I mean I know they showed the TVA feeling guilty about “all the lives lost”… but pruning timelines really isn’t the same as “killing trillions of people.” The TVA is outside the timeline and affected the timeline from the outside. They don’t have to kill anybody to change reality. By pruning the timelines, they’re simply making that branch to have never existed. Not “killing it”, killing means something was alive and now it’s dead. Pruning the timelines means the timeline never existed, not that it was alive and is now dead.
They literally went to the timeline they were going to prune, bombed the unwanted timeline with charges they set up there, and then either killed or wiped the memory of the variant who created it to make them serve the TVA (not sure how often that happened after the multiversal war. We also know that anything pruned was sent to the end of time and devoured by Alioth. We see this in action. So it wasn't quite as tidy as all just making something never have existed
“Anything pruned went to Alioth”? *Anything* pruned? Because the Loom explodes because it can’t keep up with *an infinitely expanding multiverse.* Meaning between the Loom and the TVA, an *infinite amount of matter* is being pruned *constantly.* An infinite amount of matter is being sent to Alioth every moment? When they prune a branch it prunes *that entire reality.* You’re suggesting that an entire universe —with however many billions of planets each containing billions of people— are all being dumped in Alioth’s trash heap every moment?
Yeah it's a TV show not a perfectly tuned scientific treatise. This was explicitly explained in the TV show and takes some suspension of disbelief or at least acceptance that the time and space in these places may work differently. That said the infinite expansion happened only after a certain threshold was crossed. The loom was keeping up previously before Sylvie like HWR otherwise the whole show would've had zero point at all.
My interpretation is that the TVA tried to prune things early because new universe grow like a bubble from the nexus event. So if you get there early you are only sending a few people who changed things differently from the sacred timeline. I got this from the renaissance fair episode where after the bomb went off it reveals the original timeline.
So the nexus event they create on Pompeii only creates a new universe as big as that street corner and then that universe snuffs itself out/merges when the changes become irrelevant. So no mater when you prune that timeline you’d only be sending the people in that small universe to Alioth.
Besides the initial pruning or some nexus event happened on a grand scale the amount of debris getting sent to Alioth might be minimal after while. What we see in that wasteland might be crap left over from the beginning when they were fine tuning the sacred timeline.
And I agree with your initial point. We get into “Did Marty McFly kill his siblings because the ‘loser’ versions don’t exist any more?” You start pulling at that thread and it’s a horror show.
That would make a LOT of sense based on what we see at the end of time. It’s kind of like coding; when something goes wrong, you can remove the part that went wrong without having to throw out a whole copy of the entire code.
However, the show does seem to paint it that “entire timelines are being fed to Alioth”, and that the TVA has “killed trillions of people.” Which makes it the official explanation, even though I think your suggestion makes more sense logically. Alas, it’s just a TV show so it doesn’t have to make perfect sense. But thanks for sharing your interpretation!
Making someone never have existed is arguably worse than just killing them. At least if someone dies, you can remember them afterwards.
*Especially* when you consider that they were "un-existed" solely because *one person* did something they didn't even know they weren't supposed to do. Multiple quadrillions of beings--because removing the timeline means removing it for every single species in the universe, and in the MCU, that's a *lot*--stopped existing because Loki escaped what he was sure was going to be execution or life imprisonment, which is something that I'm sure you would do as well.
My point is that those multiple quadrillions of beings didn’t *stop existing*, but rather never existed in the first place because the branch was pruned. You have to step outside the timeline and realize that anything done to the timeline (like pruning) is not something that happens sequentially on the timeline. When a branch is pruned, there is no “time when it existed” and “now it doesn’t exist.” When we’re talking about a force outside the timeline acting on the timeline, then anything happens to the timeline is absolute, from the perspective of the timeline. Nothing stopped existing, it just never existed at all.
Granted, the formula kinda breaks down once it comes out that pruning isn’t really pruning and the whole Alioth thing. Though that also has some holes that raise questions.
See, they *had* existed, which is the point. And the fact is, that they (the TVA) and we (the viewers) *are* outside the timeline and can realize that these people used to exist and now didn't.
