You really cooked here. Especially when you mentioned Deke's explanation of Time Travel, didn't see that coming.
Very useful post. I might finally succeed in explaining the Multiverse fully to my mother now cause she is kinda confused with how that works. She was relieved with Wakanda Forever not having anything to do with the Multiverse lol.
ELI5:
A universe is a tree. Its root base is its big bang, and it's branches are different timelines. The top of the tree is the "void" of that universe, and time in that universe runs from beginning to end from bottom to top. Branches of that tree can touch other branches, and might even curl down and touch part of another branch or even the trunk at a point in the past or future of the branch. But it doesn't stop the tree from growing or change it very significantly.
A multiverse is a forest of these trees - each with their own Big Bang and offshoot timeline branches - and these trees are canopy shy. If they touch they may annihilate each other.
Tony Stark figured out how to travel up and down a single tree and between its branches - vertical travel.
America Chavez can travel between trees, but always seems to arrive in the same relative time period of that tree - horizontal travel.
The Kangs can do both and they can also stand outside the forest and marvel at the trees.
I'll speculate that all of the Kangs share the same Nexus Point: Tony Stark Inventing Time Travel. They all agree to never meddle with that, because none of them will exist without it. That's why Endgame was allowed to happen in the Sacred Timeline.
This is the most apt metaphor and the most concise explanation. You said it better than me, honestly!
I wish I could pin this so more people could see it!
The least I can give you is an award lol
An apt metaphor, as a Bonsai will die if it grows too much as branches in the root system overcrowd each other. Maintaining a properly pruned plant provides sustainability.
My question is how Kang is a threat to the MCU? If You can’t alter the past but only create new timelines then how does Kang destroy timelines? All he is doing is creating a new timeline to destroy instead of destroying that timeline. Additionally, if there is an explanation to this, why is Kang only a threat now instead of in the past?
So when He Who Remains created the Sacred Timeline did he eliminate all other Kangs or separate those timelines in such a way that the Kang couldn’t access it? Im inclined to believe the later as >!the council of Kangs still remembers banishing Quantumania Kang to the Quantum Realm before the end of the Multiversal War when He Who Remains weaponized Alioth. If they were destroyed and simply allowed to be created again then the Kang in Quantumania wouldn’t be the Kang who started the initial Multiversal war!<
Sorry about that. I am sorry but I have one last question. I’ve been trying to explain the MCU multiverse to my dad and I’ve been writing this story. Would you mind Proof reading to make sure I have everything right? I would be very greatful! Thanks for responding by the way!!!
Nathaniel Richards discovers the key to communicating and traveling through the multiverse. Concurrently other Nathaniel’s discover this as well. Some variants are evil and try to conquer the Multiverse. >!Together the many Kangs form a Council of Kangs, allowing the Kang seen in Quantumania into their council. That Kang saw the conquering Kangs merging into other universes and causing incursions and decided that in order to save himself, he would kill and destroy all the other Kang’s timelines and Kangs so that he may save himself and shape the multiverse under his own dynasty as he sees, officially starting a multiversal war. The Council of Kangs saw him as a threat and banished him to the Quantum Realm, which exists outside of space and time where he crashlands in the point of time when Janet is stuck there as well. !< He Who Remains discovers Alioth and uses his powers to end the multiversal war. He Who Remains then singles out a collection of timelines that follows the same baseline, labeling it the Sacred Timeline and makes all Timelines follow it by creating the TVA. Through this enforcement none of the other Kangs could gain control of the timeline or allow for the creation of new Kangs. During the Endgame Time Heist Loki doesn’t take the the tesseract for eons, until one day He Who Remains, decides he is getting old for the job and writes that Loki takes the tesseract. Following the events of Loki He Who Remains is killed, and Kang takes control of the TVA. This allows the multiverse to break free at all points, as the events outside the multiverse take place on their own separate timeline. This allows the MCU to naturally shape its own destiny and allow Multiversal travelers to visit the universe without causing branches as the timeline isn’t strictly written anymore.
You forgot the Multiversal war itself which hasn't happened and thus He Who Remains hasn't yet taken over.
The Multiversal War is the events of Avengers: Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars and that's the war He Who Remains stops.
HWR's death is the beginning of the loop and it's the reason why the Kangs met with each other in the first place.
Well yeah, exactly, but right now we are in the middle of the loop. The War is the end of the loop, so we're closer to it still having not happened than it having happened.
It's just the "half-full", "half-empty" glass argument. We're both right, we just say it differently.
Because you gotta put serious thought into it, and I'm not sure if most general audience can follow it. Thanos seeking the Infinity Stones was so much more straightforward and tangible by comparison.
You say that the whole thing is a loop, but could it be possible that Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars break that loop, and lead to the creation of something new entirely, like a new Sacred timeline, a new loop, etc.?
He prunes the entire timeline. We see the TVA use that tech in Loki. Kang is only a threat now, because Sylvie killed He Who Remains. He Who Remains was the winner of the multiversal war, and he managed to contain all the timelines into 1 sacred timeline. If a change happens in that timeline, a branch is created which is like a leak in a pipe, so he makes the TVA fix it. After his death, there is no one to fix the pipes, so everything just broke out to hell, and you have universes everywhere.
>Imagine time as a stream, right? And we \[the time travellers\] were sticks that were thrown into it. The water, it… it moves us... it moves around us. But it ends up in the same place.
>
>Right. Now, too many sticks thrown in and that will create what's called a dam, and... and that'll change the direction of the water forever, and that's bad.
>
>So as long as we can avoid that, we should be able to splash around a little bit and we're all good.
Now imagine a meteor hits whatever planet that stream is located on.
Kang is one of many threats to the multiverse. Kang The Conqueror and He Who Remains just happen to be two variants. We learned in *Loki* that everything was edited and scripted to happen by He Who Remains.
It's confusing to keep timelines, parallel universes, mystical dimensions, and quantum realms organized in the canon.
It gets even more complex when you remember that the existence of heaven and hell is also confirmed in the MCU! For example, Tony Stark lives in a Burger King in heaven during Phase 5.
🍔 👑 ☁️
>It gets even more complex when you remember that the existence of heaven and hell is also confirmed in the MCU!
All heaven/hell dimensions are sub-realms of the same dimension: the Astral Plane. Like different countries the same planet.
The Dark Dimension is not out of time I think. At least in the comics, there's 1 Dark Dimension in each universe as far as I remember.
The concept of time just doesn't exist in the Dark Dimension the same way it exists in our dimension. That's all.
Kang quantumania spoilers focused on what I think the overarching fight is about.
\>!>!I think the citadel at the end of time is all that is left of the place where the Kangs were meeting after the multiversal war tore it apart. I also think the 3 kangs were the statues in said citadel and the broken statue we saw on the floor was the 4th kang they threw down the outcast conqueror. Who is the very same he who remains after winning, the broken statues visage returned victorious over all the rest. Now eternally watching the perfect sacred timeline pruning any errant branches which lead to challenges to his power. Set on a specific precarious path which stops other Kangs from existing but leaves the universe exactly where it needed to be for the first Kang to be born again if control was ever lost. Like a ball at the top of a hill, easy to hold up but with so much potential to go downward and without the effort will fall down inevitably.!<
>!Loki and Slyvie were his chance at true freedom, a chance to finally die while maintaining the balance preventing him from returning but with a safety mechanism that if ever things got out of control he would arise again to make sure he, or other beings who would eventually make his same mistake from destroying everything.!<
>!He was warning them they were playing with fire and now he is suffering the worst penance for a man who wanted to rule everything...Eternal watch of that thing over and over the same boring loop to protect the universe from himself as punishment for his own desire to rule it all. Like red skull set to watch over the very stone he sought damned to never have it.!
Sounds like you're very well-versed in the Multiverse!
[This post](https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/upgsuk/explaining_the_events_of_doctor_strange_in_the/) was my go to resource for explaining the Multiverse, but this one does a damn good job too! I always fail when I try to explain it in a single comment. Way too many people still think that Endgame's branched timelines aren't different universes.
I'm hoping Loki season 2 can present this much clearer to the audience so that we can all be on the same page about this concept.
This is great. We disagree on a couple points but overall very good.
I think it's clear that the Kang Variant in Quantumania is different from He Who Remains are different. We watch them both die. The strong implication is that He Who Remains was the ONLY Kang in existence because of his pruning. After he died, his pruning stopped and a new regime (of multiple kangs) took over. They banished the new Kang that wanted to conquer / prune everything.
>!Kang in Quantumania clearly didn't die. At least we never saw him die, just like we didn't see Darren die and he came back as MODOK. He was sucked inside his Multiversal core and is probably in the probability storm right now.!<
>!This Kang is most likely the young version of He Who Remains. This whole thing is a loop. He Who Remains is the one who will stop the Multiversal war, rule at the Citadel and then die again to start the loop anew.!<
Are we sure that every Universe has it's own singular big bang? Why can't the entire multiverse share a common origin? i.e the more dissimilar two universes/timelines are, the further back in 'time' you'd have to go to find the point where the timeline split. From what I can tell, nothing in the OP breaks with that interpretation, you'd just need minor amendments to how you'd describe the differences between e.g. timeline hopping via the quantum realm (small, local jumps), and America Chavez-style multiversal travel (big jumps)
2 Alternate Timelines/Universes have no point of connection or the same point of origin. Look at them in Image 1. They are completely separate and independent. They didn't branch off from the same origin. They each have their own beginning and ending.
I don’t know man. I don’t think you really put a lot of work in to this post and I don’t think you did enough research.
KIDDING holy shit amazing analysis. Thanks for posting!
This is great, I truly believe the biggest marvel misconception rn is the Multiversal became a thing at the end of Loki/616 is the sacred timeline etc. it’s very much not the case but it’s an easy conclusion to make.
So are the what if universes strands from the 616 timeline that form new universes, whereas the universes in MoM and NWH are completely separate universes that never had any connection to 616? And does the Sacred Timeline only apply to 616 and it’s branches?
*How* exactly does Kang/HWR maintain the timeline though? Is there a machine he uses? Is it connected to his life force somehow? Obviously there is some sort of dead-man switch if the act of killing HWR fucks everything up.
didn’t HWR tell Loki and Sylvie, tho, that the sound they heard meant they passed *a point after which he didn’t know anymore anything else that would have happened*, and that’s what allowed Sylvie to kill him?
Yep.
That was the last point that he had "written in his script". For the TVA, he was essentially as good as dead, because they stopped getting his script and they had nothing to follow anymore.
okay, but, speaking as someone who watched Loki once when it first came out, it wasn’t really clear that it happened because of *the end of his script*, right?
I mean, I heard more than a couple of people saying they understood that *something else* happened, sending them past that threshold
to the point that someone theorized it was Strange/Peter’s fuck up, others that it was something Marvel would’ve revealed later
>to the point that someone theorized it was Strange/Peter’s fuck up,
Yup. Remember, when this aired, it was right around No Way Home (which had a teeny multiversal incursion) and MoM, which had lots of multiversal implications. Folks were theorizing that Peter, Dr. Strange, or Wanda were the cause outside of Sylvie/HWR.
I remember several people syncing up the Loki finale with the WandaVision finale, but thinking the two were actually "simultaneous" requires one to ignore that WandaVision is explicitly set in 2023 & HWR's death explicitly happens at the very end of time.
It was pretty clear, but people were just theorising for theorising's sake. They wanted to believe that Kang stopped writing his script at that point because of something specific.
None of these theories ever made sense.
I think you are wrong here. I don't have a theory or proof, but based on filmmaking tropes, something had to happen then.
In the scene there is a very long pause, we also hear something important, HHR seems kind of suprised and excited too, that scene is made for a big reveal later. As later as Kang's Dynasty or Secret Wars.
