I agree, but a small section of the fans did though, and are still vocal about considering Gukat's more active villainy during the second half of the series some sort of character-assassination.
Big DS9 fan. Gul Dukat and Garak are fantastic characters. Getting on topic, the latest What If? episode was another dud for me. It didn't deviate enough from the normal events in the MCU to make me intrigued. It was Killmonger doing exactly what you'd expect Killmonger to do. There was no twist in that sense. To me, the main idea of What If? stories is to explore unexpected alternatives. Killmonger taking advantage of having access to Stark and the company resources in order to lead a coup in Wakanda is not unexpected.
What? Is this sone new crap Marvel is putting out? I haven’t read an Iron Man comic in the last eight years or so but I was reading them from the 70s and up and I don’t recall any Comics in which were the public was led to believe it was a robot It wasn’t always public knowledge that Tony was in the suit but It was always understood that there was an employee of Starck Enterprises inside the armor.......In fact Iron Man was considered Tony Starks bodyguard even though it was Tony himself in the suit in the original Comics
Except that doesn't actually make any sense... I mean we already see the existence of variant time lines BEFORE Kang was killed... I'm not going to bother with the "He Who Remains" thing, we all know it's Kang. In fact there's evidence of variant time lines existing even before Loki. What the Avengers did in End Game game would not be possible without creating variant time lines. We're told that restoring the infinity stones in the exact moment they were taken from would close those branches but actually it wouldn't. You'd instead be creating a second branch. Plus even if that did actually work there's also three things or rather PEOPLE that never got returned to the past. Thanos, Nebula, and Gamora. There's also a whole army of unnamed generic bad guys but for the sake of simplicity we'll focus on the main characters. Thanos dies in End Game TWICE... The older version of Thanos is killed at the beginning of the movie. This is the same Thanos who already wiped out half the universe in Infinity War 5 years earlier. Later in the movie a younger version of Thanos from Gardians of the Galaxy Vol 1. one who hasn't yet collected all the infinity stones follows the avengers into the future and then becomes a variant who dies. Because that variant. Young Evil Nebula swaps places with her older Good counterpart and opens the time portal so her father can invade from the past. The evil past version is eventually killed and because she's a variant her death has no effect on her future counterpart's continued existence. Future Gamora dies and is later replaced by her younger counterpart who takes the place of her future dead counterpart and is never returned to her own time. Because of this event creating all these variants there would ALREADY be branches that never got pruned... A universe where Thanos and his entire army just vanished and never returned. Not really because there's no actual evidence that the TVA has ever actually erased a time line. They say that's what they're doing but the evidence seems to suggest otherwise... I mean we literally meet multiple variants of Loki in the show. If the TVA ever actually erased variants then these other Lokis shouldn't exist. President Loki existing in the show would be just as likely or unlikely as Loki from What If...? existing. If the What If...? time lines can't exist Pre-Loki then Thanos, Nebula, Gamora, and all the Loki's in Loki also can't exist. If killing Kang is the event that creates the multiverse then no variants can exist before his death. There are already variants before that happens and the existence of variants proves that there must be a multiverse, if there's already a multiverse then everything we were told about pruning branches to maintain the sacred time was a lie. Variants = Multiverse You can't have one without the other. Except from what we've seen the TVA only really seems interested in hunting variant Lokis... Do we ever actually see anyone else being Pruned? I don't think so, seems like they're all Loki's so they aren't really traveling to Nexus Events, they're only hunting Lokis. Also... do you realize how many Nexus Events there would actually be? Every time anyone makes a decision that's a Nexus Event.. there are 7 billion on the planet right now, each person making multiple decisions a DAY. There could easily be up to 42 billion Nexus Points just in a single day alone... Now look at the TVA's staff... Do they look like they have the man power to even handle a single DAY let alone an entire freaking time line! Heck most of them look like they don't even do field work we only see them working desk jobs. So how do you think this under staffed TVA is possibly going to have any hope of effectively pruning variant time lines? If they were at all effective they wouldn't have Multiple Lokis running around. The Time Keepers were a lie, what makes you think anything about the TVA was ever true? Kang pretty obviously had an entirely different agenda. Plus there's also a Variant TVA that Loki ends up in after Kang died. If the TVA only existed to maintain the Sacred Time line and we're now in a different universe