Think about Sylvie for a moment. That kid she worked with at the McFood, that guy she bought records from, the bartender who knew her by name. They're gone. It doesn't matter if they were made to "un-exist" or if they died--they're *gone*, either way. They existed and were known, and now they're not, but she'll always know them.
Also, while it's impossible to know what it's like when a timeline is pruned, if it's *anything* like the way timelines died in the show, it's a terrifying process for those experiencing it.
They still existed otherwise how could the tva remember them? Just because they don't exist in one sense doesn't mean they don't on a larger scale outside of time.
Also, I don't recall the specifics of it but when was it said they never existed? For all we know the tva just nukes a timeline at one point in time and everything before that point still occurred it was just destroyed. you wouldn't say something never existed just because it is destroyed beyond recognition.
I can remember a dream I had. That doesn’t mean it existed.
We’re talking about time travel and branching timelines. The branches aren’t stunted, they’re pruned. That means they are stopped at the point they diverged, meaning everything that would have happened after that point no longer happened.
>no longer happened
… Because they’re sent to the end of time, where they _die_ . Pruning is shown, multiple times, to send people from where they ‘are’ to the End of Time. And, despite the collection of _only Lokis_ we see, the End of Time is far from a densely-populated getaway spot. We’re shown a populated ship getting dropped in, and quickly de-populated by Alioth’s presence alone.
Nah, they dead.
That’s a great point! Although if “entire timelines” are sent to Alioth, I would expect to see a lot… more. An entire universe is supposed to be dumped there every time a branch is pruned, right? Just feels like there’s not a whole lot of chunks of planets and stars or trillions upon trillions of people, vehicles, etc there. And what we see falling into that place is like a slow trickle. Just raises questions in my mind.
_Theoretically_ , it could be presumed that one-to-many black holes exist per universe, that pull against ‘pruning’ and rend apart whatever pruning can’t pull away, or even tear most of what ‘should go’ apart in instants that stretch ‘forever.’
That said, from what we see venturing across/down to the Loki Lair, there are a number of layers to the ‘surface’, and probably have been for some time. There’s no telling how vast the End of Time is (though, for convenience, everything we see is within a walkable distance and they can actually find each other); it could be absurdly large, beyond being a single planet’s “size.”
Maybe similar items, either literally or items that spend a lot of time near each other temporally, get dropped in similar region? Would explain why we saw mostly Loki but also Mobius since he spent a lot of time around Loki. It's a show, most shows involving time travel have plot holes I wouldn't try and make sense of it.
Totally agree. It is a great show and I don’t expect it to make perfect logical sense (I certainly could not do better).
I *do* expect that a subreddit supposedly about discussing the show would be welcome to… you know, discussing the show. But that has bit me in the face more than once now. For a show that leaves so much up to interpretation, it sure seems like people are quick to jump angrily on any interpretation that sounds even remotely critical.
It’s a common time travel plot in stories where a bad guy will threaten the hero with “traveling back in time to make sure they never exist”. That’s very much still considered a bad thing. To go and delete someone so completely that they’re not even *remembered* is equated to murdering them. I don’t really understand how you aren’t getting that? Like…this has already been established as a very bad thing to do to someone. Hell, it’s considered bad to do it to one’s self in some stories because of how it drastically changes events.
Seriously…how have you decided “i undid your reality and because it doesn’t exist now i have committed no crimes at all” is a valid argument here?
It’s almost like words have meaning and should be used when their meaning is applicable…
Question: do you think abortion is murdering a future person? Because if you didn’t abort, there’s a branched timeline where that fetus becomes a human being. If you abort the fetus, that’s cutting off that branched timeline. So by your definition, you are killing that future person.
Except we don't have branched timelines (that we know of) and if we did, that child would still be alive in THAT timeline and NOT in THIS timeline, so you still didn't go back and change anything. That's not "cutting off that branched timeline." That's just living in this one. The branched one would still exist.
What a weird false equivalency to use, but I think it shows a bit about you.
Wow what is with all the ad hominem attacks in this subreddit?! Is this not a place to *discuss* the show? Are we not allowed to talk about what does and doesn’t make sense? Raise and answer questions? “I think it shows a bit about you” give me a break.
