WARNING: Spoilers for Loki episode 5, "Journey into Mystery"

The mystery of the TVA’s origins has been the driving force throughout Loki, and a look at the Marvel comic book version of the agency could shed a bit of light on the MCU show. In Loki, the TVA is an omniscient bureau dedicated to keeping the multiverse focused into a single timeline. However, after the series revealed that the Time-Keepers – the supposedly all-powerful beings believed to have created the TVA – were fake, every other detail about the TVA’s nature, purpose, and origin has been thrown into question.

In the comics, the TVA is a bit different than it is in Loki. The agency is a relatively small part of the overall Marvel universe, only popping up in a handful of storylines. Unlike in the MCU, the TVA of the comics is more focused on overall monitoring than absolute control. There is no Sacred Timeline for them to maintain. Instead, they watch over the countless different realities of the multiverse, occasionally intervening when something important is disrupted, or when time travel causes existential danger.

Related: Loki Episode 5's Thanos Copter Easter Egg Explained

As for who actually created the TVA in the comics' timeline, that’s never been entirely clear. The comics TVA is much more of a spoof organization than a true player in universal events, meant to parody real-world bureaucracies with a touch of Marvel meta-humor. It’s known that the TVA was created in the distant future to try to maintain order in the cosmos and that most TVA operatives are cloned for their specific purposes – as was believed to be the case in the MCU’s TVA before Loki’s twists. Other than that, not much is known about the agency’s creation.

loki poster marvel show time keepers tva

What might be more significant for Loki’s story is how the comic book version of Loki's Time-Keepers were created. In the comics, the Time-Keepers were brought into being by the TVA rather than the other way around. The last director of the TVA, known as He Who Remains, created the beings at the very end of time, just before the universe ended, to help guide future cycles of the timeline.

He Who Remains resides in a sort of castle at the end of the universe, known as the Citadel at the End of Time. From there, he created the Time-Keepers and a more dangerous version of them called the Time-Twisters. It’s likely that the castle glimpsed by Loki and Sylvie at the end of Loki episode 5 is in fact the MCU’s version of the Citadel at the End of Time, and that they’ll confront some version of He Who Remains in the show’s final episode. Of course, it’s also possible that MCU will create an entirely new origin story for the Time-Keepers and the TVA, which could be revealed in the Loki finale.

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Loki releases new episodes Wednesdays on Disney+.

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