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A+ for ambition, D+ for the sloppy execution. And Jonathan Majors performance would have been God tier as a villain of the week in the '67 Batman series (and I mean that as a sincere compliment) but it didn't work so well in a show that already felt pretty threadbare and low stakes. The show really could have benefited from a little effort being put into it's own internal logic. Suspension of disbelief has to be at lest somewhat earned. Hell, even it's core concept of "There's thing called the sacred timeline" is meaningless and undefined in the most basic sense. If the sacred timeline is a group of Kang approved timelines it doesn't work according to things specifically said in the show, but at the same time if it is a single Kang approved timeline it also doesn't work according to things expressly said in the show. I mean I can even enjoy Star Trek which is the benchmark for shows that fall apart if you think about the details for a second, but the writers for Loki just went way overboard on the whole "Just get that plot rolling, and who gives a gently caress what's driving it" thing.
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Jul 15, 2021 15:45
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Frankenstyle posted:Hell, even it's core concept of "There's thing called the sacred timeline" is meaningless and undefined in the most basic sense. If the sacred timeline is a group of Kang approved timelines it doesn't work according to things specifically said in the show, but at the same time if it is a single Kang approved timeline it also doesn't work according to things expressly said in the show. What are the contradictions?
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Jul 15, 2021 15:50
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Bleck posted:Disney is just old and white enough to still hate mixed race business in their films and as a result I am comfortable in assuming that Kang The Conqueror being Majors means that whoever they get to play Reed Richards will also be black and this pleases me. Nathaniel and Reed are like 1000 years apart aren't they? Reed and Susan could be a Sioux/Thai power couple for all the difference it would make
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Jul 15, 2021 15:52
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The Dave posted:
Ok so first off if you have a Windows 10 PC, you can currently get gamepass ultimate for £/$1 a month for 3 months, which will also include a free month or two of disney plus, which is how I've been watching it! But you're pretty much right: It's sacred in that it keeps the number of universes - and thus the number of Kangs - in the multiverse limited to 1, who is the guy we see in episode 6. It's kind of implied that the multiverse got lucky and ended up with a fairly benevolent Kang who isn't so much worried about being in power, and is more concerned with making sure other universes don't spring up and bring additional Kangs into being. Frankenstyle posted:A+ for ambition, D+ for the sloppy execution. And Jonathan Majors performance would have been God tier as a villain of the week in the '67 Batman series (and I mean that as a sincere compliment) but it didn't work so well in a show that already felt pretty threadbare and low stakes. The show really could have benefited from a little effort being put into it's own internal logic. Suspension of disbelief has to be at lest somewhat earned. Hell, even it's core concept of "There's thing called the sacred timeline" is meaningless and undefined in the most basic sense. If the sacred timeline is a group of Kang approved timelines it doesn't work according to things specifically said in the show, but at the same time if it is a single Kang approved timeline it also doesn't work according to things expressly said in the show. There's just the one timeline/universe (or at least, only one timeline/universe that leads to Jonathan Winters existing). The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Jul 15, 2021 |
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Jul 15, 2021 15:52
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live with fruit posted:What are the contradictions? Other timelines exist, even if they're not allowed to branch off too far from the main one (see Sylvie's timeline existing for a decade, all the other Loki's, the timelines created by the Avengers when they did their shenanigans etc).
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Jul 15, 2021 15:53
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stev posted:Other timelines exist, even if they're not allowed to branch off too far from the main one (see Sylvie's timeline existing for a decade, all the other Loki's, the timelines created by the Avengers when they did their shenanigans etc). The way they describe it early on in the show is that there can be a little pocket of deviance that exists, so long as whatever cause and effect chain doesn't spread far enough that it creates a whole new timeline. So maybe there are two versions of you for an that eat different lunches, but then they converge into the same version in the afternoon because you end up leading the same life or whatever. I don't even read comics but thinking about it in terms of comic book alternate realities is really straightforward and obvious and I don't know why people are struggling so much with it.
