Loki: The Sacred Timeline Is The Only One That Doesn’t Have Kang

Loki's Sacred Timeline is the only one where Kang the Conqueror doesn't exist. Marvel Studios' latest Disney+ series officially established the multiverse, but as it turns out, it has always been there. The only thing that this change is the fact that now, they're all in disarray as countless branches of timelines grow and go unchecked.

Kicked off by his escape in the botched New York leg of Avengers: Endgame's time heist, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) finds himself captured by the Time Variance Authority/TVA where he learned about the existence of the Sacred Timeline in his series. But, it wasn't until the finale titled "For All Time. Always," that the organization's origins and motivations were better explained. Its creator, He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), shared that he instituted the TVA in an effort to prevent his other selves from wreaking havoc as what they did in the previous multiversal war. Unfortunately, Sylvie (Sophia di Martino) wasn't convinced; she forcefully pushed Loki back and ignored He Who Remains' warning by moving forward to killing him. This led to MCU's multiverse being unleashed.

Speaking with Screen Crush, Loki writer Michael Waldron further explained the existence of the Sacred Timeline. Apparently, there have always been other timelines, but the TVA's role is to make sure that no branched reality veer away from it that it could create a different variant of He Who Remains. This means, that as it is, the Sacred Timeline is the only one that doesn't have Kang the Conqueror as his existence would lead to another multiversal war just like what happened before.

There’s always like different permutations and instances happening. The TVA has their own barometer, their own gauge of what constitutes a deviation from the baseline, the way it’s supposed to go. The way it went that produced He Who Remains. That is their baseline. And so they are constantly calculating, “Okay, we see how time has always...” If you zoomed in on the timeline, it wouldn’t necessarily look like a straight line. It might look like almost the intertwined strands of a rope fluctuating and spiking here and there. When it becomes a problem for the TVA is when, according to their own rules, when could something branch off in a way that it could actually produce a new timeline that could produce a new version of He Who Remains? That is the practical thing that they’re guarding against.

He Who Remains sitting at his desk in Loki.

Waldron's comments also effectively explain why there are so many variants, some of them even look drastically different from each other as with the Lokis. This was one lingering question that the show didn't explicitly address. As fun as it was to see all of them convened, it had always been interesting where everyone else came from before their were all purged and sent to the void. Granted that almost all notable Lokis have revealed their respective Nexus events, it was still difficult to picture all of them existing given the idea that the Sacred Timeline was supposed to be the only timeline, and the TVA is trying to keep it that way.

Given this explanation, it means that the death of He Who Remains merely set the multiverse free, and not birthed it, as some initially assumed. Back then, all flow of time exist in a mannerly order; none of them veering too far from the events of the Sacred Timeline to create Kang the Conqueror. There was also no overlapping, which could be why heroes have not met their other variants unless they all find themselves together in the TVA or the void.

More: Avengers: Endgame Created One Branched Timeline That Steve Didn’t Fix

Loki season 2 will return on Disney+.

Source: Screen Crush