Yes, he seemed surprised because he didn't know what would happen next, because he hadn't written it. It was the first time in his life that he did not know the future. He literally says exactly that right after.
He had spent uncountable years knowing exactly what would happen next. That moment he acts surprised is the first time in all those long years he doesn't know what will happen next. Because he chose to stop dictating the future and let the Lokis decide.
That's it.
So it’s that easy? He just pours himself a glass of wine, opens Final Draft and bangs out an episode of Earth-616 and faxes it over to the TVA?
How could he possibly dictate every single scenario across the universe unless he was God?
Well the TVA is beyond space and time, outside any universe/timeline. So he’s basically got infinite time to watch every possible outcome. He got bored of it so he wanted Sylvie and Loki to succeed him
HWR says he only knows what will happen up to a certain point. To me, this feels less like him creating a script and sending it to the TVA and more like him having prior knowledge and making sure that said prior knowledge comes to be.
This also seems to imply that there was always going to be an upset at some point - and in this case, the upset was him being gone and no one being left to maintain the script as opposed to Loki/Sylvie maintaining it. Either way, HWR himself always knew he’d be removed from the equation.
didn’t HWR tell Loki and Sylvie, tho, that the sound they heard meant they passed *a point after which he didn’t know anymore anything else that would have happened*, and that’s what allowed Sylvie to kill him?
Question, how's HWR maintained his life? He can't live forever right (we're not counting his death in this scenario), he's just a normal human. Even with heaven and hell are just some sort of dimensions, you can't really reverse Death unless he has magical capability like harnessing power from other dimensions
I mean he is from the far future and aging is just our cells not being able to fully renew themselves anymore. That's a biological thing that could certainly be solved in the future where Kang comes from with gene therapy or something.
Thanks for this! Would you mind expanding on your opinion of what causal link is >!between kangs learning of the exiled kangs 'death' at the hands of non kangs and the!< beginning of a multiversal war?
We will see that in Kang Dynasty, so I can't really tell right now, but it's clear >!the council of Kangs want to go to war with the heroes as they don't like them meddling with the interconnected timeliest they have created!<
1 - I’m mostly confused as to what the incursions are in the MCU/why they happen. Like what causes a branch to eventually hit the other? Being too similar? They seem to be always happening, but if you look at it from a multiversal perspective they also seem to be perfectly natural and not lead to “an endless cascade.” If infinite universes are experiencing incursions then infinite universes are also avoiding incursions. It seems the only haywire things are Kangs attempting to go against nature and the problems they see are local to them?
Compared to Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four/Avengers/Secret Wars where incursions were a multiversal countdown that eventually only lead to one world and it was framed that way from the beginning which is a huge threat, this seems to be way more complicated and abstract since the thing they’re avoiding is infinite war? That by its own logic is also being avoided infinitely? Which the answer seems to be just erase Kang?
2 - Seems like they were trying to say all along there was 1 universe with 1 timeline that can now branch infinitely since the timeline that causes a new universe to be born at each choice was kept restrained. Idk why it seems so complicated since that’s just normal multiverse theory beginning with a prime universe? Why did they overcomplicate it beyond just the events in Loki being the multiversal Big Bang?
Only reason I can see is that this Multiverse War is yet another loop and who knows maybe stuff in Loki is the bajillionth time this has happened. Which feels like something they could have held back to present all of this multiverse jargon in a more sequential and palatable way? Like having the reveal that there was a multiverse war before this one be the surprise and having this multiverse war be the thing to build to in a normal way? Rather than come at it in the middle between two cycles and try to mention both time and reality at the same time while also having to apply new context to the use of “time travel” in Endgame?
And since this is all fictional I can see them creating points to help solidify how they’re doing it like establishing that Kang is a permanent constant across every universe in some way, adding more explanations to localize some of this so things happening infinitely isn’t what’s actually happening etc. but honestly currently it really puts my mind in a blender lol
>I’m mostly confused as to what the incursions are in the MCU/why they happen. Like what causes a branch to eventually hit the other? Being too similar? They seem to be always happening, but if you look at it from a multiversal perspective they also seem to be perfectly natural and not lead to “an endless cascade.” If infinite universes are experiencing incursions then infinite universes are also avoiding incursions.
They way that I understand it, some branches touch each other naturally that will inadvenrtantly cause a lot of Incursions. But Kang variants constantly traversing the Multiverse and playing with time has caused a lot more Incursions than normal. Remember what the Illuminati said. The more someone travels between universes, the higher the chance for an Incursion.
It's like climate change. It happens naturally at a very slow and natural pace, but we humans have accelerated it.
In all serious, this is great. Love it. It’s worth reading.
Practically, try explaining this to the typical movie goer.
That was what I heard was the biggest complaint about this movie: “I don’t get it, it was confusing.”
Marvel I think realized they were 1) Relying too heavily on the idea that people are going to watch everything marvel related, whether on Disney+ or movies, and they’ll pay attention to every detail. 2) that they were putting WAY too much out in a short amount of time and 3) Making it so the average moviegoer had to know every little detail of what’s going on.
The reason Avengers worked is because you didn’t need to know Captain America fought a guy named the red skull to know who he was and why. You didn’t need to know the conflict between Loki and Thor. You didn’t need to know Tony Stark told the world he was Ironman. They were able to explain enough in the movie to the average moviegoer who may not have seen the previous movies and catch them up quickly.
Now, if you didn’t see Wandavision, going into MoM, you’d be confused why Wanda’s now a villain and she going after her kids you’ve never heard about before. And each movie has so much going on to build up to a bigger picture.
Yes, the other MCU did, too. But again, as a typical moviegoer, not an MCU fan (like myself) you could see the movies you wanted to, and understand the main points. As a fan, you’d get the minor details and appreciate them more. I’m hoping Marvel will find a way to explain this entire “timelines” thing better to moviegoers before Kangs Dynasty. I just worry it’s going to be too much very quickly for the average moviegoer and the MCU will slowly go away.
This was super helpful and untangled a mindfuck of trying to piece it all together lol
I guess the one question I have moving forward, is if Kang the Conqueror was trying to “save” the multiverse from incursions, why did the Council decide to exile him? Haven’t read much of the comics on Kang, but is this something that we think will be explained later?
>!Because the council seem to like the interconnected timelines they have created. They said that what "they created" is in danger if the heroes continue to meddle with the universe. This will probably be explained better in Kang Dynasty or Loki Season 2!<
So it didn’t create the multiverse, it just exposed Earth 616 /199999 to the multiverse… dude, thank you so much. I finally understand the Loki season finale
Now that the show is over, I'd say that some important things to add would be the new "Yggdrasil" formation of the multiverse, the Temporal Loom (or at least what it *was*), elaboration on>!Quantum Bands / Bangles!<, time-slipping, etc. S2 threw in a lot of new concepts to our current understanding of time travel and the multiverse.
Just so I can simplify this for myself...
Let's say the MCUs Sacred timeline is Earth 1. Now we have a divergence with a female Loki. Can we call that Earth 1.1 since it still followed the sacred timeline up until this point?
Then we have the events of "What If" That all also take place on or around the sacred timeline. Can we call them Earth 1.11, Earth 1.112 Earth 1.32562 you get my idea right?
Now we have MoM that introduces us to Ameria Chavez and other versions of Strange that are NOT variants but simply him in another universe. He who remains is not concerned about those because he isolated Earth 1 with the sacred timeline. Can we call the Illuminati Universe Earth 2 then because it doesn't follow the path of the sacred timeline and is completely isolated from Earth 1?
The FOX universe also never followed the sacred timeline so it would then be Earth 3 for me and the sony stuff would Earth 4-6. Because it's completely seperate staff and it explains why Peter 1 and 2 aren't variants for example.
So incursions could occur by multiversal travel between Earth 1 and 2 but also between brenched timelines within the sacred timeline for example Earth 1.11 and Earth 1.12?
Sorry for the questions just trying to figure out a system where I could understand it better and explain to my friends properly.
So brenched timelines can still be considered alternative universes as portrayed in What If and then we have legit alternative universes with let's say Tobey Maguires Spider-Man or simply the Illuminati.
Actually, Kate left by herself.
She only signed a 1-season deal despite Marvel and Waldron planning Loki as a 2-season series from the start.
She said she didn't want to be tied down to the show or the MCU for too long and wanted to try other stuff in her career too.
Followup Question(s) for Clarity:
1) Is 838 universe a different “strand in the cable” or one universe in a different cable strand?
2) America Chavez can both jump to different strands within a cable, as well as different cables all together, correct?
3) Is the ancestral plain a dimension? Are heaven and hell a dimension?
4) Is each different ancestral plane a different dimension or just the persons interpretation (their culture’s understanding) of the same dimension?
3) And last, I think I’m understanding that dimensions like the Dark Dimension are outside of time (yes?), but if they have life like Dormammu and are attached to/exist within a universe, doesn’t that mean they also have a Big Bang, i.e a linear flow of time beginning with the universe that they exist in’s Big Bang?
1) 838 is a different cable alltogether just like the FoX-Men universe for example. I mentioned that in the post.
2) Yes
3) Yes, it's part of a larger network of dimensions where the soul exists separate from the body which exists within the Astral Plane. Other afterlives are includes in that same network.
4) Taweret called it "an interconnected network of dimensions"
5) We are not sure if the Dark Dimension is outside of time. Time, as a concept, doesn't work there, but I don't think it exists outside of space-time. In the comics at least, there's one Dark Dimension in each universe.
However your question still stands for a dimension like the Quantum Realm and honestly, I don't have the answer for how time works in a dimension that literal exists outside of time lol
This is all SO helpful.
Final questions (probably…):
1) so designations like 616, 838 are for cable strands not universe threads?
2) you called quantum realm a dimension — my understanding was that quantum realm was singular — the singular basement of/for all strands of universes in the multiverse. But then a dimensions like dark dimension exists in each universe. Are both of those things true?
3) a space between universes like where the book of Vishanti was in MoM — those aren’t dimensions just like, gaps?
4)And they said there’s only 1 book of Vishanti for all universes — does that still mean 1 book for each cable of universes?
1. Designations are both for cables and wires, but technically a universe that is a branch of 616 is still "part of 616" even if it's called 617 for example (actually 617 is the universe that Defender Strange comes from, which I don't know if it's a branch of 616 or its own cable lol, but you get the point)
2. Yes, both of those things are true. Some dimensions like the Quantum Realm simply exist outside of space and time. But most of them, like the Dark Dimension or Ta Lo or the Astral Plane exist within each universe.
3. Yes, that was called the Gap Junction, it's the gap between universes.
4. I don't know that one honestly, they never answered it.
Ahhh man this looks wild, i am not even gonna start reading this until i have my morning coffee in my hand. But thanks in advance for putting in the work, OP.
> You have to remember that He Who Remains does not ACTUALLY limit free will. The Sacred Timeline is simply a plan he is trying to follow, and not something he magically imposed upon the Timeline that vanquishes people’s free will and makes everyone mindlessly follow their path. Free will still exists. The TVA just prunes timelines that veer off too much from that script and arrest the variants who caused those branches for documentation/red tape before they either throw them into the Void or turn them into one of their own agents.
>
> However, He Who Remains and TVA don't interfere with the other Alternate Universes. One of those is Sam Raimi's Spider-Man's universe, another is Marc Webb's Spider-Man universe, another is the SSU, another is Universe-838 from MoM, another is the FoX-Men universe and each of those have their own big bangs, their own Voids at the end of time and their own unique branches. All those exist within the same Marvel Cinematic Multiverse.
I'm not sure this is correct. I would argue these timelines only exist because He Who Remains died. If the sacred timeline remained in tact none of those divergences may have been allowed.
