Loki! (spoiler thread)

[tomBitonti]

They are, generally speaking, in different timelines. Loki doesn't generally have the power to skip between timelines, so the variants don't generally interact. They stay in their own universes.

Additional text omitted.
The variants did originate in branches, but up now (in the current TVA frame), those branches were all pruned. Any surviving variants would be in the sacred timeline, and should be able to encounter each other.
*Except, if the variants stay in self pruning apocalypses, those locations branch and presumable would require a hop across streams to visit.
TomB

 

[Blue]

Does anyone else notice the inherent illogic in having differing points in the time disintegrated "at once"? I expect this represents a fundamental flaw in their time-travel logic, but okay, we'll have to live it with, because comic books.

When they first got to the Ren Faire and were talking about Nexus Events there was a bit with Loki asking why they couldn't come in before:

Loki: Let me ask you this, why don't we just travel back to before the attack, when the Variant first arrives?
Mobius: Nexus events destabilize the time flow. This branch is still changing and growing, so you gotta show up in real time.

"Real time"? Once you have some sort of regular time advancement in the TSA, then there is a concept of simultaneous again.

 

[hopeless]

Spoiler

So because they crapped up the first time they can't just jump back far enough to avoid this Nexus and simply establish an outpost or surveillance to keep an eye on the area so they can find out what happened right up to and before it becomes a Nexus event thus requiring them to turn up in "real time"?

Answer: Primeval the tv series covered this in the first season go watch it, the first few seasons are much better than this!

Spoiler

Yes I'm hoping she's actually the Enchantress and the whole reason the TVA can't deal with her is because they thought she was Loki and she was so annoyed that she's been beating the crap out of them until finding something useful to use their Nexus charges on.

 

[MarkB]

Additional text omitted.
The variants did originate in branches, but up now (in the current TVA frame), those branches were all pruned. Any surviving variants would be in the sacred timeline, and should be able to encounter each other.
*Except, if the variants stay in self pruning apocalypses, those locations branch and presumable would require a hop across streams to visit.
TomB

Theoretically, based on the butterfly effect, anytime a Variant steps into the sacred timeline, they immediately create a new branching timeline just by being there - except if they're in a place such as an imminent apocalypse where the effects of their presence are overwhelmed by the circumstances.

 

[Blue]

If he skipped out of that timeline, did he leave another version behind? If not, and they had disintegrated him, would he be dead forever since there was not a version in the sacred timeline anymore?

Since it has not yet become stable, the reset charges will burn it back to the variation - at the very least Loki picking up the Tesseract, but likely to when the maintimeline!Avengers entered the timeline. So it will continue from there - with Loki - without him ever getting off track.

So there's no need to create a duplicate, Loki is already there. Think if it as if books wrote each new page as you got to them, and you ripped a few rogue pages out of a book so that it can get back to writing the approved story as you turned the page.

 

[Blue]

Even without the spoilers, I would not trust this is actually a female Loki. Too big a reveal for just the 2nd episode.

It's only six episodes long. So if it was following a Three Act structure the reveal happened at the end of the first act. Seems right to me.

And she was using a power that Loki does not have, but Enchantress does. The only time Loki did something like that, he was using his staff with the infinity stone in it, and it caused a blue glow in the eyes, to match the stone. What this female "Loki" did had a green color to it, which also matches the Enchantress. Being the MCU, it could easily just be a combining of the two female characters into one. And as I read elsewhere, the hair color is not Loki's and the actress does not look like Tom Hiddleston, or at least not to me, and a Variant female Loki would still look like him.

All this makes sense.

 

[Blue]

Theoretically, based on the butterfly effect, anytime a Variant steps into the sacred timeline, they immediately create a new branching timeline just by being there - except if they're in a place such as an imminent apocalypse where the effects of their presence are overwhelmed by the circumstances.

And so would the TVA coming to capture them. I think they are positing a timestream that is more robust. Much like a real stream, throwing a rock in changes the shape of the flow and causes ripples, but the stream as a whole stays the same -- until you through in a big enough rock.

They measure the variance energy, another thought that it's not boolean like the butterfly effect would require.

 

[MarkB]

And so would the TVA coming to capture them.

That's what the Temporal Reset Charges are for. They wipe out the variances caused within the local area, resetting the course of events.

 

[Umbran]

And as I read elsewhere, the hair color is not Loki's and the actress does not look like Tom Hiddleston, or at least not to me, and a Variant female Loki would still look like him.

What the bloody good is trickster shapeshifting if he's recognizable all the time? The trickster god is going to be restricted to all being the same guy with stupid fake mustaches tacked on? Disguises are not useful if everyone can see through them!

And... Hair color? Loki can shift shape. Even gender. In the sagas, even species (as Loki is the biological mother of Odin's steed, Sleipnir). But somehow, he's gotta keep his hair color? Heck - she's been holding up in the equivalent of a Wal-mart, where there'll be a cosmetics section loaded with hair-coloring products, she's gotta maintain hair color? Really?

They tell us specifically that the Loki variants show a surprising amount of variation from the one found in the Sacred Timeline.

 

[BrokenTwin]

It's... okay, so far. Would be nice to see Loki actually earn an on-screen win, since he's been mostly jobbing to establish other character's cred since the start of the MCU. Or do literally anything to earn his trickster moniker. They've been blatant about his need to evolve for a while now, but seem gun-shy towards actually letting him do so. The first episode gave me hope when they let him see the rest of his "Sacred Timeline" life and not totally wipe out his character development ala Gamora, but then episode 2 comes and he's right back to jobbing.