outside the sacred time line then why is there another TVA still? It's pretty obvious that all that Sacred Time Line and the Multiverse not existing crap was always a lie and the Ancient One seems to be working with Kang as she's also simultaneously aware of the Multiverse while denying it's existence. Or it's just really bad writing from someone who can't seem to make up their mind what the rules are. Anyway... Saw episode 6 which seems to combine the events of the First Ironman with the Events of Black Panther. It's a good episode though the way everything is condensed down I wasn't really clear on if Killmonger working with Tony helped him find Wacconda earlier than in the main time line or if YEARS had passed as they built their robot together and became friends. I'm going to assume years went by and the "Black Panther" part of the story was happening roughly around the same time as it would have originally. Mainly because it seems very unlikely that they would become friends and later enemies as quickly as the pacing of the episode made it feel. Also I imagine getting that robot operational would take a lot more time. Even considering how quickly Tony has developed some pretty advanced technology in the main time line he also didn't get around to that kind of advanced combat A.I. until much later in the movies and with the aid of the Mind Stone. The idea of him building these robot drones in the same amount of time that it took him to build his first real Ironman armor (The first Red and gold one not counting the unpainted prototypes) seems unlikely. Like if he had the capability use A.I. the entire time why would he ever build a suit and wait till later to even consider an A.I.? Anyway good episode but I feel it suffers the worst from the quick pacing these episodes are forced to have due to condensing movies down into shorter segments... There was that other episode that combined 3 movies but at least those all took place in the same week and the episode make it clear that we were watching events happening in the span of a week. This episode combines 2 movies and there's no such indication of exactly how much time is passing. I do really wish these episodes could be extended into full length movies as the pacing is generally the worst part. I feel like I'm watching cliff notes rather than a full completed story.
Great episode, if my least favorite since T'Challa-as-Star-Lord. It was great to see Kilmonger again and it was a strong direction to double down on his villainy. Seeing a Tony who didn't go through the experiences of his captivity and thus never grew as a man was interesting as well.
They explicitly state that they don't "erase"; "pruning" shifts the variant to the end of time... it would seem that the local timeline continues as if the variant wasn't there (although "resetting the timeline" is never made clear as we don't follow any reset timelines). As much as I liked Loki, this is the problem with it - the TVA exists "out of time", so can monitor and "prune" any variation at any point, but at what point do they prune, and how does their own flow of time impact it? Given that at any point in time, any decision or action anywhere across the universe can lead to a variant, do they have infinite resources to tackle them (from their perspective) simultaneously, or do they process them in order, much like a real world bureaucracy? This is the problem with any such body - the TVA, the Time Lords, the Time Masters... why do they have to process things in our linear order when they don't follow our temporal reality? Yep. In the waiting room while Loki is being processed, the guy who didn't take a ticket was pruned. Although we're shown an image of the vast cityscape, which I would imagine is filled with other agents, my statement above is in agreement with this... the concept of one organisation (even one filled with innumerable captured variants) couldn't possibly cope with the infinite possible decisions made throughout the universe on a per-second basis. I'm not sure she'd be working with Kang, since she was already syphoning energy from Dormammu's dimension, it could just be she was unaware of anything larger than our universe; in the trailer for No Way Home, Strange acknowledges the limited understanding of the multiverse - maybe The Ancient One had similarly limited understanding. Or that
The producer of the show has literally confirmed this is set in the post-Loki multiverse Chadwick Boseman: ‘What If’ Star Jeffrey Wright Reflects On Late Actor – Deadline "It’s no coincidence that the show picks up right after Loki…The multi-verse has erupted in every possible direction. What if…? gives us a chance to explore that." Also in regards to Ancient One and the Multiverse, if one looks at Dr. Strange its clear she's not talking about alternate worlds like the ones depicted in What If, she's talking about Dimensions, as that is what she's showing Strange in his mind trip, the Quantum Realm, Dark Dimension, Mirror Dimension. We also dont know if that TVA is an alternate one or the same one, that is something we'll have to wait till S2 to be confirmed, for all we know Kang took over the same TVA and mindwiped everyone. Also i am not saying there never were variant timelines before Loki, its clear from the show that there were, as He Who Remains explained there used to exist variant timelines, but he chose to erase them so the couldn't be another Kang and obviously we see that they keep showing up. We do see the TVA also goes after non-Loki variants, remember that annoying guy in the first episode of Loki who then got pruned for not having his ticket. And we do see that the TVA have been erasing timelines, remember at the end of Loki when they meet Kang, we see the timeline in the background and its a straight line, but once the TVA found out they are variants themselfs and stopped pruning the timelines, that is when the branches start to emerge, if them erasing timelines was a lie, we would've seen branches in the timeline already by the time Loki and Sylvie meet He Who Remains