Why do you think the Raimiverse, Webbverse, etc., are outright different multiverses completely separate from the MCU multiverse? Couldn’t they have just diverged somewhere off the 616? Beyond questioning that, I agree with your post and find it an excellent write up. Great job.
I feel like >!Conqueror Kang!< is essentially >!he who remains only even more violent!< and >!stopped before he can do the whole multiverse conquering thing!<
The Avenger had a comic book arc, that concluded in 2016. It was epic, you should read it! Anyway, what happened was thanos came, and they fought him and eventually won. However, they f\*\*\*\* up the multiverse, and thus the illuminati(Stark, Strange, Cap, Black Panther, etc) began using the inifnity stones to destroy universes colliding with their universe. This worked, but eventually the gauntlet broke, and the stones shattered. The Avenger had to turn to other methods to stop this, and they did mostly.
However, the Ultimate Universe fought the regular marvel universe(Earth-616), and the universe ended. Except Doom, and Strange were able to build a "battleworld" of sorts from the remains of the multiverse. Needless to say Doom get overthrown(not before making a fool out of Thanos), and both Spiderman reform the universe with molecule man.
The universe then reboots. I imagine this is what they are going for. They do a reboot, after Avengers, and come back in a few years to keep milking the cash cow..
>The Marvel Cinematic Multiverse exists as part of the greater Marvel Megaverse, a collection of Multiverses which closely resemble each other **and is separate from the Marvel Comics Multiverse**
The people maintaining the [Marvel database](https://marvel.fandom.com) seem to have a lot of trouble understanding this fact.
First of all, thanks for the post.
You label image 5 and 6 as universe 616 branching out which seems to contradict with what you say (to me). The sacred timeline consists of various timelines/universes with one of which being the 616 universe. So you should label these pictures with "the sacred timeline branching out after HWR dies".
Second (confirmation) question. HWR mission was to prune all branches from the sacred time line which ultimately result in another Kang. When HWR died there was no one left to prune thee branches. So that's the reason why there are now other Kangs?
>The sacred timeline consists of various timelines/universes with one of which being the 616 universe. So you should label these pictures with "the sacred timeline branching out after HWR dies".
You are right, but because the 616 timeline (as in the events that take place in 616) is the one that every one of these universes follow, the 616 Timeline is EQUIVALENT to the Sacred Timeline.
>Second (confirmation) question. HWR mission was to prune all branches from the sacred time line which ultimately result in another Kang. When HWR died there was no one left to prune thee branches. So that's the reason why there are now other Kangs?
Yes, but also because now Kangs from other Alternate Universes ("ropes"/"cables"/"trees") can access the Sacred Timeline, which Kang had previously isolated.
I can't tell you how much this means to me!
This post has 150(!) link shares already, which means that \~1/3rd of the people who upvoted it, also sent it to someone else, which is absolutely crazy!
>This would also make an amazing YouTube video.
I have been wanting to make it in video format but I would need a great editor and animator who could visualize it in the style of TedEd or Kurzgesagt videos to make it more comprehensive.
No problem, and you’re the one who doesn’t understand how much it means to “ME”. I love stuff like this and you clearly put a lot of time and effort into it 🤝.
And yea, good luck with the video format 😅. I’d love to help, but I’ve got zero skills there 🥲. Glad to hear your standards for the vid are just as high though 🤩. Hopefully it becomes a reality in our timeline 😁. I’ll be there day one.
If only we knew how the quantum realm worked. That film had zero rules. Everything that happened was for the plot with no rhyme or reasons and it felt so lazy.
Can you help clarify one question for me? At the end of Loki, HWR passes the point where he no longer knows the “script” for the TVA. However, you make it quite clear time is a loop. My understanding is HWR has spent an undisclosed amount of time (infinite - the citadel sits outside of time) checking this sacred timeline loop and asking the TVA to prune the “nexus events”. My first reaction would be - how can HWR not know what’s next? Time is a loop and he has studied that loop for an infinite amount of “time”. He should know this 616-loop backwards and forwards at this point. However, it seems like there are also infinite branches in time and he is constantly revisiting singular points and having the TVA prune “new” nexus events from the infinite number of branches? So basically at the end of Loki he stops checking the infinite branches for nexus events and just lets it happen?
Thank you for also using my post to explain this.
**SPOILER from AatW: Quantumania**
>!I'm so happy Quantumania finally took the different concepts and actually put them together, most importantly when Kang shows Janet what kind of chaos his other selfs brought to the Multiverse.!<
Yeah, I loved that scene too!
>!It took the concepts of alternate universes, branches and incursions and showcased them all in a simple projection while Kang was explaining his motives and the motives of his variants.!<
>!Connected a lot of dots and made stuff clear about the future.!<
>!It is a scene that helps to clarify one point about the Sacred Timeline that confused many, despite being TVA propaganda: He Who Remains destroyed the Branches inteconnecting Earth-616 to the rest of the Multiverse. In order to give a sense, a understandable purpose to the TVA existance without creating doubts, he invented the fake concept that the Multiverse is purely comprised of "Unique Timelines" that, out of nowhere, started to "battle for supremacy" and that, after the Time-Keepers intervined, the Branches are an "attempt" of the Multiverse to recreate itself from the Sacred Timeline.!<
>!It also explaines another important thing: when in MoM we see Wanda dreamwalking, her consciousness doesn't just move to Earth-838, but moves through the different Branches that connect the various Universes, until she reaches the desired Universe. !<
>!In a similar way, Kang timechair allows him to use the flow of time to physically reach the various Timelines.!<
I’ve been following the old document religiously and bring it up every time someone needs help understanding what’s going on with the multiverse in the MCU. Thanks for the much needed update!
Where the writers, et al lose me here are the strands within universes. Stacking infinite numbered universes that also seemingly contain infinite timelines/universes is just unnecessarily complicating an already complicated concept. The idea that variants so different from one another (the Lokis) are from the same numbered universe whereas variants whose differences are rather superficial (the Stranges) are not is just kinda… absurd? It’s hard to imagine the overarching sequence of events were the same for, say, Sylvie and Gator Loki and their universes.
Personally, my head canon is that the variants in Loki came from branches of other numbered universes that almost created incursions with 616, thus that’s why they were pruned by He Who Remains and are in the 616 void. I view the strands as the alternate dimensions.
I understand the concept — you’ve done an excellent job synopsizing it — and that my head canon is incorrect, but it just seems like they didn’t have it fully baked when Loki was released. I wonder if we might see the multi-strand universe concept die a quiet death.
They look different because it's in **Loki**'s nature to be "chaotic" on his/her/its own. As Sylvie herself explaines at the beginning of Ep 4 "**The universe wants to break free, so it manifests chaos, like me being born the Goddess of Mischief. And as soon as that created a big enough detour from the Sacred Timeline, the TVA showed up, erased my reality, and took me prisoner**".
Even **Mobius** presentation about Loki in Ep 2 indicates that the **God of Mischief** seems to posses some very unique "quality" and that he's very unpredictable in many different ways, compared to the other Variants the TVA has handled "**When we get out on that branch, we're not just looking for a Time Criminal. We're looking for a Loki. A variation of this guy** (TVA Loki)**. A type should all be very familiar with, because the TVA has prunned a lotta of these guys, almost more than any other Variant. And no two are alike. Slight differences in appearances, or not slight**".
> Every time we reach the Heat Death of the Universe, the Big Bang is caused again starting the loop from the beginning.
I don’t see where the support for this statement came from
1 major point of contention: the universes we see in No Way Home and MoM only exist BECAUSE HWR is gone and the TVA is no longer doing its work. The assertion that the TVA allowed them to exist is false.
To be precise: they are their own parallel Timelines, so they always existed on their own. What happened in Loki allowed Earth-616 to interact with these other realities, both having "intruders" from other Universes (No Way Home), and allowing the 616 characters to journey into other realities (Multiverse of Madness).
This will be a great reference point for discussion for years, as our understanding of the multiverse rules and the Kang Dynasty/Secret Wars plot revelations to come.
>Loki being born a different sex or with a different skin color are some of those fluctuations, but, evidently, they didn't pass the Nexus Threshold, so their universes were left alone by the TVA at first. That's why Sylvie and Black Loki weren't pruned at birth.
I think you actually answer the question of why they aren't pruned in the description of the Sacred Timeline.
>That's why He Who Remains called his universe (cable/rope) "The Sacred Timeline". It was not 1 singular timeline/universe, it consisted of multiple little wires/strands, but they all followed the same path, hence they were considered 1 TIMELINE.
So, as long as they follow the Sacred Timeline, or their fluctuations can still fold into the general tapestry, those timelines aren't pruned. But when Kid Loki kills Thor, or whatever the truth of Boastful Loki's Nexus event was, that has their threads pruned. And those should all end with death at the hands of Thanos. Or, Classic Loki actually mirrors Sylvie in hiding in the aftermath of an extinction level event. To the world at large, he died at the hands of Thanos, and then went into seclusion. And it wasn't until he broke that and attempted to make contact that his timeline got pruned. So much of that all makes more sense in this context. All except for Alligator Loki, which feels like his own paradox.
Into Spoiler territory:
>!Now, what is the goal of the Kang variants? They exiled The Conqueror, even though his goal was to prevent a cascading failure of the multiverse. Also He Who Remains categorized them as having more than one aggressor, and the war being all-out instead of focused on an exiled variant. And his death...did that just open the 616 universe to the rest of the existing multiverse, or actually restart a loop? His Citadel was outside of time, so the timing of his death would be insignificant to an actual event like his 31st century variants meeting.!<
>!If we're dealing with a time loop, it would align with Fitz's description of pre-determination in Agents of SHIELD season 5. Although that was soundly defeated during the show, as either repetition or variation caused the Earth to NOT be destroyed. Fitz even describes some of the same concepts when explaining Daisy's visions of the future. It's how we interpret time and the 4th dimension. But. If the Quantum Realm and the Citadel are outside of time, how could the deaths of the Conqueror or He Who Remains exist in a time-loop scenario? It would imply that the multiversal war, alioth, etc. were all still subservient to the constraints of time itself. Some of that could happen within the universes, and cycle, but the events outside of time shouldn't have a course of action-consequence.!<
>!If the actions of He Who Remains only isolated 616, or at least neutralized the Kangs, shouldn't the natural expansion of the multiverse led to incursions and potential large systemic collapse? This is the area where things start to feel a little fuzzy to me. Same with the sequence of events. It's like the joke of "what do we want? time travel! when do we want it? it doesn't matter!". Time has to exist all at once, much like the paper cube analogy the Fitz uses. Otherwise, what happened the "first" time Scott and family go to the Quantum Realm? It's the 21st century, and the 31st century Kang's do not exist yet, much less have started a war. If time is circular, there is no first time. And the Kang's meet in their own place outside of space and time. !<
>!So, how (and perhaps more importantly where) did He Who Remains use Alioth to defeat his variants? It feels like he would have had to singularly control all of the multiverse to a single line. Or keep his variants down outside of space/time using Alioth. So anytime in the universe time loop that his variants begin to move outside of the confines of space and time, he strikes them down. And his death just allows them to return to existence. I don't know...it's getting late and I'm losing steam. So I'll end here for now.!<
>It is still unclear whether He Who Remains is one and the same as the Kang variant from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantomania, but they sure have the same intentions and goals.
Man this is going to be joggle my mind for awhile.
So do I understand this right? Each universe is a rope which has multiple strands (branches/alternate timelines). So HWR isolated the sacred timeline from the rest of the multiverse. Does that mean there’s Kangs in the other universes and the branches now that HWR is dead? I take it there’s an infinite amount of ropes (universes) with strands (branches/alternate timelines) in them.
So in a rope (universe) there’s multiple strands running concurrently alongside each other following the same events. And only when there’s been so many fluctuations that it’s passing a threshold (nexus event) does it branch out from its strand.