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Jul 15, 2021 15:59
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About whether Endgame matters in a sense Yes, it's important to also remember Kang is specifically from the 31st century, a future MCU where the events of Endgame already happened. After removing himself to be outside of time and ensure he's the one and only, it was dependent upon the events which lead to him to stay on that path. So yes, while he may have paved the road which led Loki and Sylvie to him, that was specifically just them as variants, and not really anything else from what was probably the normal time stream.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:04
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The Dave posted:I don't want to publicly admit this but I don't have D+ and I "watch" these MCU shows by second-hand through youtube reactors. I watch about 2-3 and I get a pretty good idea of what has happened and the story. Come on. Just pirate it. It's fine. This sounds like some seventh level of hell torture. Don't subject yourself to youtube reactions. Nothing is worth that.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:07
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My interpretation of the end was the difference at the end was Loki chose not to become the ruler of the world “take the throne” which caused things to change rapidly
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Jul 15, 2021 16:08
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Timelines that get pruned / nexus events are changes significant enough to cause another Kang to come into existence So there is theoretically another Sylvie who is living happily on her own timeline, but evens unfold such that Kang does not come into being, or does not figure out dimensional travel, or something like that I think? So like, Loki escaping would eventually lead to a different Kang than the one we met in the finale... I thinkkkkkk?
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Jul 15, 2021 16:14
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HootTheOwl posted:The TVA only allows for one timeline. Period. We see this at the end First the disc around the castle begins branching as soon as he's stabbed and then when Loki goes back to the TVA they're rapidly pruning timelines. The Remaining Kang (both the dead one and the new one) seem to understand that the only way to ensure there is no multiverse war is for there to be no branching timelines. And each branch represents a threat to him. Dead kang did it out of beneveloence. I assume that as villain for Ant Man new Kang wants a throne. You really only made one mistake. He Who Remains is not benevolent. He's a turbo-Hitler, a Mega Stalin, and an Ultra Thanos. He had killed every single thing in every alternative universe except for the one sacred Timeline. Before he did that, he was an eager participant in the multiverse war. What separates him from those atrocities is millions of years of introspection and loneliness. He wiped out all of the other timelines for self aggrandizement and conquest and retroactively justified it in the name of peace. Was he tired and lonely at the end? Sure, but at no point did he express regret or try to pay penance. In fact it was his expressed wish that the pruning of alternate universes continue regardless of who took power.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:17
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The red horizontal line they monitor on their ipads is in hindsight probably the “this universe will spawn a bad guy “ line yeah
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Jul 15, 2021 16:17
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euphronius posted:My interpretation of the end was the difference at the end was Loki chose not to become the ruler of the world “take the throne” which caused things to change rapidly No. The death of He Who Remains allows the other variants of him to run rampant and one has now gone back in time and retroactively usurped control of the TVA.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:17
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The Grumbles posted:The way they describe it early on in the show is that there can be a little pocket of deviance that exists, so long as whatever cause and effect chain doesn't spread far enough that it creates a whole new timeline. So maybe there are two versions of you for an that eat different lunches, but then they converge into the same version in the afternoon because you end up leading the same life or whatever. I don't even read comics but thinking about it in terms of comic book alternate realities is really straightforward and obvious and I don't know why people are struggling so much with it. But as stev said above, Sylvie lived for like a decade before she was pruned. If we were simply talking about alternate timelines, sure, a universe could have branched off a billion years ago and produced alligator Loki or satyr Loki, but the TVA is clearly shown to prune alternate timelines very quickly (within minutes, in Loki's case). So "the TVA prunes people as soon as they diverge" doesn't quite mesh with "wildly different version of people can live for a long time on their own." I guess you could argue that Loki and Sylvie would have eventually become the same person (if she hadn't made some unknown *choice*), but that doesn't seem true to the characters we are shown. And perhaps characters are lying to us about how things work, but that's not a very satisfying answer. Edit: Thinking about it more, I guess some of these wildly-different variants could have been pruned during the time war (before the sacred timeline was established). Still, that doesn't seem to apply to Sylvie, who was individually pruned by the TVA. DorianGravy fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Jul 15, 2021 |
