I watched Loki, and I loved it!! The Disney+ shows are a gift that keeps on giving. While the music and set design were spectacular, what caught my eye the most was this TVA (Time Variance Authority). Only Marvel can pull off such a metaplot with such great finesse. While I do slightly feel that everything good Marvel has done post-Thor: Dark World is just a means to cover up that tragedy, this show will have a fundamental impact on MCU nonetheless.
The Multiverse
Loki, premiered on Wednesday and it has officially introduced the multiverse to MCU, something Spider-Man: Far From Home and then WandaVision were expected to do.
The multiverse was touched upon in the show in the context of the Time Variance Authority or TVA, an organization that has arrested Loki for interfering with what they refer to as the Sacred Timeline. In case you did not know, Loki’s escape after stealing the Tesseract was not, as per TVA, supposed to happen.
The TVA
TVA in Marvel Comics is, as mentioned above, an organisation that is beyond the scope of reality and works at the focal point of every timeline — it calls it a ‘sacred timeline’. The employees of this vast institution, who are literally faceless in the lore, are basically clones from the original genetic stock so there won’t be dissenters.
The TVA claims responsibility for monitoring the multiverse and can prune timelines if they are deemed too dangerous to exist. They also take action to prevent other beings from altering the past or future. They were first seen allowing Justice Peace, a lawman from the future, to travel to the 20th century in order to stop the killer Zaniac. Peace is able to succeed in his mission thanks to the assistance of Thor.
Despite their claims, the TVA’s influence over time is not absolute. The scope of their influence is bordered by Alioth in the distant past as well as Kang the Conqueror, the Delubric Consortium, and Revelation at different eras throughout the timescape. There have also been numerous incidents of time travel or reality tampering where the TVA has failed to interfere.
At the End of Time, the last Director of the TVA creates the Time Keepers, the last three beings who exist in the remaining timeline in the universe; however this process also ends up creating the Time Twisters, a trio of beings who imperiled all realities until stopped by Thor and other members of the Avengers.
That, is their lore in the comics but MCU does change a lot when it comes to their shows and movies. However, since this show is set outside the cannon, anything is possible. One thing that is certain is that we have a T-Shirt idea thanks to Agent Mobius.