Loki

 

This TV show explains what happens to Loki after he steals the tesseract during the events of Avengers: End Game. Shortly after being transported to the Gobi desert, he is detained by the TVA (Time Variance Authority), a mysterious organization tasked with maintaining the "correct" flow of time. Anytime an event occurs that could skew history and change what was supposed to happen, the TVA arrives and resets the event, essentially rewinding time and preventing its occurrence. They even capture people to prevent reoccurrence and sometimes prune them, sending them to a sort of purgatory at the end of time to prevent them from repeating their actions. Apparently Loki was not supposed to end up with the tesseract, hence his capture by the TVA.

A nexus event is one that skews the main timeline, and the people involved in these events are called variants. Variants are who the TVA chase to capture, and Loki's stealing of the tesseract was a nexus event with Loki being the variant. There is one variant of Loki who has evaded the TVA for years, so once they capture the Avengers: End Game version of Loki they use him to help them find the Loki who has escaped capture.

The first half of the season focuses on who this other version of Loki is and how to capture them. The second half of the season, after the Loki variant is found, focuses on who is behind the TVA, pulling the strings. I feel like we only get a partial answer in the season finale. The two Lokis figure out that the timekeepers are actually robots, fake leaders of the TVA. They are able to get to the real puppet master, a man who is called He Who Remains. He explains that galactic chaos and war lead to the creation of the TVA, where events and time could be controlled to prevent annihilation. 

The show ends with that information. The Loki variant Sylvie kills He Who Remains, ending the TVA. This creates timeline chaos, with multiple branches developing from the main timeline. The Avengers Loki did not want this to happen, and ends up at the TVA headquarters in a different time line where no one knows who he is. Internet reviews say that He Who Remains is a version of Kang the Conqueror, a villain I am not familiar with but apparently is a powerful time-traveling foe to the Avengers and is slated to make his appearance in the next Doctor Strange film in 2022.

This show mostly acts as a plot catalyst, as the MCU enters its next phase in the post-Thanos era. It introduces the concept of timeline variations and the multiverse, as well as the character Kang. Having a storyline that involves multiple possible timelines sets up a scenario where endless plots can be plausible, albeit at the expense of adding confusion. It will be interesting to see how Marvel handles this scenario moving forward. Additionally, the show itself left a few hanging plots that will apparently pick up in season 2 of the series, which I'm happy to see is occurring. I also enjoyed the visuals of the TCA headquarters - obviously very futuristic in their abilities to manipulate time, but at the same time having a very 60s-70s vibe going on. Also lots of paperwork, with literal paper, which seemed interesting.