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Jul 15, 2021 16:17
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Sockser posted:Timelines that get pruned / nexus events are changes significant enough to cause another Kang to come into existence Which means all we have to do to solve everything Loki presented is to kill Richards Doom did nothing wrong
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Jul 15, 2021 16:18
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euphronius posted:My interpretation of the end was the difference at the end was Loki chose not to become the ruler of the world “take the throne” which caused things to change rapidly
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Jul 15, 2021 16:19
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X-O posted:No. The death of He Who Remains allows the other variants of him to run rampant and one has now gone back in time and retroactively usurped control of the TVA. What was the (metaphorical) thunder in the distance and then HWR saying “I don’t know what’s going on now”
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Jul 15, 2021 16:20
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I thought that was Loki using “free will “ which was referenced many times in the show
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Jul 15, 2021 16:20
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euphronius posted:What was the (metaphorical) thunder in the distance and then HWR saying “I don’t know what’s going on now” His knowledge of events is based on being in the 'sacred timeline' and knowing what happens there. The decision about to be made breaks that. The timeline starts branching and now events are no longer under his control or knowledge. euphronius posted:I thought that was Loki using “free will “ which was referenced many times in the show Nothing that happened there was free will. The only free will exhibited was by He Who Remains who let a choice be made. But even in that choice both outcomes were already determined.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:22
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The Dave posted:I don't want to publicly admit this but I don't have D+ and I "watch" these MCU shows by second-hand through youtube reactors. I watch about 2-3 and I get a pretty good idea of what has happened and the story. Yes, you have it correct. Kang created the TVA to ensure that the only timeline that remains is the one where he is the ruler and no other Kang variants exist. By pruning branching timelines, he ensures that other Kangs never exist. It’s only a problem because Kang is the one who discovers the multiverse and how to travel between them. Before Kang, multiverses existed fully separate from each other. For what it’s worth, it makes perfect sense to me. It’s actually the exact thing that I predicted after episode 5, so I watched the entire episode with a smug look on my stupid face. I didn’t get his motivation right though; I thought we would see bad Kang who was using the TVA to ensure his grip on the multiverse never slipped. Instead we got a quirky Kang who is tortured by the thought of a worse version of himself taking over. 20 minutes of monologuing from behind a desk is not good TV though.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:26
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So I think the finale does neatly tie up why there aren't that many aliens in the TVA or questions like "Why isn't Gamora a variant!!?1!" Only events that could affect a particular person being born on earth in the 31st century are worth dealing with. Anything that happens elsewhere won't be relevant to that.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:27
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Umbra Dubium posted:So I think the finale does neatly tie up why there aren't that many aliens in the TVA or questions like "Why isn't Gamora a variant!!?1!" Also explains why so many Lokis in Hell or whatever that plane was called
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Jul 15, 2021 16:28
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Mulva posted:Do you get what the concept of pruning is? It's eliminating the variation from how time is in He Who Remains' reality so there is only the one timeline, rather than a multiverse of events. The arbitrary decision point he made is "My reality is the one I'll keep". That's what people deviate from. And the TVA is the tool by which that variance is corrected. Ok with that so far? The deviation in Endgame was Loki gets away with (or without) the Tesseract. The "non-deviation" is that Loki doesn't get away with the Tesseract but the 2023 Avengers don't get it either. The 2023 Avenger were always "supposed" to fail to get the Tesseract in 2012. Tony and Steve were always supposed to go to the 70s to get it and more Pym particles.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:30