Erase was the word use by the post I was responding to and either way the same problems arise regardless. No idea what any of this has to do with the quote you're responding to but I actually addressed the same issue in a different quote and I AGREE with you on this point. Well most of it I agree with... I will say that they have to follow our temporal reality because it's literally impossible not to. Time is not a thing that actually exists in the first place, it's a unit of measurement. To exist "out of time" would basically mean the same thing as time travel or time manipulation. You're existing out of the normal flow of time. To put it simply... If you were born in 1984 then you would be naturally be 37 years old in the current year of 2021. If you were to some how stop time around for 2 years between then and now then you'd actually be 39 and would thus exist "out of time" because you're 2 years removed from YOUR time. While you stopped time around you, you continued to age within that stopped time hence being an extra 2 years older. The idea of existing out of time meaning that the rules of times don't apply to you... well if that were the case then you would be the one stopped in time... unable to move... The rules of time must apply to you or you can't do anything. Simply put, if you don't age then can't move... if you're moving then you must still be ageing. Unless there's some other power that keeps you looking young despite the passage of time. The rules of times can be bent, not broken. They still apply, they're just being applied in a different way then we normally experience time. How do we know that guy wasn't another Loki though? I mean we've seen that he has the power to change his appearance at will. Even other Loki's within the show aren't all Tom Hiddleston's I think our Primary Loki and President Loki are the only variants in the show actually played by the same actor. Hell one of them is a freaking alligator! So how can we be sure that random guy wasn't another Loki? Didn't know about the vast cityscape... how has no one mentioned that in their reviews of this show? I was under the impression that it was just one building with a few people working there. I guess it doesn't really make much of a difference though if we both still came to the same conclusion. Strange's understanding of the multiverse vastly differs from the Ancient One. Remember he still very recently even learned that magic exists, is still learning more about it, and many books were actually forbidden from him to ever read... books that the Ancient One already possesses knowledge of. She has already shown to have knowledge far beyond that of any other character. She literally references the Sacred Time line and Kang's entire goals from Loki in End Game. Also in that same scene despite traveling to a time when Dr. Strange was still a surgeon she already had knowledge of who Dr. Steven Strange was, exactly when his accident would take place, and what the Avengers from the future were doing in the past in the first place. She wasn't attempting to stop them and also explained in Loki is that what the Avengers did in End Game was actually SUPPOSE TO HAPPEN. All of which suggests that the Ancient One is working with Kang because how else could she not only know all if this information from her future but why else would she literally have the exact same goals that Kang does? There no reason for these two entirely different characters to be mirroring the same dialog and the same goals, unless they're working together. "It’s no coincidence that the show picks up right after Loki…The multi-verse has erupted in every possible direction. What if…? gives us a chance to explore that."[/quote] That's not as much of a confirmation as you seem to think it is. You're looking at this linearly from an in universe perspective which make no sense. The Multiverse has ALWAYS existed simultaneously with the main universe. That's how a multiverse works, it's multiple different time lines all over lapping each other co-existing TOGETHER... From OUR perspective this quote makes sense. What If...? literally started airing right after Loki ended. But for What If...? to follow Loki from an in universe story perspective can't happen because they're not even the same universe. Your "confirmation" just seems to be a horrible misunderstanding of contextual perspectives. To put this simply... To say that something is "Pre" or "Post" something else means you're speaking linearly but you CAN'T speak linearly about either of these two shows. It doesn't work with Loki because of their use of time travel. The only thing in the show that we could speak linearly about