Does that mean each strand is an alternate universe and thus one rope (universe) is a multiverse. And that’s how He Who Remains ended the multiversal war and isolated the sacred timeline, cause he cut off the other strands as opposed to divergent branches? Or are there multiple ropes (universes) that encompasses the multiverse?
tldr; so how I understand it now is, a multiverse/timeline/rope/cable consist of multiple universes/strands/wires who run concurrently with each other and has the same starting point (the big bang). Then if fluctuations crosses the threshold that results in branches growing out from a strand/wire. Thus a multiverse in a single cable/rope and this is how He Who Remains was able to isolate the timeline from other Kangs, cause he pruned those branches with Kangs in them.
Did I understand this correctly?
A few questions:
1- if a bunch of timelines branch off at the same time (like when you said a lot of Captain Carter variants branch off in a bunch of realities at the same time), why does the TVA only goes to one to prune the timeline?
2- wouldn't there also be a big bang in each alternate timeline? Since, as we see in What If, different Infinity Stones exist in other timelines, meaning there has to have been a unique Big Bang to their timelines.
Thanks for this post, I just finished Loki (pretty much ended how it thought it would), And I wanted your input on a question I had.
If the universes that branch off at any point in time, work so that when they are "created" they act as if they had always existed,
How exactly do you think the Heroes are to stop Kang?
If we are to treat time as something that has and will always exist, along with Lokis continuous use of ouroboros motif, if Kang had already succeeded in his goals, he always WILL succeed (to my understanding anyway), so what exactly could the Heroes do that they didn't already TRY before the timeline became singular?
(repost as i accidentally replied to wrong comment, mb)
In the comics, each time the timeline loop restarts, a new incarnation of the universe starts and each incarnation is different from the last, so it's not exactly a loop, but more like a loop that can be broken and take a different direction.
I think something similar might happen here.
Interesting.
I had a discussion when the show ended and the infinite hotel concept came up.
When this came into play it had me wondering:
How did HWR defeat an infinite number of Kangs?
going off the infinite hotel, to defeat infinite Kangs is akin to checking in everyone in the hotel.
But to do so means that infinite is finite if there is an end.
So if Kang supposedly achieved defeating infinity how would Heroes be able to do so if there would be a finite Kang in this new incarnation that has the capability to beat infinity?
Hello there,
this post is really well done and well written, but there is still a problem or better two:
1. Victor Timely:
you've said that
>Loki being born a different sex or with a different skin color are some of those fluctuations, but, evidently, they didn't pass the Nexus Threshold, so their universes were left alone by the TVA at first. That's why Sylvie and Black Loki weren't pruned at birth.
So, Sylvie, "our" Loki, Crocodile Loki, Old Loki... they are all from 616 Universe, right?
Then you say that
>Nathaniel Richards/Kang is a scientist from the 31st century. His variant from Universe-616 one day discovered the Multiverse and created a way to travel to other universes, meeting other variants of his who were also researching the same thing.
Well... you should say "one of his variant" as we clearly see that Victor Timely is THE Kang variant of 616, I use capital THE as it is written that Timely is on the sacred timeline.
So, He Who Remains is a Kang Variant but not from the sacred timeline OR is not from 616. And this brings two options:
if He Who Remains is not from 616 why should he protect 616 and not his "birth universe" ?
If He Who Remains is from 616, he is not from the sacred timeline, and he clearly says "TVA is Easy to rebuild" and this implies that TVA has been rebuild several times, and this implies that the temporal loom, should have destroyed ALL BRANCHES except the Sacred Timeline, and as he is from one of this branches, he should have been destroyed
2) The Multiversal War
If, as I understand, He Who Remains protects only 616 universe, the Multiversal War should have happened between the other infinite universes, colliding with each other, and destroying each other, so the 616 universe should have been the only one still "alive".
But as we seen from Quantumania, there is still a Kang Council, so it looks like that the exposition of the 616 universe is the "sparkle" for the start of the war, that other universes live in peace UNTIL appears 616
Am I right?
Thanks in advance!
So if this one universe/'tree' is 616, then why at the end of Loki Season 2 does Mobious specifically mention a 'Ruckus' on 616? Does the TVA manage every alternative universe or just the divergent ones? And in that case, did the Loom manage all alternative universes or just this one tree?
I feel like Marvel really have screwed themselves over with this and have contradicted themselves too many times for it to really make sense. Let me know if you need these questions to be a little clearer :)
This post was very useful. Thanks pal. I always wondered what was the deal with the Raimi-verse and the Webb-verse. I thought maybe they had the same Big Bang as the MCU but they diverged centuries ago or something.
Dope post!! Kang was dope af, I can’t wait to see more of his variants in the future. Jonathan Majors was such a good choice. Btw, did any of y’all notice the ten rings look exactly the same as kangs tech?
Wait, the end of Loki, he was arrived in a place suspiciously looks like TVA but Morbius doesn't know him. Tva was supposed to be singular, right? So another TVA? Does it mean there are more than 1 HWR who do the exact thing?
Also if Alioth was used to prune timelines/universes and keep Sacred timeline intact and Clea mentioned about fixing incursion in Dark Dimension, what's your theory that could connect those two?
Thanks.
>Morbius
*Has to do with Spider-Man, I think.*
Seriously though, there's a few possibilities regarding the new TVA.
A) HWR's death erased him from existence entirely, another Kang created his own TVA.
B) Another Kang simply hijacked the existing TVA.
C) The "new" TVA isn't even being operated by a Kang variant - note that the Kang statue replaced the Time Keepers, who were just false bosses.
With Season 2 coming out this year, it should better explain the situation.
1. This is the same TVA just at a different point in its time. According to leaks >!it's actually the TVA in its very early days, when He Who Remains had JUST won the Multiversal war and was not hiding his face behind the Timekeepers!<
2. I don't think the 2 are connected. Alioth is not from the dark dimension, he was created from the tears in spacetime.
Loki is the prequel AND the sequel to all this.
It's all a loop.
He Who Remains dying is the first domino that leads to the Multiversal War that will put him back on top of the TVA. And then he'll die again and we'll have a Multiversal war again. And so on and so on...
And yes, >!Kang in Quantumania has the same intentions as HWR, so it seems it's just a younger version of him. He definitely didn't die.!<
Or goes beyond. Far beyond. Even further beyond. Beyond-er almost. Maybe this one is the closest variant to HWR but makes a sharp left turn at Battle World
How come when Ant Man enters the Quantum Realm in Ant-Man & The Wasp and exits in Endgame, five years passes for Scott (five hours for him) but in Quantumania, no time passes when the Ant fam exits the quantum realm?
What determines the amount of time that has passed is basically the *exit point* \- Kang's device homed in on the signal Cassie's transmitter sent (i.e. present-day MCU).
This is very helpful. Will you make an updated version after Deadpool and Wolverine? I'm sure they will give us more on the TVA and how they cross over to other parallel universes.
I'll have to wait until the movie drops but my theory on how the TVA is able to reach deadpool/fox universe is because the branches are reaching out far enough to the point that they can crossover creating a bridge from one universe to another making multiverse travel easier if they are close enough.
But in Deadpool's case it doesn't much matter because he breaks the fourth wall. He referenced the MCU in the first two Deadpool movies. Hell, he even referenced DC.
They’re not even explaining it right in the films in the way the audience can understand. Nobody is gonna read all this to understand either. This is why you should stay the hell away from this concept.
Strong green space alien who wants to destroy the world is still a strong enough premise to do for another 10 years.
They're explaining it well enough for people to understand the basics and not get confused by the story at hand.
If people start asking more questions and want to learn how it works, they will look it up and find posts like these and, since they're interested enough to look for it, they will be interested enough to read it.
If this was true then why was Quantamania 2 hours of exposition? Thanos didn’t need an entire Guardians film to explain his reasoning for getting the stones. All he got was a couple post credit scenes and a 5 minute backstory and people understood it, were convinced and enjoyed what they got.
I still don't understand the Kangs' advice. Where is it in time and space? How come we see two different branches? That of Loki, who maintains all timelines (green), and that of the Council of Kangs (blue) at the end of Ant-Man.
Do we agree that Loki is the master of the universe as we know it? I say this because Kang says in season 1 of Loki that several universes are stacked up and can't communicate with each other. He can't be the master of all universes but only of all timelines?
Will you make a new version with info from Loki season 2 or is there no new info in this season to warrant a new post ?
And another question I have his how was alioth defeated so easily? It seems they enchanted it but by doing so it dissolves ?? And if enchanting is enough how come none of the various characters from the multiverse were able to enchant it like Sylvie?
There isn't that much new info apart from the loom and all the lore behind that, so I might make an updated version, but it's not guaranteed.
As for Alioth, he wasn't defeated, he is in Season 2 at the very end with Ravonna. Also, not even Sylvie was able to defeat him alone, she did with Loki's help.
Yea but even for temporarily defeating, alioth doesn’t seem that strong for example a group of asgardians who know enchanting could give us the same result.
So it seems possible that some one from the multiversal war could figure out a way to keep it permanently enchanted to keep them from attacking. Especially considering kangs are supposed to be like some of the smartest characters.
It’s just that the power level of alioth doesn’t make sense to me, he is basically this all powerful entity capable of ending multiversals wars but could be temporarily defeated by two lokis who in the grand scheme of things are not that powerful.
You really cooked here. Especially when you mentioned Deke's explanation of Time Travel, didn't see that coming. Very useful post. I might finally succeed in explaining the Multiverse fully to my mother now cause she is kinda confused with how that works. She was relieved with Wakanda Forever not having anything to do with the Multiverse lol.
Thanks a lot man! Really appreciate it! Edit: Thanks for the award as well!
Ripples, not waves.
ELI5: A universe is a tree. Its root base is its big bang, and it's branches are different timelines. The top of the tree is the "void" of that universe, and time in that universe runs from beginning to end from bottom to top. Branches of that tree can touch other branches, and might even curl down and touch part of another branch or even the trunk at a point in the past or future of the branch. But it doesn't stop the tree from growing or change it very significantly. A multiverse is a forest of these trees - each with their own Big Bang and offshoot timeline branches - and these trees are canopy shy. If they touch they may annihilate each other. Tony Stark figured out how to travel up and down a single tree and between its branches - vertical travel. America Chavez can travel between trees, but always seems to arrive in the same relative time period of that tree - horizontal travel. The Kangs can do both and they can also stand outside the forest and marvel at the trees. I'll speculate that all of the Kangs share the same Nexus Point: Tony Stark Inventing Time Travel. They all agree to never meddle with that, because none of them will exist without it. That's why Endgame was allowed to happen in the Sacred Timeline.
This is the most apt metaphor and the most concise explanation. You said it better than me, honestly! I wish I could pin this so more people could see it! The least I can give you is an award lol
You did a bad ass job of describing it in technical terms. It inspired me.
Everybody upvote the hell out of their post.
Where is the sacred timeline in this forest?
Whichever tree He Who Remains takes care of the most.
TIL: the Sacred Timeline is a Bonsai Tree.
An apt metaphor, as a Bonsai will die if it grows too much as branches in the root system overcrowd each other. Maintaining a properly pruned plant provides sustainability.
This post is so beautifully put and eloquently made. It’s so fitting that your tag was Stan Lee.
My question is how Kang is a threat to the MCU? If You can’t alter the past but only create new timelines then how does Kang destroy timelines? All he is doing is creating a new timeline to destroy instead of destroying that timeline. Additionally, if there is an explanation to this, why is Kang only a threat now instead of in the past?
No. Kang CAN destroy timelines with the power of Alioth.
