On the Disney+ series Loki, there is one question that keeps coming up time and again—if the Time Variance Authority (TVA) is vigilantly policing the Sacred Timeline, why does there seem to be so many versions of Loki? Sylvie, Classic Loki, Kid Loki, Boastful Loki, Alligator Loki—the list seems to go on and on.
If there is only one Sacred Timeline within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as is explained in the series, where did all of these variants come from? There are plenty of theories and speculations floating around out there, but none offered a true, definitive answer. That is until now.
Michael Waldron, the creator of the Loki series, was recently asked this very question—how is it possible that the sacred timeline exists, but so do a million variants of Loki simultaneously? As it turned out, Waldron has a perfect answer to explain it all.
“The best I can explain it is that our approach with time travel was the philosophy that basically time is always happening. So there are infinite instances of time always occurring at once.”
Image: ElleMagz
Waldron then goes on to explain:
“So, you and I are having this conversation right now. There’s another instance of us having this conversation ten seconds ago. There’s another instance of time of us having this conversation ten seconds in the future…”
Waldron sums it up as looking at those three instances of a conversation, one could literally say that they are all part of separate and different universes. In a way, they are also all different timelines as well, and all the instances are the same.
The only difference is that there are little minute fluctuations that occur within each of those instances in time.
This explanation may seem as somewhat convoluted–and truth be told, it is—but when dealing with the Sacred Timeline, we have come to learn that not everything is cut and dried.