S01.E02: The Variant

[johntfs]

11 hours ago, silverstream said:

...to be fair, if I were in the hands of an agency that vaporized people at the slightest provocation, I'd be booking it out of there the first chance I got too 😆

Except that I don't think Loki was using the Time Door to run away from the TVA.  He was using it to run toward Lady Loki. 

I think at that point Loki was relatively safe in terms of the TVA.  He'd led them here to where the Evil Loki was hiding out, prior to which he discovered how it was possible to hide from the TVA in apocalypses.  If Loki stops or goes to Mobius, he has useful information.  This Loki is female.  This [Loki does an illusion] is what she looks like in her true form.  And she can possess people.  That would be more than enough to extend his "stay of execution" from the TVA.

But.

But that's not enough for Loki.  Loki understands that there's only really one way to stop this woman (if she should be stopped) and that's to understand her.  To hear her side of the story.  And that was never going to happen back at the TVA.  The only way that happens is to go after Lady Loki through the door to talk to her Loki to Loki.

[SnarkShark]

On 6/17/2021 at 12:05 PM, Bruinsfan said:

that fight in the Roxxcart store was throwing the participants with force matching a human fight, not one where architecture is incidental collateral damage. Have the people writing the show forgotten that he's a god?

Well, not really.  But point taken that a random big guy shouldn't have easily dominated him. It's got to be wanked that the possessed people maybe inherit additional physical power from their controller. 

[Emily Thrace]

On 6/18/2021 at 12:59 AM, arc said:

Loki can shapeshift, right? It's not just all illusions. Perhaps the variants adopt different shapes to go with their different personalities.

One comic book character that the Female Loki could be is that Loki has a daughter in some of the comic stories. He did seem to recognize her. It would certainly explain why he went with her. It would introduce a family element to the story something all the disney+ shows have had and was always a big element of the Thor movies. 

[arc]

On 6/17/2021 at 9:05 AM, Bruinsfan said:

Yeah, it didn't appear that either Loki or the variant-possessed people he was fighting had superhuman physical powers at all.

I feel like the trucker guy kicked Loki harder than an unenhanced human could have.

[Abra]

I knew this variant they were chasing would be female because I accidentally got spoiled on one of those YouTube channels during TFATWS reviews. But is she actually Lady Loki? I'm mean, they're saying that she has a Variant Loki energy signature or whatever, but could that be faked?

I'm wondering about the attention given to Mobius's drink and the coasters. Should we expect the Franklin D. Roosevelt High School pen and the other analysts mentioned who work for Ravonna to have meaning in future episodes?

I really just love how polite Loki is. Weird to see, given that he's a murderer and all, but he's all "I beg your pardon" and saying "Nice to see you" to Pillboi Casey before he takes his drink instead of just grabbing the damn thing. It's possibly just Tom Hiddleston shining through the character, but whatever, I love it.

Why does there need to be a Minuteman on duty, standing watch over the lunchroom? Curious.

Before this show is over, if we don't see Mobius M. Mobius on or at least about to ride a jetski, I swear to god...

There's no candy on Asgard? Poor Asgard.

Seeing the Alabama hurricane listed as a Category Eight vaguely irks me. Not that it's going to be referenced again, but while I can buy them saying climate change has made hurricanes even faster/stronger/whatever in the future, at the end of the day the Saffir–Simpson Scale is about determining the amount of damage a hurricane will cause. A Cat 5 hurricane will cause catastrophic damage. There's no need to create a higher category, because what is worse than catastrophic that's not hyperbole? Anyway.

Hunter C-20 kept saying "It's real." What's real? What did she see? I'm assuming whatever she saw is the reason she was kidnapped and not killed. Maybe she was meant to be found.

Can someone explain the logic of what happened at the end to me, or are we just supposed to "wait and see" or even just handwave the timey wimey stuff? I don't see how just sending a reset charge to another place/time could create an alternate timeline/nexus event. I thought a person had to Do A Thing to muck things up; I don't see how sending a random object where it doesn't belong would be enough to split the timeline. Unless reset charges do more than just destroy and I missed it? I am confusion.

Tom Hiddleston just has the most beautiful voice, my goodness.

[paigow]

Lady Loki created Nexus Events for Christopher Columbus in 1492 and the Catholic Church in 1390

[arc]

12 hours ago, Abra said:

Seeing the Alabama hurricane listed as a Category Eight vaguely irks me.

To be fair, it wasn't a "category 8 hurricane", it was a "class 10 apocalypse", which feels more like TVA terminology than something about hurricanes.