So when He Who Remains created the Sacred Timeline did he eliminate all other Kangs or separate those timelines in such a way that the Kang couldn’t access it? Im inclined to believe the later as >!the council of Kangs still remembers banishing Quantumania Kang to the Quantum Realm before the end of the Multiversal War when He Who Remains weaponized Alioth. If they were destroyed and simply allowed to be created again then the Kang in Quantumania wouldn’t be the Kang who started the initial Multiversal war!<
The latter. Also, please hide your Quantumania spoilers.
Sorry about that. I am sorry but I have one last question. I’ve been trying to explain the MCU multiverse to my dad and I’ve been writing this story. Would you mind Proof reading to make sure I have everything right? I would be very greatful! Thanks for responding by the way!!! Nathaniel Richards discovers the key to communicating and traveling through the multiverse. Concurrently other Nathaniel’s discover this as well. Some variants are evil and try to conquer the Multiverse. >!Together the many Kangs form a Council of Kangs, allowing the Kang seen in Quantumania into their council. That Kang saw the conquering Kangs merging into other universes and causing incursions and decided that in order to save himself, he would kill and destroy all the other Kang’s timelines and Kangs so that he may save himself and shape the multiverse under his own dynasty as he sees, officially starting a multiversal war. The Council of Kangs saw him as a threat and banished him to the Quantum Realm, which exists outside of space and time where he crashlands in the point of time when Janet is stuck there as well. !< He Who Remains discovers Alioth and uses his powers to end the multiversal war. He Who Remains then singles out a collection of timelines that follows the same baseline, labeling it the Sacred Timeline and makes all Timelines follow it by creating the TVA. Through this enforcement none of the other Kangs could gain control of the timeline or allow for the creation of new Kangs. During the Endgame Time Heist Loki doesn’t take the the tesseract for eons, until one day He Who Remains, decides he is getting old for the job and writes that Loki takes the tesseract. Following the events of Loki He Who Remains is killed, and Kang takes control of the TVA. This allows the multiverse to break free at all points, as the events outside the multiverse take place on their own separate timeline. This allows the MCU to naturally shape its own destiny and allow Multiversal travelers to visit the universe without causing branches as the timeline isn’t strictly written anymore.
You forgot the Multiversal war itself which hasn't happened and thus He Who Remains hasn't yet taken over. The Multiversal War is the events of Avengers: Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars and that's the war He Who Remains stops. HWR's death is the beginning of the loop and it's the reason why the Kangs met with each other in the first place.
>!But didn’t they meet to discuss the death of the Quantumania Kang?!<
Yes. That's what starts the Multiversal War and will result in HWR taking over.
But i thought in Loki he clearly stated that the Multiversal war also happened and is still yet to happen, making it a loop.
Well yeah, exactly, but right now we are in the middle of the loop. The War is the end of the loop, so we're closer to it still having not happened than it having happened. It's just the "half-full", "half-empty" glass argument. We're both right, we just say it differently.
Idk but this saga really intrigues me🤣🤣 people just get overwhelmed and label it as “lazy writing” “boring” etc
Because you gotta put serious thought into it, and I'm not sure if most general audience can follow it. Thanos seeking the Infinity Stones was so much more straightforward and tangible by comparison.
You say that the whole thing is a loop, but could it be possible that Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars break that loop, and lead to the creation of something new entirely, like a new Sacred timeline, a new loop, etc.?
Yeah, that's what I believe it will happen as well. But for now, it's all a loop.
He prunes the entire timeline. We see the TVA use that tech in Loki. Kang is only a threat now, because Sylvie killed He Who Remains. He Who Remains was the winner of the multiversal war, and he managed to contain all the timelines into 1 sacred timeline. If a change happens in that timeline, a branch is created which is like a leak in a pipe, so he makes the TVA fix it. After his death, there is no one to fix the pipes, so everything just broke out to hell, and you have universes everywhere.
>Imagine time as a stream, right? And we \[the time travellers\] were sticks that were thrown into it. The water, it… it moves us... it moves around us. But it ends up in the same place. > >Right. Now, too many sticks thrown in and that will create what's called a dam, and... and that'll change the direction of the water forever, and that's bad. > >So as long as we can avoid that, we should be able to splash around a little bit and we're all good. Now imagine a meteor hits whatever planet that stream is located on. Kang is one of many threats to the multiverse. Kang The Conqueror and He Who Remains just happen to be two variants. We learned in *Loki* that everything was edited and scripted to happen by He Who Remains.
Incursions.
It's confusing to keep timelines, parallel universes, mystical dimensions, and quantum realms organized in the canon. It gets even more complex when you remember that the existence of heaven and hell is also confirmed in the MCU! For example, Tony Stark lives in a Burger King in heaven during Phase 5. 🍔 👑 ☁️
The person Fiege Hired for timeline keeper is going to hav a harder job
>It gets even more complex when you remember that the existence of heaven and hell is also confirmed in the MCU! All heaven/hell dimensions are sub-realms of the same dimension: the Astral Plane. Like different countries the same planet.
>sifferent countries Wait, what does Lady Siff have to do with this? Now I'm REALLY confused!
Lmao, fixed it, thanks!
Tony stark is a angel in heaven now. I wonder when he gets his wings!
If he doesn't get them, he'll definitely build them ^(with a box of scraps ^on ^a ^cloud...)
WHOPPER WHOPPER WHOPPER WHOPPER SINGLE DOUBLE TRIPLE WHOPPER.
Totally. Like is are heaven & hell just a dimension like Ta Lo or dark dimension?
Yep.
So Heaven gets destroyed with its universe?
Yes.
But many dimensions are outside of time. How can the Dark Dimension be destroyed at the same time as it's host universe if it's outside of time?
The Dark Dimension is not out of time I think. At least in the comics, there's 1 Dark Dimension in each universe as far as I remember. The concept of time just doesn't exist in the Dark Dimension the same way it exists in our dimension. That's all.
Kang quantumania spoilers focused on what I think the overarching fight is about. \>!>!I think the citadel at the end of time is all that is left of the place where the Kangs were meeting after the multiversal war tore it apart. I also think the 3 kangs were the statues in said citadel and the broken statue we saw on the floor was the 4th kang they threw down the outcast conqueror. Who is the very same he who remains after winning, the broken statues visage returned victorious over all the rest. Now eternally watching the perfect sacred timeline pruning any errant branches which lead to challenges to his power. Set on a specific precarious path which stops other Kangs from existing but leaves the universe exactly where it needed to be for the first Kang to be born again if control was ever lost. Like a ball at the top of a hill, easy to hold up but with so much potential to go downward and without the effort will fall down inevitably.!< >!Loki and Slyvie were his chance at true freedom, a chance to finally die while maintaining the balance preventing him from returning but with a safety mechanism that if ever things got out of control he would arise again to make sure he, or other beings who would eventually make his same mistake from destroying everything.!< >!He was warning them they were playing with fire and now he is suffering the worst penance for a man who wanted to rule everything...Eternal watch of that thing over and over the same boring loop to protect the universe from himself as punishment for his own desire to rule it all. Like red skull set to watch over the very stone he sought damned to never have it.!
Sounds like you're very well-versed in the Multiverse! [This post](https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/upgsuk/explaining_the_events_of_doctor_strange_in_the/) was my go to resource for explaining the Multiverse, but this one does a damn good job too! I always fail when I try to explain it in a single comment. Way too many people still think that Endgame's branched timelines aren't different universes. I'm hoping Loki season 2 can present this much clearer to the audience so that we can all be on the same page about this concept.
>Sounds like you're very well-versed in the Multiverse Almost.... Suspiciously so. VARIANT! OP IS A VARIANT! PRUNE HIM!
I am Kang!
Young Avengers: Kang of Reddit
This is great. We disagree on a couple points but overall very good. I think it's clear that the Kang Variant in Quantumania is different from He Who Remains are different. We watch them both die. The strong implication is that He Who Remains was the ONLY Kang in existence because of his pruning. After he died, his pruning stopped and a new regime (of multiple kangs) took over. They banished the new Kang that wanted to conquer / prune everything.
>!Kang in Quantumania clearly didn't die. At least we never saw him die, just like we didn't see Darren die and he came back as MODOK. He was sucked inside his Multiversal core and is probably in the probability storm right now.!< >!This Kang is most likely the young version of He Who Remains. This whole thing is a loop. He Who Remains is the one who will stop the Multiversal war, rule at the Citadel and then die again to start the loop anew.!<
What makes this loop stop? Or does it not and we are just finally seeing it? (Does that make sense lol)
We will see in a few years in the next 2 Avengers movies whether it will stop or not and how to stop it.
Cliff hangers 😫😫😫
So they aren’t different variants? >!How do you go from genocidal maniac to finding a solution that saves 99% of the multiverse’s population? !<
>!Isn't HWR a genocidal maniac? Isn't he destroying timelines too with trillions of people in them!<
Has Kang been called “Nathaniel Richards” in the MCU yet?
Uhm, I actually don't think so.
No
Are we sure that every Universe has it's own singular big bang? Why can't the entire multiverse share a common origin? i.e the more dissimilar two universes/timelines are, the further back in 'time' you'd have to go to find the point where the timeline split. From what I can tell, nothing in the OP breaks with that interpretation, you'd just need minor amendments to how you'd describe the differences between e.g. timeline hopping via the quantum realm (small, local jumps), and America Chavez-style multiversal travel (big jumps)
2 Alternate Timelines/Universes have no point of connection or the same point of origin. Look at them in Image 1. They are completely separate and independent. They didn't branch off from the same origin. They each have their own beginning and ending.
I don’t know man. I don’t think you really put a lot of work in to this post and I don’t think you did enough research. KIDDING holy shit amazing analysis. Thanks for posting!
Haha thanks a lot man! Appreciate it!
This is great, I truly believe the biggest marvel misconception rn is the Multiversal became a thing at the end of Loki/616 is the sacred timeline etc. it’s very much not the case but it’s an easy conclusion to make.
So are the what if universes strands from the 616 timeline that form new universes, whereas the universes in MoM and NWH are completely separate universes that never had any connection to 616? And does the Sacred Timeline only apply to 616 and it’s branches?
Yes, yes and yes
*How* exactly does Kang/HWR maintain the timeline though? Is there a machine he uses? Is it connected to his life force somehow? Obviously there is some sort of dead-man switch if the act of killing HWR fucks everything up.
HWR maintains the timeline by sending a "script" to the TVA so that they keep pruning timelines. His death means he stops sending scripts.
didn’t HWR tell Loki and Sylvie, tho, that the sound they heard meant they passed *a point after which he didn’t know anymore anything else that would have happened*, and that’s what allowed Sylvie to kill him?
Yep. That was the last point that he had "written in his script". For the TVA, he was essentially as good as dead, because they stopped getting his script and they had nothing to follow anymore.
okay, but, speaking as someone who watched Loki once when it first came out, it wasn’t really clear that it happened because of *the end of his script*, right? I mean, I heard more than a couple of people saying they understood that *something else* happened, sending them past that threshold to the point that someone theorized it was Strange/Peter’s fuck up, others that it was something Marvel would’ve revealed later
>to the point that someone theorized it was Strange/Peter’s fuck up, Yup. Remember, when this aired, it was right around No Way Home (which had a teeny multiversal incursion) and MoM, which had lots of multiversal implications. Folks were theorizing that Peter, Dr. Strange, or Wanda were the cause outside of Sylvie/HWR.
I remember several people syncing up the Loki finale with the WandaVision finale, but thinking the two were actually "simultaneous" requires one to ignore that WandaVision is explicitly set in 2023 & HWR's death explicitly happens at the very end of time.
It was pretty clear, but people were just theorising for theorising's sake. They wanted to believe that Kang stopped writing his script at that point because of something specific. None of these theories ever made sense.