is our main Loki for the series, because we know when he came from. Anything post-Loki would also then be Post-Avengers(2012). If that's the basis you're going off of then episode 1, 3, and 6 of What if...? Must all be Pre-Loki because all of those episode take place Pre-Avengers(2012). You can't speak linearly about What if...? because each episode takes place in a different time period. The first episode is Agent Carter which much like Captain America First Avenger in the main time line is the Earliest point in the time line... Actually I take that back... I hated the Dr. Strange episode so much I almost forget he actually time travels to an even earlier point in time... anyway... for this series to all be Post-Loki that means the entirety of the main MCU time line including Loki itself is also Post-Loki. Do you see now why none of that makes any sense? The scenes you're talking about from Dr. Strange are an ENTIRELY different discussion that has NOTHING to do with her later scenes. She actually does talk about alternate worlds like the ones depicted in What If...? both in End Game and within What If...?'s Dr. Strange episode. And she speaks about the mutiverse the exact same way that Kang and the TVA agents do in Loki. That's the whole reason why I think she must be working with Kang because it's pretty clear that she knows more about the Multiverse than what she lets on. Plus there's a tone of evidence that she knows more than what she lets on in general... like the fact that she clearly knows who Dr. Strange is before they even officially met. Dr. Strange doesn't know this but Bruce Banner does cause she told him. She only seems to tell people what she needs to and keeps a lot of information hidden even from those she claims to trust. This isn't immediately apparent if you only watched Dr. Strange but the more we see of the Ancient One the less I trust her. What are you talking about? It's pretty obviously an alternate TVA. There are Statues of Kang that weren't there before, the Time Keeper statues that use to be around don't exist anymore because this version of the TVA is actually aware of Kang instead of working for the Time Keepers who never actually existed. And no one knows who Loki is. That's pretty differently an alternate TVA. Now it's possible that individual people could be mind wiped from the original TVA I mean they were mind wiped originally so they didn't know they were variants from Pruned time lines but the organization as a whole is still clearly a variant from what we had previously seen. Then what ARE you saying? I already addressed this in that other guy's post but no I don't remember that guy... mostly because I never actually watched the show. I just heard some other people talking about it. Honestly it sounded the whole series was a bunch of terribly written contradicting nonsense so I didn't waste my time actually watching that crap. And what's weird is I seem to have a better grasp of what's going on in the series than most of people who did actually watch it... like why do people still insist of referring to Sylvie as a female Loki? She's not a Loki at all. Her powers come from a Loki but she is actually an entirely different character. The fact that she was Credited as Sylvie in the second episode should of given it away. Sylvie A.K.A. the Enchantress is a HUMAN who grew up in New Asgard... at least in the comics, no idea if that's going to come into play for MCU version. She was given her powers by the actual Loki which could cause her to register as being a Loki to the TVA's sensors since she is welding his powers. I actually have another theory that our main Loki actually isn't a variant from a different time line... He's just a past version of the same Loki who's still going to go on to do all the Post-Avengers stuff we've seen him do before... except that he's seen his own future, he knows exactly how he's going to die... and he can freaking cast illusions... So I think the Loki who got killed by Thanos was an illusion cause that's the only way Loki could still be alive to create the Enchantress since New Asgard didn't exist in the MCU before Thanos killed him. It was established 5 years later. If her comic book origins even translate to her film origins at all... Sylvie would actually be from the future. It does look like she was taken from the original Asgard in her flash back, it doesn't look like New Asgard on Earth, at least not as we saw it during End Game but if she's from even futher in the future than that it's possible that given enough time Thor could build something that looks closer to the original Asgard. It is mentioned that they were both adopted but she knew she was adopted but a lot of people were adopted, doesn't make them the same person. I don't think they ever really confirmed WHO adopted her or even where she originally came from. Loki being a Frost Giant and Sylvie being a human pretty obviously different. Plus the big major clue that she's not actually a Loki Variant... SHE LITERALLY SAYS SHE'S NOT A LOKI! If she ever actually called herself Loki at any point fine sure, female Loki variant. Loki is a character who can literally look like anyone he/she want to so why not a female? But she's even literally telling us that she's no a Loki so why we treating her like she is? It's everyone else in the show that assumes she's a Loki