[Abra]

23 minutes ago, arc said:

it wasn't a "category 8 hurricane", it was a "class 10 apocalypse"

It was both.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

16 hours ago, Abra said:

Can someone explain the logic of what happened at the end to me, or are we just supposed to "wait and see" or even just handwave the timey wimey stuff? I don't see how just sending a reset charge to another place/time could create an alternate timeline/nexus event. I thought a person had to Do A Thing to muck things up; I don't see how sending a random object where it doesn't belong would be enough to split the timeline. Unless reset charges do more than just destroy and I missed it? I am confusion.

IMO, it's 'wait and see', but I think the reset charges aren't just technology, they've got mystical energy too. If that's the case, I expect seven or eight of them going off at the same place at the same time is enough of A Thing to put the timeline out of whack. Otherwise, why would Lady Loki have bothered to steal them in the first place?

[Bruinsfan]

Considering the amount of jury rigging that was going on in that big-box store it's entirely possible Lady Loki modified the reset charges themselves to have an effect other than what they normally do once detonated.

[Llywela]

1 minute ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

IMO, it's 'wait and see', but I think the reset charges aren't just technology, they've got mystical energy too. If that's the case, I expect seven or eight of them going off at the same place at the same time is enough of A Thing to put the timeline out of whack. Otherwise, why would Lady Loki have bothered to steal them in the first place?

They didn't all go off at the same place at the same time, though, did they? I thought they were all sent to a bunch of other places and times, where they then all went off - simultaneously by TVA standards, but in Real World terms, scattered through time. We saw a bunch of different dates and locations listed as going critical in the TVA office after the event.

I agree, though, about the reset charges being more than mere tech and that setting off that many nexus events all at the same moment (from the TVA's point of view; scattered through time from the perspective of the events themselves) was obviously a deliberate ploy on Lady Loki's part, for reasons that remain to be seen. It is clearly just the next phase of a much wider plan.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

1 hour ago, Llywela said:

They didn't all go off at the same place at the same time, though, did they?

I might have misunderstood what you wrote. The reset charges were all in the Roxxmart store when they detonated, but they each opened a different place on the timeline. Physically they were in the same place, they just activated a separate timeline for each one.

[Kel Varnsen]

16 minutes ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

I might have misunderstood what you wrote. The reset charges were all in the Roxxmart store when they detonated, but they each opened a different place on the timeline. Physically they were in the same place, they just activated a separate timeline for each one.

It seems weird to me that the reset charges created new timelines rather than resetting the sacred timeline back to some point.

[Llywela]

39 minutes ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

I might have misunderstood what you wrote. The reset charges were all in the Roxxmart store when they detonated, but they each opened a different place on the timeline. Physically they were in the same place, they just activated a separate timeline for each one.

They went off in the Roxxmart store, but as part of that detonation seemed to be transported to other locations, as borne out by the nexus events taking place scattered through time. I figured Lady Loki had rigged up a way of transporting them away through time as they went off - I mean, their effects weren't felt in the store.

[arc]

The reset charges had tiny, horizontally oriented time doors activated under them, so they were sent to different locations and times before detonation.

[Llywela]

7 minutes ago, arc said:

The reset charges had tiny, horizontally oriented time doors activated under them, so they were sent to different locations and times before detonation.

Thank you! That's what I thought happened, but I was starting to doubt myself after the conversation above! So like I said, they very much didn't all go off in the same place at the same time. They were scattered through time and went off out there, creating a whole bunch of nexus events, which happened in very different times and places, simultaneous only from the TVR's point of view.

[BlazingBloomers]

I think that Lady Loki stole the reset charges and sent them back to critical points in the Sacred Timeline where even a small deviation would create a rapidly branching new line. This would force the TVA to deploy most, if not all, of their teams very quickly leaving headquarters unprotected. We saw multiple teams heading out almost immediately.  The portal she and Loki went through might just take them right into the TVA. 

[johntfs]

20 hours ago, BlazingBloomers said:

I think that Lady Loki stole the reset charges and sent them back to critical points in the Sacred Timeline where even a small deviation would create a rapidly branching new line. This would force the TVA to deploy most, if not all, of their teams very quickly leaving headquarters unprotected. We saw multiple teams heading out almost immediately.  The portal she and Loki went through might just take them right into the TVA. 

It might but I kind of doubt it.  Once back in the TVA they'd be powerless.  No magic.  No body-hopping.  I think they went Lady Loki next hideout where she'll tell our Loki her story.