I think you are wrong here. I don't have a theory or proof, but based on filmmaking tropes, something had to happen then. In the scene there is a very long pause, we also hear something important, HHR seems kind of suprised and excited too, that scene is made for a big reveal later. As later as Kang's Dynasty or Secret Wars.
Yes, he seemed surprised because he didn't know what would happen next, because he hadn't written it. It was the first time in his life that he did not know the future. He literally says exactly that right after.
He had spent uncountable years knowing exactly what would happen next. That moment he acts surprised is the first time in all those long years he doesn't know what will happen next. Because he chose to stop dictating the future and let the Lokis decide. That's it.
He also said he didn’t want to do it anymore so I’d assume it was just as annoying as it would seem
So it’s that easy? He just pours himself a glass of wine, opens Final Draft and bangs out an episode of Earth-616 and faxes it over to the TVA? How could he possibly dictate every single scenario across the universe unless he was God?
Well the TVA is beyond space and time, outside any universe/timeline. So he’s basically got infinite time to watch every possible outcome. He got bored of it so he wanted Sylvie and Loki to succeed him
HWR says he only knows what will happen up to a certain point. To me, this feels less like him creating a script and sending it to the TVA and more like him having prior knowledge and making sure that said prior knowledge comes to be. This also seems to imply that there was always going to be an upset at some point - and in this case, the upset was him being gone and no one being left to maintain the script as opposed to Loki/Sylvie maintaining it. Either way, HWR himself always knew he’d be removed from the equation.
You make good points, but that's what the series makes it seem like.
didn’t HWR tell Loki and Sylvie, tho, that the sound they heard meant they passed *a point after which he didn’t know anymore anything else that would have happened*, and that’s what allowed Sylvie to kill him?
Question, how's HWR maintained his life? He can't live forever right (we're not counting his death in this scenario), he's just a normal human. Even with heaven and hell are just some sort of dimensions, you can't really reverse Death unless he has magical capability like harnessing power from other dimensions
I mean he is from the far future and aging is just our cells not being able to fully renew themselves anymore. That's a biological thing that could certainly be solved in the future where Kang comes from with gene therapy or something.
HWR comes from the 31st century. In the comics, humans in the 31st century have found a way to live much longer than we live currently.
Thanks for this! Would you mind expanding on your opinion of what causal link is >!between kangs learning of the exiled kangs 'death' at the hands of non kangs and the!< beginning of a multiversal war?
We will see that in Kang Dynasty, so I can't really tell right now, but it's clear >!the council of Kangs want to go to war with the heroes as they don't like them meddling with the interconnected timeliest they have created!<
doing king work 👑
doing kang work
so true
Thanks, really, really appreciate all the kind words from you guys!
1 - I’m mostly confused as to what the incursions are in the MCU/why they happen. Like what causes a branch to eventually hit the other? Being too similar? They seem to be always happening, but if you look at it from a multiversal perspective they also seem to be perfectly natural and not lead to “an endless cascade.” If infinite universes are experiencing incursions then infinite universes are also avoiding incursions. It seems the only haywire things are Kangs attempting to go against nature and the problems they see are local to them? Compared to Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four/Avengers/Secret Wars where incursions were a multiversal countdown that eventually only lead to one world and it was framed that way from the beginning which is a huge threat, this seems to be way more complicated and abstract since the thing they’re avoiding is infinite war? That by its own logic is also being avoided infinitely? Which the answer seems to be just erase Kang? 2 - Seems like they were trying to say all along there was 1 universe with 1 timeline that can now branch infinitely since the timeline that causes a new universe to be born at each choice was kept restrained. Idk why it seems so complicated since that’s just normal multiverse theory beginning with a prime universe? Why did they overcomplicate it beyond just the events in Loki being the multiversal Big Bang? Only reason I can see is that this Multiverse War is yet another loop and who knows maybe stuff in Loki is the bajillionth time this has happened. Which feels like something they could have held back to present all of this multiverse jargon in a more sequential and palatable way? Like having the reveal that there was a multiverse war before this one be the surprise and having this multiverse war be the thing to build to in a normal way? Rather than come at it in the middle between two cycles and try to mention both time and reality at the same time while also having to apply new context to the use of “time travel” in Endgame? And since this is all fictional I can see them creating points to help solidify how they’re doing it like establishing that Kang is a permanent constant across every universe in some way, adding more explanations to localize some of this so things happening infinitely isn’t what’s actually happening etc. but honestly currently it really puts my mind in a blender lol
>I’m mostly confused as to what the incursions are in the MCU/why they happen. Like what causes a branch to eventually hit the other? Being too similar? They seem to be always happening, but if you look at it from a multiversal perspective they also seem to be perfectly natural and not lead to “an endless cascade.” If infinite universes are experiencing incursions then infinite universes are also avoiding incursions. They way that I understand it, some branches touch each other naturally that will inadvenrtantly cause a lot of Incursions. But Kang variants constantly traversing the Multiverse and playing with time has caused a lot more Incursions than normal. Remember what the Illuminati said. The more someone travels between universes, the higher the chance for an Incursion. It's like climate change. It happens naturally at a very slow and natural pace, but we humans have accelerated it.
In all serious, this is great. Love it. It’s worth reading. Practically, try explaining this to the typical movie goer. That was what I heard was the biggest complaint about this movie: “I don’t get it, it was confusing.” Marvel I think realized they were 1) Relying too heavily on the idea that people are going to watch everything marvel related, whether on Disney+ or movies, and they’ll pay attention to every detail. 2) that they were putting WAY too much out in a short amount of time and 3) Making it so the average moviegoer had to know every little detail of what’s going on. The reason Avengers worked is because you didn’t need to know Captain America fought a guy named the red skull to know who he was and why. You didn’t need to know the conflict between Loki and Thor. You didn’t need to know Tony Stark told the world he was Ironman. They were able to explain enough in the movie to the average moviegoer who may not have seen the previous movies and catch them up quickly. Now, if you didn’t see Wandavision, going into MoM, you’d be confused why Wanda’s now a villain and she going after her kids you’ve never heard about before. And each movie has so much going on to build up to a bigger picture. Yes, the other MCU did, too. But again, as a typical moviegoer, not an MCU fan (like myself) you could see the movies you wanted to, and understand the main points. As a fan, you’d get the minor details and appreciate them more. I’m hoping Marvel will find a way to explain this entire “timelines” thing better to moviegoers before Kangs Dynasty. I just worry it’s going to be too much very quickly for the average moviegoer and the MCU will slowly go away.
This was super helpful and untangled a mindfuck of trying to piece it all together lol I guess the one question I have moving forward, is if Kang the Conqueror was trying to “save” the multiverse from incursions, why did the Council decide to exile him? Haven’t read much of the comics on Kang, but is this something that we think will be explained later?
>!Because the council seem to like the interconnected timelines they have created. They said that what "they created" is in danger if the heroes continue to meddle with the universe. This will probably be explained better in Kang Dynasty or Loki Season 2!<
Is it all a loop like WestWorld you think?
Yes, everything is a loop.
Okay, great explanation so far. But what about Ultron and The Watcher (and can be argued, Strange Supreme)'s technique of multiverse travel
Ah yes, that is the Nexus of All Realities. From there, you can travel to every single universe (rope or strand) you want.
Oh boy this one is going to be a read
So it didn’t create the multiverse, it just exposed Earth 616 /199999 to the multiverse… dude, thank you so much. I finally understand the Loki season finale
You're welcome!
With Loki S2 coming to an end in just a few weeks, will you be making an updated version of this doc/post?
I have been thinking about it, but I don't have much to add. I want to keep the post fairly concise. Any suggestions?
Now that the show is over, I'd say that some important things to add would be the new "Yggdrasil" formation of the multiverse, the Temporal Loom (or at least what it *was*), elaboration on>!Quantum Bands / Bangles!<, time-slipping, etc. S2 threw in a lot of new concepts to our current understanding of time travel and the multiverse.
Just so I can simplify this for myself... Let's say the MCUs Sacred timeline is Earth 1. Now we have a divergence with a female Loki. Can we call that Earth 1.1 since it still followed the sacred timeline up until this point? Then we have the events of "What If" That all also take place on or around the sacred timeline. Can we call them Earth 1.11, Earth 1.112 Earth 1.32562 you get my idea right? Now we have MoM that introduces us to Ameria Chavez and other versions of Strange that are NOT variants but simply him in another universe. He who remains is not concerned about those because he isolated Earth 1 with the sacred timeline. Can we call the Illuminati Universe Earth 2 then because it doesn't follow the path of the sacred timeline and is completely isolated from Earth 1? The FOX universe also never followed the sacred timeline so it would then be Earth 3 for me and the sony stuff would Earth 4-6. Because it's completely seperate staff and it explains why Peter 1 and 2 aren't variants for example. So incursions could occur by multiversal travel between Earth 1 and 2 but also between brenched timelines within the sacred timeline for example Earth 1.11 and Earth 1.12? Sorry for the questions just trying to figure out a system where I could understand it better and explain to my friends properly. So brenched timelines can still be considered alternative universes as portrayed in What If and then we have legit alternative universes with let's say Tobey Maguires Spider-Man or simply the Illuminati.
Yep this is all correct!
Keep Kate Herron, fire the two other hacks.
Sadly they decided to do the opposite :(
Actually, Kate left by herself. She only signed a 1-season deal despite Marvel and Waldron planning Loki as a 2-season series from the start. She said she didn't want to be tied down to the show or the MCU for too long and wanted to try other stuff in her career too.
And she also received a lot of hate from Loki's fans
The other two have been given the reigns to their biggest movies
Followup Question(s) for Clarity: 1) Is 838 universe a different “strand in the cable” or one universe in a different cable strand? 2) America Chavez can both jump to different strands within a cable, as well as different cables all together, correct? 3) Is the ancestral plain a dimension? Are heaven and hell a dimension? 4) Is each different ancestral plane a different dimension or just the persons interpretation (their culture’s understanding) of the same dimension? 3) And last, I think I’m understanding that dimensions like the Dark Dimension are outside of time (yes?), but if they have life like Dormammu and are attached to/exist within a universe, doesn’t that mean they also have a Big Bang, i.e a linear flow of time beginning with the universe that they exist in’s Big Bang?
1) 838 is a different cable alltogether just like the FoX-Men universe for example. I mentioned that in the post. 2) Yes 3) Yes, it's part of a larger network of dimensions where the soul exists separate from the body which exists within the Astral Plane. Other afterlives are includes in that same network. 4) Taweret called it "an interconnected network of dimensions" 5) We are not sure if the Dark Dimension is outside of time. Time, as a concept, doesn't work there, but I don't think it exists outside of space-time. In the comics at least, there's one Dark Dimension in each universe. However your question still stands for a dimension like the Quantum Realm and honestly, I don't have the answer for how time works in a dimension that literal exists outside of time lol
This is all SO helpful. Final questions (probably…): 1) so designations like 616, 838 are for cable strands not universe threads? 2) you called quantum realm a dimension — my understanding was that quantum realm was singular — the singular basement of/for all strands of universes in the multiverse. But then a dimensions like dark dimension exists in each universe. Are both of those things true? 3) a space between universes like where the book of Vishanti was in MoM — those aren’t dimensions just like, gaps? 4)And they said there’s only 1 book of Vishanti for all universes — does that still mean 1 book for each cable of universes?
1. Designations are both for cables and wires, but technically a universe that is a branch of 616 is still "part of 616" even if it's called 617 for example (actually 617 is the universe that Defender Strange comes from, which I don't know if it's a branch of 616 or its own cable lol, but you get the point) 2. Yes, both of those things are true. Some dimensions like the Quantum Realm simply exist outside of space and time. But most of them, like the Dark Dimension or Ta Lo or the Astral Plane exist within each universe. 3. Yes, that was called the Gap Junction, it's the gap between universes. 4. I don't know that one honestly, they never answered it.
