So I guess now I’m just reviewing all the Marvel TV shows. It’s not like I have any better ideas on what to write about, so here goes.
Loki is off to a promising start and looks to be a good foray into the Marvel Universe multiverse and time travel. Now to explain some of the Easter eggs.
The Time Keepers and Time Variance Authority are real properties in Marvel Comics, dating back to the ‘80s (the Commission in Umbrella Academy reminded me of them). I’m most familiar with the Time Keepers from the late-‘90s Avengers Forever series, which dealt with time travel and the legacy of the Avengers through their long and twisty history. These three beings, looking much as they did in those wall carvings, fought a group of Avengers that Kang the Conqueror (more on him below) pulled from various points in the timestream.
The Time Keepers are in that group of “overseers,” the really cosmic beings that make the Marvel Universe tick. In the show, they are keeping the “sacred timeline” safe by eliminating any stray timelines so destiny will take its course. It was very similar in comics (Avengers Forever dealt with the idea of eliminating any timelines in which earthlings made real inroads in space because they were destined to become a Terran Empire and establish a dictatorship modeled after the Avengers), with the added idea that the Time Keepers are keeping the timeline safe ultimately so the timeline in which they are born will survive.
The Time Variance Authority in the comics is a bunch of bureaucrats, apparently modeled after the late Marvel writer Mark Gruenwald, who was sort of the keeper of Marvel continuity. I liked the cartoon orientation video of the TVA and the form Loki had to sign about every word he’d ever spoken.
The idea of a “sacred timeline” highlights one big difference in how DC and Marvel handle their universes. DC reboots its continuity every so often. There was a DC multiverse for decades until it got too confusing, at which point DC contracted back to one universe and one Earth, then later expanded back to a multiverse. Along the way, DC jettisoned some of its history so certain events never occurred. Marvel has never done a hard reboot, so events going back decades have all occurred. They might retcon our understanding of events, or update the Vietnam War to the Iraq War, but it’s still basically one unbroken timeline.
The woman judge who ruled on Loki’s status is credited as Ravonna, which may go somewhere interesting. In Avengers comics, she’s not part of the TVA but is a love interest of Kang, a princess of one of the worlds he conquered. This might be exciting since it suggests they’ll bring on Kang (I did read he’s supposed to be featured in an upcoming movie). They really need to, since Kang has been an Avengers villain since the ‘60s and if time travel is involved, they have to bring him in. I’ll give some more info on Kang in an upcoming episode but he’s a time-traveler and longtime manipulator of the Avengers who once actually conquered present-day Earth.
I’m wondering here how powerful Loki is. Sometimes it seems like the MCU will underpower the Asgardians and go for laughs, and I’m not sure I like that. In the comics, Thor is immensely powerful but he’s not funny, but I guess they realized humor worked better with the character on screen. I just hope they don’t downplay Loki as some guy with an inferiority complex who puts up a front as a trickster. He’s an actual Norse god (more on the Asgardians in another entry).
I wonder how susceptible Loki would be to the Time Keepers and the TVA and if there’s a hierarchy to the cosmic beings in Marvel. There are pantheon gods like Thor, Loki and Hercules and they’re massively powerful but there are also cosmic beings like Eternity and the Living Tribunal, and they seem to be above some of the gods. (Thanos, to me, is someone who’s not at the level of the cosmic beings. He’s elevated by acquiring the Infinity Stones but if he loses them, he just has a superhuman but not-unreasonable level of power. A being like Eternity has power that cannot be stripped away; there’s no gauntlet he can take off. And above all these in the Marvel Universe is Galactus, a fundamental force of the universe.)
Anyway, good start. More Easter eggs and inside baseball in the coming weeks.
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