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I mean it’s basically just the MCU version of Immortus who was old and tired. Except apparently the Time Keepers, who are real, come to him to give him a job in exchange for immortality. There was also a story where he tries to put Scarlet Witch in charge of time kind of like what he attempts to do with the Lokis here.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:31
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DorianGravy posted:But as stev said above, Sylvie lived for like a decade before she was pruned. If we were simply talking about alternate timelines, sure, a universe could have branched off a billion years ago and produced alligator Loki or satyr Loki, but the TVA is clearly shown to prune alternate timelines very quickly (within minutes, in Loki's case). So "the TVA prunes people as soon as they diverge" doesn't quite mesh with "wildly different version of people can live for a long time on their own." Sylvie is a weird exception because we know that Kang knows that he need Loki and Sylvie together at the end of time. So he's clearly got his own reasons for pruning her as and when he does. But even without that exception, I'd put that in overthinky "why doesn't Thanos just snap more food" territory.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:33
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The "twist" of Loki was that they basically did a 1:1 adaption of plot beats from the comics instead of modifying/reimagining them. Despite being an "original" show, it was probably the most comics-accurate MCU entry.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:33
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For a show about a character whose entire deal is being the most clever trickster in the multiverse, the fact that the season finale is a completely straightforward encounter with Some Guy in the Office at the End of Time fell entirely flat to me. I kept waiting for some kind of Jojoesque turnabout or trick that would change the state of play and, you know, actually use the defining feature of the main character in a satisfying way. Instead, the final encounter progresses in a way that feels so constrained by the Marvel Global Business Unit's future storytelling needs that the only possibility was 20 minutes of plot explanation, a weak payoff on the show's romantic thread, and a murder that even the victim seems to be utterly bored by. Loki's just along for the ride as people around him do the necessaries to get us to the next batch of properties.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:35
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:The "twist" of Loki was that they basically did a 1:1 adaption of plot beats from the comics instead of modifying/reimagining them. Holy poo poo yes. When he was giving his backstory I was thinking to myself that this was basically reading from the wiki or an Avengers compilation TPB.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:35
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X-O posted:His knowledge of events is based on being in the 'sacred timeline' and knowing what happens there. The decision about to be made breaks that. The timeline starts branching and now events are no longer under his control or knowledge. It seemed like HWR had it set up to be killed by Sylvia and then Loki takes over. Loki uses free will to step out of his normal path (take the throne ) which gets him banished by Sylvie and knocks out HWRs precognition (he literally had the script !!!) . HWR had it set up this way and pruned all other Lokis over time to make sure these two specially showed up because they were the ones he needed to do the deed and turn over power so he can get out This fits thematically with the show which was in part about Loki’s existential crisis and trying to be a different (better ?) person . The “script” for Loki is that he doesn’t think twice about “taking the throne” in fact that’s what he’s been trying to do all show. Him boy doing so goes against his comic book / MCU nature and corrupts “the sacred time line”. Basically Loki had a existential crisis about being type cast as a villain and becomes a real (rounded) character in the show which breaks everything in the MCU about him Imho euphronius fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Jul 15, 2021 |
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Jul 15, 2021 16:35
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Fwiw overthinking how it all works is half the fun of time travel stories. I never usually intend it as a significant criticism of the work itself, since it's impossible to write a time travel plot that makes perfect logical sense.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:36
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Sockser posted:Timelines that get pruned / nexus events are changes significant enough to cause another Kang to come into existence This is my understanding. The "sacred timeline" is the one that leads to HWR and anything that doesn't lead to an alternate Kang is fine.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:36