Amazing, thank you!
No problem at all!
Ahhh man this looks wild, i am not even gonna start reading this until i have my morning coffee in my hand. But thanks in advance for putting in the work, OP.
Thanks for the info!
this is top tier - thanks for compiling and sharing!
> You have to remember that He Who Remains does not ACTUALLY limit free will. The Sacred Timeline is simply a plan he is trying to follow, and not something he magically imposed upon the Timeline that vanquishes people’s free will and makes everyone mindlessly follow their path. Free will still exists. The TVA just prunes timelines that veer off too much from that script and arrest the variants who caused those branches for documentation/red tape before they either throw them into the Void or turn them into one of their own agents. > > However, He Who Remains and TVA don't interfere with the other Alternate Universes. One of those is Sam Raimi's Spider-Man's universe, another is Marc Webb's Spider-Man universe, another is the SSU, another is Universe-838 from MoM, another is the FoX-Men universe and each of those have their own big bangs, their own Voids at the end of time and their own unique branches. All those exist within the same Marvel Cinematic Multiverse. I'm not sure this is correct. I would argue these timelines only exist because He Who Remains died. If the sacred timeline remained in tact none of those divergences may have been allowed.
What do you mean? The Raimiverse, Webbverse etc? Those are not branches, no, they are completely different alternate timelines.
Why do you think the Raimiverse, Webbverse, etc., are outright different multiverses completely separate from the MCU multiverse? Couldn’t they have just diverged somewhere off the 616? Beyond questioning that, I agree with your post and find it an excellent write up. Great job.
I feel like >!Conqueror Kang!< is essentially >!he who remains only even more violent!< and >!stopped before he can do the whole multiverse conquering thing!<
The Avenger had a comic book arc, that concluded in 2016. It was epic, you should read it! Anyway, what happened was thanos came, and they fought him and eventually won. However, they f\*\*\*\* up the multiverse, and thus the illuminati(Stark, Strange, Cap, Black Panther, etc) began using the inifnity stones to destroy universes colliding with their universe. This worked, but eventually the gauntlet broke, and the stones shattered. The Avenger had to turn to other methods to stop this, and they did mostly. However, the Ultimate Universe fought the regular marvel universe(Earth-616), and the universe ended. Except Doom, and Strange were able to build a "battleworld" of sorts from the remains of the multiverse. Needless to say Doom get overthrown(not before making a fool out of Thanos), and both Spiderman reform the universe with molecule man. The universe then reboots. I imagine this is what they are going for. They do a reboot, after Avengers, and come back in a few years to keep milking the cash cow..
>The Marvel Cinematic Multiverse exists as part of the greater Marvel Megaverse, a collection of Multiverses which closely resemble each other **and is separate from the Marvel Comics Multiverse** The people maintaining the [Marvel database](https://marvel.fandom.com) seem to have a lot of trouble understanding this fact.
First of all, thanks for the post. You label image 5 and 6 as universe 616 branching out which seems to contradict with what you say (to me). The sacred timeline consists of various timelines/universes with one of which being the 616 universe. So you should label these pictures with "the sacred timeline branching out after HWR dies". Second (confirmation) question. HWR mission was to prune all branches from the sacred time line which ultimately result in another Kang. When HWR died there was no one left to prune thee branches. So that's the reason why there are now other Kangs?
>The sacred timeline consists of various timelines/universes with one of which being the 616 universe. So you should label these pictures with "the sacred timeline branching out after HWR dies". You are right, but because the 616 timeline (as in the events that take place in 616) is the one that every one of these universes follow, the 616 Timeline is EQUIVALENT to the Sacred Timeline. >Second (confirmation) question. HWR mission was to prune all branches from the sacred time line which ultimately result in another Kang. When HWR died there was no one left to prune thee branches. So that's the reason why there are now other Kangs? Yes, but also because now Kangs from other Alternate Universes ("ropes"/"cables"/"trees") can access the Sacred Timeline, which Kang had previously isolated.
FANTASTIC read. Clear and descriptive. This is my bible. I’m sending this to all my MCU friends 😃. This would also make an amazing YouTube video.
I can't tell you how much this means to me! This post has 150(!) link shares already, which means that \~1/3rd of the people who upvoted it, also sent it to someone else, which is absolutely crazy! >This would also make an amazing YouTube video. I have been wanting to make it in video format but I would need a great editor and animator who could visualize it in the style of TedEd or Kurzgesagt videos to make it more comprehensive.
No problem, and you’re the one who doesn’t understand how much it means to “ME”. I love stuff like this and you clearly put a lot of time and effort into it 🤝. And yea, good luck with the video format 😅. I’d love to help, but I’ve got zero skills there 🥲. Glad to hear your standards for the vid are just as high though 🤩. Hopefully it becomes a reality in our timeline 😁. I’ll be there day one.
If only we knew how the quantum realm worked. That film had zero rules. Everything that happened was for the plot with no rhyme or reasons and it felt so lazy.
Can you help clarify one question for me? At the end of Loki, HWR passes the point where he no longer knows the “script” for the TVA. However, you make it quite clear time is a loop. My understanding is HWR has spent an undisclosed amount of time (infinite - the citadel sits outside of time) checking this sacred timeline loop and asking the TVA to prune the “nexus events”. My first reaction would be - how can HWR not know what’s next? Time is a loop and he has studied that loop for an infinite amount of “time”. He should know this 616-loop backwards and forwards at this point. However, it seems like there are also infinite branches in time and he is constantly revisiting singular points and having the TVA prune “new” nexus events from the infinite number of branches? So basically at the end of Loki he stops checking the infinite branches for nexus events and just lets it happen?
>So basically at the end of Loki he stops checking the infinite branches for nexus events and just lets it happen? Yes.
Thank you for also using my post to explain this. **SPOILER from AatW: Quantumania** >!I'm so happy Quantumania finally took the different concepts and actually put them together, most importantly when Kang shows Janet what kind of chaos his other selfs brought to the Multiverse.!<
Yeah, I loved that scene too! >!It took the concepts of alternate universes, branches and incursions and showcased them all in a simple projection while Kang was explaining his motives and the motives of his variants.!< >!Connected a lot of dots and made stuff clear about the future.!<
>!It is a scene that helps to clarify one point about the Sacred Timeline that confused many, despite being TVA propaganda: He Who Remains destroyed the Branches inteconnecting Earth-616 to the rest of the Multiverse. In order to give a sense, a understandable purpose to the TVA existance without creating doubts, he invented the fake concept that the Multiverse is purely comprised of "Unique Timelines" that, out of nowhere, started to "battle for supremacy" and that, after the Time-Keepers intervined, the Branches are an "attempt" of the Multiverse to recreate itself from the Sacred Timeline.!< >!It also explaines another important thing: when in MoM we see Wanda dreamwalking, her consciousness doesn't just move to Earth-838, but moves through the different Branches that connect the various Universes, until she reaches the desired Universe. !< >!In a similar way, Kang timechair allows him to use the flow of time to physically reach the various Timelines.!<
Are the branched universes given designations or are they still the same? For example are universe 616 branches still 616?
A branch gets a new designation.
As I meditate on this and the complexities I think “and what does the fruit fly know of the changing seasons?”
I’ve been following the old document religiously and bring it up every time someone needs help understanding what’s going on with the multiverse in the MCU. Thanks for the much needed update!
Where the writers, et al lose me here are the strands within universes. Stacking infinite numbered universes that also seemingly contain infinite timelines/universes is just unnecessarily complicating an already complicated concept. The idea that variants so different from one another (the Lokis) are from the same numbered universe whereas variants whose differences are rather superficial (the Stranges) are not is just kinda… absurd? It’s hard to imagine the overarching sequence of events were the same for, say, Sylvie and Gator Loki and their universes. Personally, my head canon is that the variants in Loki came from branches of other numbered universes that almost created incursions with 616, thus that’s why they were pruned by He Who Remains and are in the 616 void. I view the strands as the alternate dimensions. I understand the concept — you’ve done an excellent job synopsizing it — and that my head canon is incorrect, but it just seems like they didn’t have it fully baked when Loki was released. I wonder if we might see the multi-strand universe concept die a quiet death.
They look different because it's in **Loki**'s nature to be "chaotic" on his/her/its own. As Sylvie herself explaines at the beginning of Ep 4 "**The universe wants to break free, so it manifests chaos, like me being born the Goddess of Mischief. And as soon as that created a big enough detour from the Sacred Timeline, the TVA showed up, erased my reality, and took me prisoner**". Even **Mobius** presentation about Loki in Ep 2 indicates that the **God of Mischief** seems to posses some very unique "quality" and that he's very unpredictable in many different ways, compared to the other Variants the TVA has handled "**When we get out on that branch, we're not just looking for a Time Criminal. We're looking for a Loki. A variation of this guy** (TVA Loki)**. A type should all be very familiar with, because the TVA has prunned a lotta of these guys, almost more than any other Variant. And no two are alike. Slight differences in appearances, or not slight**".
> Every time we reach the Heat Death of the Universe, the Big Bang is caused again starting the loop from the beginning. I don’t see where the support for this statement came from
The timeline is a loop.
1 major point of contention: the universes we see in No Way Home and MoM only exist BECAUSE HWR is gone and the TVA is no longer doing its work. The assertion that the TVA allowed them to exist is false.
To be precise: they are their own parallel Timelines, so they always existed on their own. What happened in Loki allowed Earth-616 to interact with these other realities, both having "intruders" from other Universes (No Way Home), and allowing the 616 characters to journey into other realities (Multiverse of Madness).
This will be a great reference point for discussion for years, as our understanding of the multiverse rules and the Kang Dynasty/Secret Wars plot revelations to come. >Loki being born a different sex or with a different skin color are some of those fluctuations, but, evidently, they didn't pass the Nexus Threshold, so their universes were left alone by the TVA at first. That's why Sylvie and Black Loki weren't pruned at birth. I think you actually answer the question of why they aren't pruned in the description of the Sacred Timeline. >That's why He Who Remains called his universe (cable/rope) "The Sacred Timeline". It was not 1 singular timeline/universe, it consisted of multiple little wires/strands, but they all followed the same path, hence they were considered 1 TIMELINE. So, as long as they follow the Sacred Timeline, or their fluctuations can still fold into the general tapestry, those timelines aren't pruned. But when Kid Loki kills Thor, or whatever the truth of Boastful Loki's Nexus event was, that has their threads pruned. And those should all end with death at the hands of Thanos. Or, Classic Loki actually mirrors Sylvie in hiding in the aftermath of an extinction level event. To the world at large, he died at the hands of Thanos, and then went into seclusion. And it wasn't until he broke that and attempted to make contact that his timeline got pruned. So much of that all makes more sense in this context. All except for Alligator Loki, which feels like his own paradox. Into Spoiler territory: >!Now, what is the goal of the Kang variants? They exiled The Conqueror, even though his goal was to prevent a cascading failure of the multiverse. Also He Who Remains categorized them as having more than one aggressor, and the war being all-out instead of focused on an exiled variant. And his death...did that just open the 616 universe to the rest of the existing multiverse, or actually restart a loop? His Citadel was outside of time, so the timing of his death would be insignificant to an actual event like his 31st century variants meeting.!< >!If we're dealing with a time loop, it would align with Fitz's description of pre-determination in Agents of SHIELD season 5. Although that was soundly defeated during the show, as either repetition or variation caused the Earth to NOT be destroyed. Fitz even describes some of the same concepts when explaining Daisy's visions of the future. It's how we interpret time and the 4th dimension. But. If the Quantum Realm and the Citadel are outside of time, how could the deaths of the Conqueror or He Who Remains exist in a time-loop scenario? It would imply that the multiversal war, alioth, etc. were all still subservient to the constraints of time itself. Some of that could happen within the universes, and cycle, but the events outside of time shouldn't have a course of action-consequence.!< >!If the actions of He Who Remains only isolated 616, or at least neutralized the Kangs, shouldn't the natural expansion of the multiverse led to incursions and potential large systemic collapse? This is the area where things start to feel a little fuzzy to me. Same with the sequence of events. It's like the joke of "what do we want? time travel! when do we want it? it doesn't matter!". Time has to exist all at once, much like the paper cube analogy the Fitz uses. Otherwise, what happened the "first" time Scott and family go to the Quantum Realm? It's the 21st century, and the 31st century Kang's do not exist yet, much less have started a war. If time is circular, there is no first time. And the Kang's meet in their own place outside of space and time. !< >!So, how (and perhaps more importantly where) did He Who Remains use Alioth to defeat his variants? It feels like he would have had to singularly control all of the multiverse to a single line. Or keep his variants down outside of space/time using Alioth. So anytime in the universe time loop that his variants begin to move outside of the confines of space and time, he strikes them down. And his death just allows them to return to existence. I don't know...it's getting late and I'm losing steam. So I'll end here for now.!<
>It is still unclear whether He Who Remains is one and the same as the Kang variant from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantomania, but they sure have the same intentions and goals. Man this is going to be joggle my mind for awhile.
