The following article contains spoilers for Episode 1 of Loki.
After a long wait and multiple teases on social media, Marvel’s latest series Loki finally premiered on Disney Plus on Wednesday. The first episode, "Glorious Purpose," is loaded with both fun and emotional moments as the God of Mischief comes to terms with his arrest by the Time Variance Authority. Apart from introducing a whole bunch of new characters, the first episode of Loki makes a rather large reveal that has many fans shocked and upset at the same time.
During one of the scenes towards the end of the episode, when Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is trying to escape from the TVA, he comes across several Infinity Stones, which have seemingly been rendered useless by the Time Keepers, the three powerful beings dictating the “sacred timeline.” This scene holds so much power and has undoubtedly leveled up the MCU in so many ways.
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The Infinity Saga, which has spanned over the first three phases of the MCU, has been all about Thanos’ quest to obtain all the Infinity Stones. For those who aren’t aware, the Infinity Stones are extremely powerful objects that are tied to different aspects of the universe and consist of the Space Stone, Reality Stone, Power Stone, Mind Stone, Time Stone, and the Soul Stone. The being who wields all Stones together is granted exceptional power.
This is obviously why super-villain Thanos was after the Stones to begin with and plans to use their power to obliterate half of the universe’s population. He manages to obtain all the Stones in Avengers: Infinity War, after winning against several members of the Avengers who try to stop him, including Loki who faces a shocking death. The villain then uses the Infinity Gauntlet by snapping his fingers, to carry out his evil plans. This was one of the most important moments in MCU history, with a decade-worth of films culminating to this point wherein billions of people around the world simply disappeared.
Following these events, the Avengers, who are left broken by the Blip, decide to reunite and travel in time to obtain the Stones themselves. Finally reuniting in the present, they place all the Stones into a brand new gauntlet, which the Hulk then uses to reverse Thanos’ actions. Every person who had gone missing for five years then returns to the present, causing a lot of confusion - a scene witnessed in Marvel’s WandaVision that also premiered on Disney Plus earlier this year.
The battle doesn’t end there as a different version of Thanos shows up in the present, plans to retrieve the Stones and use them to destroy the universe. While restored members of the Avengers assemble in Asgard to fight Thanos' army, the film ends with the tragic death of Tony Stark, who uses the Infinity Gauntlet to disintegrate Thanos and his army. Such is the power of the Infinity Stones. They were used to destroy and recreate lives. However, the first episode of Loki completely changed the way fans will look at them moving forward.
After Loki is captured by the TVA, he gets a chance to speak with Owen Wilson’s Agent Mobius who just wants to understand the God of Mischief and “what makes [him] tick.” But, just as he steps out of the room, Loki gets up to his antics, something he is well known for. Escaping from the interrogation room, Loki arrives in a part of the TVA’s facility that seats all the clerical employees. In the process of searching for the Tesseract, he runs into Casey, a low-level employee. When Loki looks through a trolley that contains the objects of evidence confiscated by the authority, he finds the Tesseract, but along with it he comes across a drawer full of Infinity Stones.
These Stones, which Thanos had been pursuing for over a decade, are now being used by the TVA employees as paperweights. The way Loki reacts to this news is perhaps identical to what MCU fans would have felt at that moment. That one scene literally shatters the MCU’s reality that fans have been believing in and following for the past 13 years. The reveal means that the TVA is perhaps the most powerful entity in the universe. Loki rightfully asks, “Is this the greatest power in the universe?”
Everything that has happened in the MCU thus far has been under the supervision of the Time Keepers and the TVA. This entity has been monitoring the actions of all the superheroes and villains for the past decade and allowing them to act in a certain way. Anything that is not considered suitable is immediately reversed, so as to avoid the possibility of multiple timelines, which could potentially lead to a multiverse.
Finding several Infinity Stones at the TVA’s headquarters means that there were potentially other attempts of time travel to obtain the different Stones. This has been a question that many fans have asked in the past. If the Avengers could go back in time and obtain the Stones, why was the same not attempted by someone else? Well, that question has clearly been answered because it seems like several other attempts to steal the Stones were made, as there were multiple copies of each. But, since the Time Keepers did not approve of those actions, they were erased and the Stones were brought to the TVA facility, rendering them useless.
This brings forth another question, were all the sacrifices made by the Avengers useless, too? The Avengers did go back in time to obtain the Stones, but they lost an important member along the way. In order to obtain the Soul Stone, Black Widow sacrifices her life. Also, in Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos sacrifices his daughter Gamora for the same stone, so that’s two Avengers losing their life for the cause. It would have been nice to know that there were multiple versions of the Stone lying around in a filing cabinet at the TVA, so that those members could have lived.
However, one thing that the first episode of Loki establishes is that anything and everything that happens is by the approval of the Time Keepers. Captain America was able to return all the Stones to their original time and place by the end of Avengers: Endgame, which means that his actions did not create any alternate branches of reality, and were thus approved by the TVA. But, this also means that the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame were both meant to happen as part of the sacred timeline.
The MCU has received a major upgrade in just the first episode of Loki. While the Infinity Stones may have not been as powerful as they originally seemed, the TVA, which has never been mentioned before and was just introduced into the universe, is suddenly the all-knowing and extremely powerful force that seems to be in charge. All those continuity issues in the MCU are now a thing of the past, as the TVA knows what it's doing. Tasked with protecting the timeline, it remains to be seen how far the TVA will go to ensure their work is done.
Episode 1 of Loki is now streaming on Disney Plus.
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