Caution: spoilers ahead for What If...?

What's the difference between What If...?'s absolute points and Loki's Nexus events in the MCU? When Avengers: Endgame brought time travel to the Marvel Cinematic Universe confusion inevitably ensued, but an explanation from the Ancient One made some attempt to lay down rules for time travel and changing the past. Then along came Disney+'s Loki, which dived deeper into the mechanics of the multiverse, contradicting the Ancient One. Where she claimed changing the past would create an alternate timeline, Loki says the TVA is responsible for pruning alternate timelines. Most recently, What If...? made its own amendments in the MCU's Guide to Time Travel, describing the multiverse as a prism, and introducing separate timelines within one universe.

Another concept What If...? raises is the "absolute point." Similar in concept to Doctor Who's "fixed points," an absolute point is an MCU event that cannot and must not be altered because doing so will affect history too significantly - usually for the worse. This is explained by the Ancient One when Doctor Strange attempts to rewind Christine Palmer's death using the Time Stone. If Strange (in What If...?'s universe, at least) doesn't lose Christine, he never learns the mystic arts and, therefore, never makes a bargain with Dormammu to prevent the Dark Dimension invading ours. For this reason, the demise of Christine Palmer on a specified date is deemed an absolute point in the MCU timeline.

Related: Doctor Strange Just Broke The Ancient One’s One Rule

This notion is closely related to the Nexus events described by the Time Variance Authority in Loki. As Miss Minutes helpfully explains, He Who Remains set forth a Sacred Timeline for the MCU, where all events and actions flowed according to his will. Any moment that deviated from the Sacred Timeline (such as Loki stealing the Tesseract in 2012) was branded a Nexus event. So while absolute points and Nexus events broadly describe the same thing - events in time that shouldn't happen - they're also total opposites. "Absolute point" describes the act that can't be changed, whereas "Nexus event" describes the act doing the changing.

Ancient One and Doctor Strange in What If

Having said that, there are 2 vital differences between each concept. Firstly, the authorities dictating what should be considered an absolute point or Nexus event are totally different. For a Nexus event, the buck stops with He Who Remains - a less conquer-y version of Kang the Conqueror. He Who Remains established the Sacred Timeline and founded the TVA, so he's obviously in charge of deciding what acts are Nexus event-worthy. The Ancient One doesn't explicitly reveal who decided Christine Palmer's death should become an absolute point in time, but it's implied that the universe itself is responsible. Because absolute points and Nexus events are managed by totally different entities, they can coexist in the MCU. Nexus events are just the whim of He Who Remains as a means of preventing Kang's return; absolute points are what the universe creates in order to protect itself. In other words, Nexus events are man-made; absolute points are naturally occurring.

The other major distinction is what happens when each rule is broken. As seen in Loki, any person who creates a Nexus event gets a knock on the door from TVA agents, who "prune" that person and the offending timeline their actions created. These are consigned to the Void, never to be seen again. If someone tries breaking an absolute point, however, there's no such punishment. The universe simply corrects itself by other means - like when Strange stands Christine up, only for his girlfriend to die via an apartment explosion instead. By contrast, a Nexus event left unchecked would spin into a whole new timeline without any such course correction.

After 4 episodes, there's nothing to cement What If...? into wider MCU canon. It's actually easier to take the animated anthology series with a grain of salt - a completely separate entity with the freedom to introduce concepts that have no place in Kevin Feige's official continuity. Although that situation might change as What If...? continues, it's possible we won't see any live-action character mention absolute points as part of the MCU's time travel doctrine.

More: What If…? Episode 4: 7 Big Question About Doctor Strange And The MCU

What If...? streams every Wednesday on Disney+.

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