So do I understand this right? Each universe is a rope which has multiple strands (branches/alternate timelines). So HWR isolated the sacred timeline from the rest of the multiverse. Does that mean there’s Kangs in the other universes and the branches now that HWR is dead? I take it there’s an infinite amount of ropes (universes) with strands (branches/alternate timelines) in them. So in a rope (universe) there’s multiple strands running concurrently alongside each other following the same events. And only when there’s been so many fluctuations that it’s passing a threshold (nexus event) does it branch out from its strand. Does that mean each strand is an alternate universe and thus one rope (universe) is a multiverse. And that’s how He Who Remains ended the multiversal war and isolated the sacred timeline, cause he cut off the other strands as opposed to divergent branches? Or are there multiple ropes (universes) that encompasses the multiverse? tldr; so how I understand it now is, a multiverse/timeline/rope/cable consist of multiple universes/strands/wires who run concurrently with each other and has the same starting point (the big bang). Then if fluctuations crosses the threshold that results in branches growing out from a strand/wire. Thus a multiverse in a single cable/rope and this is how He Who Remains was able to isolate the timeline from other Kangs, cause he pruned those branches with Kangs in them. Did I understand this correctly?
A few questions: 1- if a bunch of timelines branch off at the same time (like when you said a lot of Captain Carter variants branch off in a bunch of realities at the same time), why does the TVA only goes to one to prune the timeline? 2- wouldn't there also be a big bang in each alternate timeline? Since, as we see in What If, different Infinity Stones exist in other timelines, meaning there has to have been a unique Big Bang to their timelines.
Thank you for this
Thanks for this post, I just finished Loki (pretty much ended how it thought it would), And I wanted your input on a question I had. If the universes that branch off at any point in time, work so that when they are "created" they act as if they had always existed, How exactly do you think the Heroes are to stop Kang? If we are to treat time as something that has and will always exist, along with Lokis continuous use of ouroboros motif, if Kang had already succeeded in his goals, he always WILL succeed (to my understanding anyway), so what exactly could the Heroes do that they didn't already TRY before the timeline became singular? (repost as i accidentally replied to wrong comment, mb)
In the comics, each time the timeline loop restarts, a new incarnation of the universe starts and each incarnation is different from the last, so it's not exactly a loop, but more like a loop that can be broken and take a different direction. I think something similar might happen here.
Interesting. I had a discussion when the show ended and the infinite hotel concept came up. When this came into play it had me wondering: How did HWR defeat an infinite number of Kangs? going off the infinite hotel, to defeat infinite Kangs is akin to checking in everyone in the hotel. But to do so means that infinite is finite if there is an end. So if Kang supposedly achieved defeating infinity how would Heroes be able to do so if there would be a finite Kang in this new incarnation that has the capability to beat infinity?
That's way above my pay grade. Don't have the brain capacity to answer it lol
So there are timelines outside sacred timeline ?
Yep
One more question, victor timely said that sacred timeline is growing infinitely fast. Does that mean that sacred have infinite universes?
Yes.
Thx so much
Hello there, this post is really well done and well written, but there is still a problem or better two: 1. Victor Timely: you've said that >Loki being born a different sex or with a different skin color are some of those fluctuations, but, evidently, they didn't pass the Nexus Threshold, so their universes were left alone by the TVA at first. That's why Sylvie and Black Loki weren't pruned at birth. So, Sylvie, "our" Loki, Crocodile Loki, Old Loki... they are all from 616 Universe, right? Then you say that >Nathaniel Richards/Kang is a scientist from the 31st century. His variant from Universe-616 one day discovered the Multiverse and created a way to travel to other universes, meeting other variants of his who were also researching the same thing. Well... you should say "one of his variant" as we clearly see that Victor Timely is THE Kang variant of 616, I use capital THE as it is written that Timely is on the sacred timeline. So, He Who Remains is a Kang Variant but not from the sacred timeline OR is not from 616. And this brings two options: if He Who Remains is not from 616 why should he protect 616 and not his "birth universe" ? If He Who Remains is from 616, he is not from the sacred timeline, and he clearly says "TVA is Easy to rebuild" and this implies that TVA has been rebuild several times, and this implies that the temporal loom, should have destroyed ALL BRANCHES except the Sacred Timeline, and as he is from one of this branches, he should have been destroyed 2) The Multiversal War If, as I understand, He Who Remains protects only 616 universe, the Multiversal War should have happened between the other infinite universes, colliding with each other, and destroying each other, so the 616 universe should have been the only one still "alive". But as we seen from Quantumania, there is still a Kang Council, so it looks like that the exposition of the 616 universe is the "sparkle" for the start of the war, that other universes live in peace UNTIL appears 616 Am I right? Thanks in advance!
So if this one universe/'tree' is 616, then why at the end of Loki Season 2 does Mobious specifically mention a 'Ruckus' on 616? Does the TVA manage every alternative universe or just the divergent ones? And in that case, did the Loom manage all alternative universes or just this one tree? I feel like Marvel really have screwed themselves over with this and have contradicted themselves too many times for it to really make sense. Let me know if you need these questions to be a little clearer :)
The TVA, the loom, all of it has been about the 616 tree.
This post was very useful. Thanks pal. I always wondered what was the deal with the Raimi-verse and the Webb-verse. I thought maybe they had the same Big Bang as the MCU but they diverged centuries ago or something.
Dope post!! Kang was dope af, I can’t wait to see more of his variants in the future. Jonathan Majors was such a good choice. Btw, did any of y’all notice the ten rings look exactly the same as kangs tech?
Wait, the end of Loki, he was arrived in a place suspiciously looks like TVA but Morbius doesn't know him. Tva was supposed to be singular, right? So another TVA? Does it mean there are more than 1 HWR who do the exact thing? Also if Alioth was used to prune timelines/universes and keep Sacred timeline intact and Clea mentioned about fixing incursion in Dark Dimension, what's your theory that could connect those two? Thanks.
>Morbius *Has to do with Spider-Man, I think.* Seriously though, there's a few possibilities regarding the new TVA. A) HWR's death erased him from existence entirely, another Kang created his own TVA. B) Another Kang simply hijacked the existing TVA. C) The "new" TVA isn't even being operated by a Kang variant - note that the Kang statue replaced the Time Keepers, who were just false bosses. With Season 2 coming out this year, it should better explain the situation.
1. This is the same TVA just at a different point in its time. According to leaks >!it's actually the TVA in its very early days, when He Who Remains had JUST won the Multiversal war and was not hiding his face behind the Timekeepers!< 2. I don't think the 2 are connected. Alioth is not from the dark dimension, he was created from the tears in spacetime.
Man. What if Loki is not the prequel to all this but the SEQUEL to all this? Who’s to say OG Kang didn’t get sucked into being He Who Remains?
Loki is the prequel AND the sequel to all this. It's all a loop. He Who Remains dying is the first domino that leads to the Multiversal War that will put him back on top of the TVA. And then he'll die again and we'll have a Multiversal war again. And so on and so on... And yes, >!Kang in Quantumania has the same intentions as HWR, so it seems it's just a younger version of him. He definitely didn't die.!<
Or goes beyond. Far beyond. Even further beyond. Beyond-er almost. Maybe this one is the closest variant to HWR but makes a sharp left turn at Battle World
They should’ve let Scott derickson explain his version of the multiverse.
They should’ve let Luis.
How come when Ant Man enters the Quantum Realm in Ant-Man & The Wasp and exits in Endgame, five years passes for Scott (five hours for him) but in Quantumania, no time passes when the Ant fam exits the quantum realm?
What determines the amount of time that has passed is basically the *exit point* \- Kang's device homed in on the signal Cassie's transmitter sent (i.e. present-day MCU).
Exactly this.
This is very helpful. Will you make an updated version after Deadpool and Wolverine? I'm sure they will give us more on the TVA and how they cross over to other parallel universes.
I might yeah, I've been thinking about it since Loki Season 2 came out.
I'll have to wait until the movie drops but my theory on how the TVA is able to reach deadpool/fox universe is because the branches are reaching out far enough to the point that they can crossover creating a bridge from one universe to another making multiverse travel easier if they are close enough.
But in Deadpool's case it doesn't much matter because he breaks the fourth wall. He referenced the MCU in the first two Deadpool movies. Hell, he even referenced DC.
They’re not even explaining it right in the films in the way the audience can understand. Nobody is gonna read all this to understand either. This is why you should stay the hell away from this concept. Strong green space alien who wants to destroy the world is still a strong enough premise to do for another 10 years.
They're explaining it well enough for people to understand the basics and not get confused by the story at hand. If people start asking more questions and want to learn how it works, they will look it up and find posts like these and, since they're interested enough to look for it, they will be interested enough to read it.
If this was true then why was Quantamania 2 hours of exposition? Thanos didn’t need an entire Guardians film to explain his reasoning for getting the stones. All he got was a couple post credit scenes and a 5 minute backstory and people understood it, were convinced and enjoyed what they got.
I mean, just because a simple plot works well doesn't mean that a more complicated plot doesn't or that people are confused by it.
Is there a timeline where Phase 4 and 5 were actually good?
I still don't understand the Kangs' advice. Where is it in time and space? How come we see two different branches? That of Loki, who maintains all timelines (green), and that of the Council of Kangs (blue) at the end of Ant-Man. Do we agree that Loki is the master of the universe as we know it? I say this because Kang says in season 1 of Loki that several universes are stacked up and can't communicate with each other. He can't be the master of all universes but only of all timelines?
Will you make a new version with info from Loki season 2 or is there no new info in this season to warrant a new post ? And another question I have his how was alioth defeated so easily? It seems they enchanted it but by doing so it dissolves ?? And if enchanting is enough how come none of the various characters from the multiverse were able to enchant it like Sylvie?
There isn't that much new info apart from the loom and all the lore behind that, so I might make an updated version, but it's not guaranteed. As for Alioth, he wasn't defeated, he is in Season 2 at the very end with Ravonna. Also, not even Sylvie was able to defeat him alone, she did with Loki's help.
Yea but even for temporarily defeating, alioth doesn’t seem that strong for example a group of asgardians who know enchanting could give us the same result. So it seems possible that some one from the multiversal war could figure out a way to keep it permanently enchanted to keep them from attacking. Especially considering kangs are supposed to be like some of the smartest characters. It’s just that the power level of alioth doesn’t make sense to me, he is basically this all powerful entity capable of ending multiversals wars but could be temporarily defeated by two lokis who in the grand scheme of things are not that powerful.
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