or just the subset that starts with Rick doing something mysterious.

Y'know, this "alien makes delicious thing in horrible way" factory is very reminiscent of Futurama's Slurm factory episode. I guess the difference is that one didn't really put a whole lot of moral dilemmas on Fry and co. Also, I'm not sure I buy that suicide is the only way to have started the spaghettification process. Rick said it was due to cortisol levels. If he can genetically engineer brainless torsos, surely he could have just given them baseline super high levels of cortisol. I liked the tag a lot. Come to think of it, the ep was a fairly thin metaphor for industrial scale animal husbandry, sooooo =/ Also, I'm not sure the plot fully hangs together. If the universe as a whole rejects Morty-O's Spaghetti on moral or ethical concerns, why would they also reject a synthesized duplicate that doesn't have any of those concerns? In the real world I'm sure some vegetarians have aesthetic reasons for rejecting Impossible Burgers, but surely the ethical concerns are adequately addressed, right? I guess then again, the question would be why would Rick sign over the rights to the spaghetti to Spaghetti Planet, or even why wouldn't it be synthesizable by the universe at large anyways. Which reminds me of how I vaguely understand the last few books of the Dune series go, where among other things eventually the mad scientists of that universe manage to synthesize "spice" and forever end any monopoly on spice.

Yeah, but like Bruce said about time travel in Endgame, that timeline is effectively wiped out when you time travel back and replace the missing thing as if it had never left. (And, given this show, I guess the TVA prunes divergent timelines.) If the actors' ages are the characters' (bio) ages, then Casey is 12 years younger than Mobius but actually he's 48 years older than Mobius, as ”Frank” was plucked out of 1962. Time travel! The time loom breaking down and threatening all of existence implies it's foundational to reality, which raises the question of how it was ever built in a universe that didn't initially have one.

As Maya is Choctaw and the show was made in consultation with the Choctaw Nation, the first two episodes were screened for Choctaw Nation's annual powwow: https://www.marvel.com/articles/tv-shows/echo-screening-choctaw-day-celebration Marvel also announced Spotlight:

There was no explanation for why Loki started time slipping, no. Maybe they'll cover it in the next episode or maybe it was just a very plot-convenient side effect of killing HWR. As for Loki and Mobius: yes, in one sense Loki was selfish. Some of the best moments of this show have been when Mobius (in s1) and Sylvie here break past Loki's self-deceptions to get to real truths. But while Sylvie was right in the bar, Loki's pretext for gathering his friends wasn't entirely wrong either: ignoring the apocalypse doesn't mean the apocalypse will ignore you. Also, I'm of the opinion that if someone leaves and then returns with time travel to the instant they left, functionally they didn't really leave. Although if they left for a really long amount of perceived time from their end and had life changing experiences, then maybe.

Variety: https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/echo-trailer-marvel-hulu-rating-release-date-1235778785/ (There's no spoiler below; I pushed the spoiler button and now I can't delete the spoiler box on mobile.)

New trailer! Also confirms new release date and that it’ll still be a binge drop. I kinda hoped they would recalibrate in wake of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes slowing down the pipeline. The tag line “no bad deed goes unpunished” has to be a Punisher tease, right?

Yes, per the first episode of the series, he was caught by the TVA almost immediately after escaping with the Tesseract/Space Stone in branched 2012.

I feel like Loki could be a special case because of magic and all those Loki variants could have started out as the same baby.

First thing that bugs me, since it came up in the previouslies: the temporal loom is more of a temporal spinning mule, isn't it? "[refining] raw time into a physical timeline" is much more analogous to how fabric yarns and threads are spun from raw staple fibers into a one-dimensional product, rather than a loom that weaves yarns into a two dimensional fabric. (There are many myths about Fates weaving destinies into a tapestry that's basically a sort of sacred timeline, of course, but this show has chosen to make the Sacred Timeline a one-dimensional thing rather than a tapestry.) Was that girl who broke her arm written to not have lines because that made the most sense, or because they could pay her less if she doesn't have lines? As far as I understand the SAG-AFTRA contracts, she'd be an "under-five" (as in five or fewer lines, totalling 50 words) even if she did get to speak a little. Whoa, real timeline OB's lab/workshop looks a lot like his TVA workshop. I didn't recognize Zaniac as a real game, but it turns out it's a deep cut MU reference. "It's about who" is magnificent cheese and I love it. Oh wow, I had no idea this was based on a real incident!

(some noodling on the lore of the show and Sylvie's character, which I felt fits better here than on any particular episode thread) From the s02e04 thread, responding to me saying the show wants Sylvie to be a fully separate character from Loki and The show in s1 was pretty loose with the rules on how timeline branching worked and how far it could go before becoming unrecoverable to the Sacred Timeline, but on the one hand, it seemed like the TVA pruned variants right around the decisive moment where timelines would branch. (On the other hand, Sylvie said her parents told her she was adopted, and our Loki found out much, much later. Maybe that started the timeline divergence?) Anyways, I don't think Loki and Sylvie were intended to have started out as two different babies. I think they were both the same baby found by Odin and Sylvie is a trans femme variant on Loki. I guess there isn't a whole lot of canon to support or rule out either view, though.

Last season, the TVA was more or less just about keeping history going the way it was supposed to. So the Avengers were allowed to time travel in Endgame but the TVA would clean up variants and branches. This season they’ve introduced the loom which processes “raw time” into a team stream or something and if it breaks then all chaos is unleashed, or possibly the multiverse dies. And it’s an urgent problem but with no ticking clock or any kind of indication that things are getting worse. And this massive city-sized agency tasked with patrolling an entire universe for time shenanigans somehow has no one besides our handful of plucky heroes working on this existential looming disaster. And Renslayer opposes them with no plausible counter-plan of her own to not destroy her own timeline. This also kind of describes Sylvie. Then they’ve got this Kang variant who is both a genius and a small time con man so there’s never a sense that the show even knows who Timely should be. also, I guess they want to make Sylvie a fully separate character from Loki but it jarred me when he talked about “his” brother rather than “our” brother.

No, this was the other end of the bit from 2x01 where there was some convoluted plan in which Loki had to get pruned right when the little indicator flashed green in order to fix his time slipping. So yes, normally the pruning stick sends the target to the end of time, but this time it didn't.