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Squashing Machine posted:For a show about a character whose entire deal is being the most clever trickster in the multiverse, the fact that the season finale is a completely straightforward encounter with Some Guy in the Office at the End of Time fell entirely flat to me. I kept waiting for some kind of Jojoesque turnabout or trick that would change the state of play and, you know, actually use the defining feature of the main character in a satisfying way. Instead, the final encounter progresses in a way that feels so constrained by the Marvel Global Business Unit's future storytelling needs that the only possibility was 20 minutes of plot explanation, a weak payoff on the show's romantic thread, and a murder that even the victim seems to be utterly bored by. Loki's just along for the ride as people around him do the necessaries to get us to the next batch of properties. I mean yeah, that's probably my biggest criticism of a series as a whole is that they make Loki seem kind of... an inept buffoon? Like, he's the major villain in one of the key marvel films, and his whole deal is that he's playing 4d chess the whole time and is genuinely good at both winning people over and betraying them. But his consistent trait in this is that he's kind of bad at doing Loki stuff - even to regular people who aren't cosmic space wizards. I mean it fits the irreverent tone of the series, I guess.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:38
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Showing the script was funny.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:38
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stev posted:Fwiw overthinking how it all works is half the fun of time travel stories. I never usually intend it as a significant criticism of the work itself, since it's impossible to write a time travel plot that makes perfect logical sense. I can't enjoy Back to the Future until I know why objects from the future will change in the past because Marty never existed, but Marty himself never changes. Or why Marty not existing still means his siblings are the exact same age, genetically the same, and took the exact same picture, but the photographer took it off-center to leave blank space for a third person.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:39
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:I can't enjoy Back to the Future until I know why objects from the future will change in the past because Marty never existed, but Marty himself never changes. first thing you learn in photography 101, always leave a bit of room for time ghosts
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Jul 15, 2021 16:40
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euphronius posted:It seemed like HWR had it set up to be killed by Sylvia and then Loki takes over. Loki uses free will to step out of his normal path (take the throne ) which gets him banished by Sylvie and knocks out HWRs precognition (he literally had the script !!!) . HWR had it set up this way and pruned all other Lokis over time to make sure these two specially showed up because they were the ones he needed to do the deed and turn over power so he can get out One sort of wild card is Miss Minutes trying to bribe them. Why would HWR do that when he wanted them to either kill or replace him? Unless it's just what they "needed to hear." live with fruit fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Jul 15, 2021 |
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Jul 15, 2021 16:41
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Pretty sure the Kang that took over the TVA was probably hiding in the Quantum Realm, as it looks like Chronoplis behind Janet in Ant-Man and the Wasp. He probably fled there with his army to hide from who i'm going to call Immortus and as soon as Sylvie killed Immortus, then Kang the Conqueror pops out and takes over the TVA at an earlier point in time and thats why Loki shows up and they don't know him, because in their minds, they never met, and they've been working for Kang who has his own agenda that doesn't worry about Loki's winning the tour de france Sylvie will not be happy that yea, killing Immortus is just letting something worse come into being. Going to assume Renslayer Travelled to Kang. as Kang had some sort of control over Miss Minutes, and she's running Kang's TVA, because that's what she sought, power and free will because by being in charge of the timeline, she can do whatever she wants
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Jul 15, 2021 16:42
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What was the point of having Miss Minutes offer Sylvie and Loki a place on the timeline where they could have everything they wanted, if Immortus knew they wouldn't take it? Why bother bringing that up at all?
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Jul 15, 2021 16:43
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Sylvie said "I was pruned before you existed" to Loki, but how would that work? Shouldn't all Loki's have started existence at the same time, they just took differing paths to get to where they are now? Like, you get Old Loki & Kid Loki because they were pruned at different points along their path, but how would Sylvie exist "before" another version of herself? I suppose it adds to the clues that she's not the same person, but Loki doesn't even flinch at her saying it.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:44
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fractalairduct posted:What was the point of having Miss Minutes offer Sylvie and Loki a place on the timeline where they could have everything they wanted, if Immortus knew they wouldn't take it? Why bother bringing that up at all? Denying it steels their resolve for the final showdown (It also shows the audience their internal state and commitment to the cause) Imho idk.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:45
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