variant, she has Loki's powers so they treat her as just another variant... but the character herself never claimed to be Loki. Maybe season 2 will explain more about her origins and clarify who she really is but honestly... I think they gave a huge chunk of her back story away as soon as they gave us the name Sylvie. Of course they're bound to change some details from the comics but just having her name already and being literally told by the character that she's not a Loki makes it pretty clear that we should stop addressing her as the Female Loki. That's not who she is. Whatever details they change from her comic origins she literally said "I'm not a Loki" her name is Sylvie, call her by her actual name damn it. You do realize that graphic is PART OF THE LIE right? It proves nothing. The time line is not a literal line, there are no literal branches, it's a metaphor we use to visualize an abstract concept that doesn't actually exist in any physical way. It's kind of like this how maps have literal boarder lines between different geographical regions. You do know that those boarders don't actually exist right? Like if you drive between California and Nevada there's no point at which you see a giant line going across the ground. I used that example because I've actually done that one, and all I saw was miles of freaking desert! No boarder line. Was my first time out of state, I don't know what I was expecting when I crossed the boarder but it was actually pretty uneventful. Still never crossed the boarder into a different country and that actually would be a bit more difficult than driving over state lines but that's got more to do politics than there actually being literal boarder lines. Anyway, point is that graphic can't be used to prove the existence or non-existence of the multiverse any more than this graphic can be used to prove where the boarder of Mexico is. This map shows both the current boarder as well as the pre-1848 boarder... neither of which ever actually existed. I mean sure the CONCEPT of boarders exist but the literal line drawn across the land is not something you'd ever actually find. In the same way there is no literal time line that you can see. It's just a graphic on a screen. It's as much a lie as all the lines on this map, they don't exist in any literal way. These are figurative lines being represented literally in an unrealistic graphic.
MCU Writer Reveals Loki's Nexus Connection to Doctor Strange's What If Episode Nexus Point Vs. Absolute Point In an interview with The GOAT Movie Podcast on YouTube, What If...? head writer A.C. Bradley gave insight on the development process for the show, specifically as it pertained to connecting with the rest of the MCU. With how long it took to come up with the concept for the plot and develop the animation, Bradley explained that she and her team were "writing so far into the future" that it was hard to think of the MCU years down the road. Specifically touching on Episode 4 featuring Doctor Strange, the writer revealed that she wrote the script over two and a half years ago. Bradley also commented on how the "Absolute Point" in the show should have been called a "Nexus Point" as it was in Loki , but the scripts and plot for Loki hadn't been developed when she was working on her own project: Tilda Swinton's The Ancient One referenced this concept in the episode itself when talking about the ramifications of Doctor Strange Supreme accomplishing his goal of changing the absolute point in his universe: With Episode 4 of What If...? having been written more than a year before Loki even began filming, it was nearly impossible to get that same level of consistency with how close Marvel keeps plot details close to the vest . However, the idea of this series happening in an alternate reality likely helped Bradley in the development process. After all, this universe could use a different name for the same concept, considering how much else was already changed from the core timeline. Not having access to the MCU's future plot details, Bradley found a way to deliver a concept that had already been introduced in a way that didn't confuse fans keeping up with this story after Loki . The coming weeks could potentially bring more similarities like this one , although everything is expectedly unpredictable in "these vast, new realities."
I liked how in the zombie episode, Okoye was featured. She of course is voiced by Danai Gurira, who plays Michonne in the Walking Dead.
Marvel's What If Writer: Party Thor Episode "Less Tragic" Than Doctor Strange Supreme "I swear it's slightly less tragic than Doctor Strange." As long as it's less tragic than Ragnarok.
I was just trying to point out he has more than one brother most people don’t know Then again this is the MCU so not exactly how it is in the comics
Ya, Baldur and the rest of his half-siblings within the marvel comics do not exist in the MCU. Baldur got close to appearing in the opening of Dark World (Its who Thor, Sif and the Warriors Three were initially going to help out). But Fiege and Marvel figured having a Baldur in took away from Loki.
as far as we know anyway Odin has proven he holds a lot of dark secrets, It wouldn’t surprise me if he had other kids somewhere I was hoping we would one day see Tyr or Vadar (we did see Tyr in dark world but there was no mention of his connection to the family)
