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What if everything we’ve been told in Loki so far is a lie? What if the Time Variance Authority, the great controllers of time and space, aren’t all they’re cracked up to be? And what if someone is plotting behind the scenes in preparation for the emergence of a major Marvel villain?
Those possibilities form the basis of one of the best Loki fan theories currently floating around the internet.
Taking to Reddit, user Royal-Roll7762 laid out his theory: "There are no timekeepers. There is no sacred timeline. The multiverse exists, and it’s all a lie. [Gugu Mbatha Raw’s character] Ravonna Renslayer is Kang [the Conqueror]’s wife and she’s reporting to him… and they only make changes that they want to make when it suits them. There’s actually no hard and fast rules. Also, all of the TVA agents are variants themselves that have had their minds wiped."
Honestly? It has serious merit. Think about ours – and Loki’s – first introduction to the TVA. Creepy mascot Miss Minutes’ video just so handily explains everything they need us to know: an entirely new concept from out of nowhere called the Sacred Timeline, the Time-Keepers (who are conveniently busy when Loki asks Renslayer to meet them), and a serious set of rules to keep things in check.
Renslayer's possible duplicitous nature also echoes our very own chat with Renslayer actor Gugu Mbatha-Raw. In the interview, she said: "I think as the show goes on, we get to see some of the morally ambiguous choices that she has to make. I think that she has a lot of tough decisions to make and a lot of responsibility." Mbatha-Raw even took part in some "fight training" in preparation for the role.
But if Renslayer is in cahoots with the time-travelling villain Kang the Conqueror, it suddenly makes a whole lot more sense as to why temporal matters are policed so heavily.
If the multiverse exists freely, it makes Kang’s job to, well, conquer a whole lot more difficult. The villain, set to be played by Jonathan Majors in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, can’t have various Lokis running around in the same space or Spider-Men swinging in from multiple Earths. For Kang, the control of time – or the illusion of control – is about as close to absolute power as one can get.
The TVA, then, could be a front for something far more sinister. If the theory rings true, Kang the Conqueror is the show’s secret villain – which has already been hinted at in an Easter egg from the premiere – and the MCU gets a lot more chaotic without a single Sacred Timeline to focus on. It'd be the biggest paradigm shift since Thanos decided to go hunting for Infinity Stones.
Roll on next week. Find out what time the next episode drops with our Loki release schedule. In the meantime, there’s even a primer on Kang the Conqueror to take in.
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