Loki Theory: How The Time-Keepers Created The TVA

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Marvel's Loki episode 2 "The Variant."

Loki has introduced the Time Variance Authority, protectors of the Sacred Timeline - but how were they created by the Time-Keepers? The Avengers tried to seal off the timelines they'd created in Avengers: Endgame, but there was one they couldn't do anything about, a branched timeline created in 2012 when Loki escaped with the Tesseract. Fortunately for the timeline, this Loki variant has been captured by the Time Variance Authority, which serves as the multiverse's police force.

The trickster god was given a convenient briefing on the TVA by the delightful animated Miss Minutes, which also served as a useful infodump for viewers. According to the TVA, creation naturally pivots towards chaos, with even the smallest aberration - say, a person simply being late for work - having the potential to create an entirely different timeline. Unfortunately, some branches of the multiverse became aware of one another, resulting in multiversal war as they vied for supremacy. When the war was over, the Time-Keepers emerged and determined they would ensure there was only ever one timeline in order to avoid another war. The TVA was created to maintain this "Sacred Timeline," destroying new branches as they are created.

As Loki episode 2 revealed, however, the Time-Keepers are hiding a lot from the TVA and its agents. It raises the curious question of just how they created this organization in the first place.

The TVA Remains A Mystery

Loki Will Explain More About How The TVA Works

The reality is that the TVA remains something of a mystery right now. When Loki attempted to access records about the founding of the TVA, he was told they were confidential, meaning he wouldn't be given a chance to read them anytime soon. Members of the TVA even keep secrets from one another, with Judge Ravonna Renslayer refusing to tell Mobius M. Mobius the identity of her second TVA analyst. In fact, Loki has even avoided naming the location the TVA operates from, leading to speculation it would be instantly recognized by comic book readers. It could potentially be Chronopolis, for example, a city outside time with connections to a time traveler named Kang the Conqueror, who's due to be played by Jonathan Majors in Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania.

All this secrecy is surely deliberate. From an out-of-universe perspective, it signifies there's a story to be told as Loki continues, with the mysteries of the TVA gradually revealed to viewers. In-universe, of course, the secrets only serve to pique Loki's curiosity, making him increasingly determined to learn the truth about the group he has been forced to work with.

Where Did The Time-Keepers Get Their TVA Recruits?

The most obvious question is the simplest: where do the Time-Keepers recruit their TVA agents? And if the Time-Keepers don't recruit, does that mean they made all their TVA agents? They seem to be absolutely fanatical in their devotion to the Sacred Timeline, unquestioning and obedient, viewing the Time-Keepers almost as gods. Question them a little deeper, though, and you quickly realize there's something very wrong about them. Mobius couldn't tell Loki how long he'd been working for the Time-Keepers, dismissing the question with the comment "time passes differently here in the TVA." Casey, one of the TVA desk-jockeys, had precious little knowledge of the outside world, not even knowing what a fish was. The lack of curiosity in itself is quite remarkable, making it feel as though the Time-Keepers brainwashed the TVA's members, and programmed them not to ask questions. Enter Loki, the God of Mischief, who is just bubbling with questions.

And yet, for all that's the case, there are hints some of the people in the TVA may have backstories they are unaware of. Take Mobius M. Mobius, who has somehow acquired a passion for jet skis. "You know, some things... Actually, most things in history are kinda dumb, and everything gets ruined eventually," he reflected. "But in the early 1990s, for a brief, shining moment, there was a beautiful union of form and function, which we call the jet ski, and a reasonable man cannot differ." His passion sounds a lot like a repressed memory bubbling to the surface, a hint he originated from Earth in the 1990s, where he loved jet skis.

How Could The Time-Keepers Have Taken People Out Of History?

Mobius sitting in Ravonna's office in Loki

But how could the Time-Keepers extract people out of the timeline? There are really only two possibilities, the first being one hinted at by Loki episode 2. As Loki deduced, time travelers can interfere with events surrounding notable disasters without creating new timelines, simply because everything they do will be destroyed anyway. The Lady Loki variant used this to hide herself from the Time-Keepers and the TVA, but the Time-Keepers could likewise have used this to recruit TVA agents. Following the same logic, any missing person whose body was never found could be extracted from the timeline without causing any branches and just written off as lost to the disaster. Perhaps Mobius was actually a human who was supposed to die in a jet ski accident, his body lost at sea, or in a natural disaster, but the Time-Keepers took him before his death.

A second possibility is even more striking, though: the TVA's agents could have been people from branched timelines that no longer exist. The Time-Keepers only care for maintaining the Sacred Timeline, so they wouldn't have any problem with disrupting a branched reality before they had it destroyed. This approach would have the advantage of allowing the Time-Keepers to recruit people in massive numbers - an entire universe's worth of potential agents, if they possessed the power to extract them and brainwash them all. It would be the easiest way to staff the TVA, and it could be repeated to expand the ranks of the TVA at speed. If Marvel takes the second approach, then the rank-and-file TVA could actually be the survivors of that first multiverse war described in Loki, unwittingly conscripted by the Time-Keepers to prevent such an interdimensional conflict ever happening again. There would certainly be a degree of irony to this idea, but also a great risk. The Lady Loki variant clearly has the power to mess with people's minds, and she could have awakened the buried memories of someone in the TVA, creating a mole within the group who has good reason to want revenge against the Time-Keepers. Thus the origin story of the Time-Keepers would become more than just a curiosity and instead would drive the plot of Loki.

More: Loki: Every MCU Easter Egg In Episode 2

Loki releases new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.