What If...?

[MarkB]

I got that too. But...

She followed some incomprehensible being of limitless malevolence into its dimension where time and space mean nothing. In those scenarios, there is no happy ending for the hero. Even if they save the world, it comes at the cost of their sanity. When the captain of the Alert stopped Cthulhu, he wound up insane afterward.

I'm sorry but there isn't enough superserum in the multiverse to keep someone from going insane after tangling with one of the many unfathomable horrors that lurk outside of the bounds of our reality in timeless undeath, waiting for the time when the stars are right again and rents in the fabric of our delicate exist tear open, freeing them from their prison beyond the stars.

I mean, it was a thing with tentacles. That's all we know.

I'm sure the Red Skull was going for "timeless unfathomable being from beyond the universe", but there's no guarantee that's what he actually dialled.

 

[Rune]

I got that too. But...

She followed some incomprehensible being of limitless malevolence into its dimension where time and space mean nothing. In those scenarios, there is no happy ending for the hero. Even if they save the world, it comes at the cost of their sanity. When the captain of the Alert stopped Cthulhu, he wound up insane afterward.

I'm sorry but there isn't enough superserum in the multiverse to keep someone from going insane after tangling with one of the many unfathomable horrors that lurk outside of the bounds of our reality in timeless undeath, waiting for the time when the stars are right again and rents in the fabric of our delicate exist tear open, freeing them from their prison beyond the stars.

There’s no reason to assume she’s still sane, just because she comes out coherent.

Although, if her personality was already highly adaptable to unusual situations, the superserum would heighten that trait, I would think. And frankly, the sanity-fraying aspect of cosmic horror doesn’t make much sense to me, anyway. People’s minds adapt to things they can’t understand all the time.

Also, why does Stephen Strange get a pass on sanity if Captain Carter can’t handle it?

 

[embee]

Also, why does Stephen Strange get a pass on sanity if Captain Carter can’t handle it?

Who says he does?

After all, it is called "Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of MADNESS!!!!"

 

[trappedslider]

Also, why does Stephen Strange get a pass on sanity if Captain Carter can’t handle it?

Also, why does a portal with tentacles = Lovecraftian?

 

[Ryujin]

Also, why does a portal with tentacles = Lovecraftian?

By default, I would think so. Seems that Marvel is more forgiving to its heroes than either Lovecraft or Howard were.

 

[embee]

Ok... so there's the Sacred Timeline. And anything that diverges from the Sacred Timeline gets pruned. And anyone pruned goes to the End of Time.

One would assume that Captain Carter and T'Challa Starlord are Variants.

So shouldn't they be at the End of Time? Or have they been eaten by Alioth? Or have they foiled the TVA's attempts at pruning?

 

[MarkB]

Ok... so there's the Sacred Timeline. And anything that diverges from the Sacred Timeline gets pruned. And anyone pruned goes to the End of Time.

One would assume that Captain Carter and T'Challa Starlord are Variants.

So shouldn't they be at the End of Time? Or have they been eaten by Alioth? Or have they foiled the TVA's attempts at pruning?

I think you may have missed the point. There is no Sacred Timeline anymore. Now there's the multiverse, and these are some of the results.

 

[Janx]

Ok... so there's the Sacred Timeline. And anything that diverges from the Sacred Timeline gets pruned. And anyone pruned goes to the End of Time.

One would assume that Captain Carter and T'Challa Starlord are Variants.

So shouldn't they be at the End of Time? Or have they been eaten by Alioth? Or have they foiled the TVA's attempts at pruning?

from a certain perspective, yes and no.

Pre end of Loki, all variants and bits that would have caused variants were pruned. So the moment Peggy decided to stay in the room, right then, time was stopped and that Peggy got pruned. She prolly didn't last long. Nor did young T'Challa get scooped up, because the variant was Ego knocking up somebody else, and that's what got pruned.

After end of Loki season 1, all those moments were allowed to progress and poof Peggy got Power and T'Challa ended up with Yondu.

 

[Rune]

Ok... so there's the Sacred Timeline. And anything that diverges from the Sacred Timeline gets pruned. And anyone pruned goes to the End of Time.

One would assume that Captain Carter and T'Challa Starlord are Variants.

So shouldn't they be at the End of Time? Or have they been eaten by Alioth? Or have they foiled the TVA's attempts at pruning?

As near as I can tell,

Spoiler: Spoiler for the Loki series

When Sylvie kills He Who Remains and destroys the TVA, she is outside of time. The resulting multiversal branches are occurring at all points throughout time as they always have/will. From the point of view of anyone outside of time (like the new/old Kang-led TVA*), these branches (and their resulting branches, and so on…infinitely) are happening simultaneously and are thus far too numerous to prune.

*Which can exist outside of time in a different form than the original(?) TVA because it’s variant origins were rooted within time(s).

Put more simply, at this point, all variant timelines that have or will have ever existed (outside the so-called “sacred” timeline) have never been pruned. Even though they also all have been.

 

[Ryujin]

Causation is only a paradox in linear time