In Marvel’s upcoming Loki series, the Asgardian god of mischief who appeared to peace right on out of the timestream in Avengers: Endgame somehow ends up being apprehended by the Time Variance Authority, an extradimensional organisation in charge of maintaining the ordered flow of time. In a new clip from his very own Disney+ show, we find out a bit more about how it all works.
Given Loki’s fondness for sneaking around with messing with things, and the fact that Endgame was a story about Earth’s heroes altering timelines on a massive scale, it makes a certain degree of sense that the TVA would set its sights on Odin’s youngest delinquent. A new clip featuring Owen Wilson as TVA Agent Mobius M. Mobius fleshes out Loki’s story a bit more, though, as the trickster is singled out for questioning after being imprisoned and almost killed.
As Mobius guides Loki through the TVA, their conversation makes clear that while Loki isn’t entirely certain of how much danger he’s in, he’s pieced enough of the puzzle together to understand that Mobius isn’t exactly his biggest obstacle. Mobius may be a know-it-all annoyance keeping Loki bound within the TVA’s walls, but the new clip establishes the existence of the Time-Keepers, Mobius’ creators and the real source of the TVA’s power.
It’s a bit rich hearing an Asgardian — the people who travel via rainbow lightshow — scoff at the idea of hyper-intelligent space lizards who manipulate time. But it’s likely easier for Loki to roll his eyes than to consider the possibility that there’s really a group of people who know of every messed up thing he’s ever done. In Marvel’s comics, the Time-Keepers are both responsible for the creation of the TVA and recruiting employees to carry out the organisation’s larger goal of dealing with particularly dangerous timelines. For example, Immortus, one of the Avengers’ classic villains, is revealed to have been tasked by the TVA to monitor substantial chunks of time, as well as prevent the Scarlet Witch from having children whose power could threaten reality.
Loki, it seems, plans to put its titular antihero on a similar path as he’s sent out to various points in time to clean up messes of his and others’ makings. There’s little question that Loki’s going to rise to the challenge as he receives his TVA assignments, but it’s going to be interesting to see how much the Time-Keepers and the TVA’s other workers aside from Loki and Mobius factor into the larger shape of the series. With WandaVision behind us and Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania introducing an Immortus-adjacent villain in the future, there’s a chance that Loki’s plot could set up some major developments for the MCU beyond its own story, which, you know, is the whole point.
Loki — which also stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Wunmi Mosaku — premieres on Disney+ on June 9, 2021.