[Kel Varnsen]

So rewatching this episode the stuff about Ragnarok was weird. The file said it was an event where the society was completely wiped out, even though it wasn't. Plus using Loki's example if he did something like push Hulk off the rainbow bridge it could totally have an affect on the timeline. If it didn't nothing that happened in Thor: Ragnarok would have any link to Avengers Infinity War, which it did. 

Plus Morbius said that an apocalypse had to be naturally occurring, but Ragnarok was caused by Surtur.

 

[johntfs]

1 hour ago, Kel Varnsen said:

So rewatching this episode the stuff about Ragnarok was weird. The file said it was an event where the society was completely wiped out, even though it wasn't. Plus using Loki's example if he did something like push Hulk off the rainbow bridge it could totally have an affect on the timeline. If it didn't nothing that happened in Thor: Ragnarok would have any link to Avengers Infinity War, which it did. 

Plus Mobius said that an apocalypse had to be naturally occurring, but Ragnarok was caused by Surtur.

 

I'd argue that the Asgardian society as it was did get completely wiped out.  Granted that some of the population survived and now inhabits a crappy-looking fishing village somewhere in Norway.  That population doesn't live like they used to.  They're citizens of Earth in Norway, so they're presumably beholden to Norway's government.  They're making a society in a New Asgard, but the old Asgard was, in fact, destroyed.

[Kel Varnsen]

4 minutes ago, johntfs said:

I'd argue that the Asgardian society as it was did get completely wiped out.  Granted that some of the population survived and now inhabits a crappy-looking fishing village somewhere in Norway.  That population doesn't live like they used to.  They're citizens of Earth in Norway, so they're presumably beholden to Norway's government.  They're making a society in a New Asgard, but the old Asgard was, in fact, destroyed.

But the whole point with Loki's metaphor was that in an apocalypse a variant can do whatever they want because everyone gets wiped out anyway. But if he pushes Hulk off the bridge that could absolutely change the timeline because Hulk didn't get killed.

Even the file made it sound like everyone is gone, but a bunch of people including several important people survived.

[Scarlett45]

On 6/16/2021 at 3:40 PM, paigow said:

Is an alternate timeline the same thing as an alternate universe? 

I think so. 

[Cobalt Stargazer]

On 6/26/2021 at 7:20 PM, Kel Varnsen said:

Plus Morbius said that an apocalypse had to be naturally occurring, but Ragnarok was caused by Surtur.

I would have to rewatch, but I would think that the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii and Surtr setting fire to Asgard would be kinda-sorta the same thing. A city buried under thousands of tons of ash is no more inhabitable than one torched by a vengeful fire giant, it's just that the fire eventually burns the entire world.

On 6/26/2021 at 9:12 PM, Kel Varnsen said:

Even the file made it sound like everyone is gone, but a bunch of people including several important people survived.

They don't seem to be very interested in Thor or Valkyrie, do they? It doesn't make much sense to think the TVA isn't aware they're still alive, but maybe Asgard itself being wiped out is still considered a world-ending event. It's like wondering why they haven't even mentioned Thanos by name. You would the the Snap would be thought of as an apocalypse, even if it was reversed.

[johntfs]

On 6/26/2021 at 8:12 PM, Kel Varnsen said:

But the whole point with Loki's metaphor was that in an apocalypse a variant can do whatever they want because everyone gets wiped out anyway. But if he pushes Hulk off the bridge that could absolutely change the timeline because Hulk didn't get killed.

Even the file made it sound like everyone is gone, but a bunch of people including several important people survived.

Even if Loki's specific example of "pushing Hulk off the Rainbow bridge" doesn't work, his larger point still stands - and was proved when he and Mobius went to Pompei.

Edited June 28, 2021 by johntfs

[JustHereForFood]

On 6/17/2021 at 2:26 AM, Morrigan2575 said:

I'm convinced that the Time Keepers don't exist, if they ever did. The discussion with Mobius and Ravonna plus the Mobius/Loki discussion have me in the Equilibrium mindset. 

I agree. They got mentioned too many times by now, there has to be some "surprise reveal" at the end.

[tv echo]

Edited July 15, 2021 by tv echo

[Zuleikha]

The original draft of Episode 2 completely followed Sylvie and they changed it.

Is this referring to the above screencap? (where Martin said they planned to show more of what Sylvie did on the timeline in ep 2) I didn't think that was clearly saying they planned for ep 2 to completely follow Sylvie but just that they planned for it to show much more of her. Or is there another interview where Martin is clear that they planned for her to be the focus of the whole episode?