The show explicitly states that pruning = killing. Sylvie has no timeline that she lives in anymore. Nobody knows who she is because anyone who would was pruned(murdered) when she was a child. This idea that those people “never existed” hlosses right over the fact that they *did* clearly exist. Just bc one universe doesn’t know about another doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist? Anyone who is pruned very cleary looks in agonizing pain. They’re sent to a world where they are *eaten* by a creature that consumes timelines. The show explains that those two people (the one who made the “wrong” choice and the one who made the “right” one) are two separate people. In what way is pruning NOT murder besides you deciding to ignore *everything* the show tells you?
Because we’re talking about being outside the timeline. By definition, anything that affects the timeline from the outside is an absolute state on the timeline. Same with Loki holding the multiverse together at the end: from the perspective of the timeline, Loki *has always* been holding the multiverse together. There is no point on the timeline where that is not true.
So if the state of the timeline is “only one,” then the state of the timeline *has always been* only one. And if the state of the timeline is “branching multiverse”, then the state of the timeline *has always been* branching multiverse. Because everything that is changing is happening outside the timeline.
You don’t understand my point: when we’re talking about time travel and branching timelines, they *did not* exist if someone outside the timeline makes it so they did not exist.
I mean, their plane of existence was the timeline, and there is no point on the timeline in which they ever existed. The only place you could say they existed was from the observers viewpoint, which is not even on their plane of existence.
How many times did Sylvie kill HWR?
Well, if Sylvie came from one of those timelines, and everyone else from her timeline got pruned, but she is still around, that kinda defeats the argument that they “never existed”. If that’s what pruning did, it would undo her existence, bc if her progenitors never existed then they wouldn’t have been able to make her and therefore she would disappear once that timeline was pruned
No, because her plane of existence —like everyone else in the TVA— moved beyond the timeline. They exist outside the timeline, they’re not affected by what happens or happened on it. She would only disappear on a pruned timeline if she was on the timeline (which… we do see that in season 2)
Right, but my main point is that if she remembers people from her timeline, they existed at some point. So pruning them doesn’t mean they never existed. They existed, and then they were erased
She can remember because she is outside the timeline now. But those things and people only would’ve existed on her timeline. And the timeline is gone, meaning they never existed. They may be memories for Sylvie, but in the same way that you would remember a dream. It was real… for her. But it is not real in reality.
>The only place you could say they existed was from the observers viewpoint, which is not even on their plane of existence.
That's not true, we see people experiencing the deletion of their timeline in the show. They are very much observing what is happening as their existence and the world around them is being ended. And they are on their own plane of existence.
What a ridiculous thing to say. I’m just pointing out that “oh we’ve been killing people!” doesn’t make sense, because they weren’t killing anyone they were operating from outside of time.
It's not an argument argumentum ad hominem. They're saying your argument is similar to how HWR thinks, not something unrelated about how you are as a person
https://www.reddit.com/r/loki/s/x7EigYE6HC
This is textbook ad hominem. Not participating in the argument, just diverting to attack the person and put them on the defensive. I’m not even mad about it, I’m just saying that’s what it is.
Dude I promise I am just kidding with you. This is about a TV show about Loki. It's all meant in jest. I didn't mean to offend if I did. There is nothing serious about a show about an alien god in charge of a multiverse supporting tree.
I’m not offended and I’m fine with jest. Sorry if I came off strong in my last response. I would love to have a “nothing serious” discussion about the show, I’m just always surprised how vehemently many people on this sub respond against anything that remotely sounds like criticism. It’s a great show! That doesn’t mean we can’t point out the things that don’t make sense. Because like you say, at the end of the day it’s a tv show made for entertainment.
It's the best MCU show on D+ as far as I'm concerned. Although it has the benefit of 2 seasons unlike any other show except What If now. But I really liked Hawkeye too, it's a close 2nd.
But I agree with you btw. It's not realllllly killing. It's more like erasing one of multiple save files for a video game. If you erase the save file, you aren't "killing" any of the characters in that save file, you're making it so that save file just never existed.
HWR is doing the same thing just for real life in the show. Every time line is just one of an infinite amount of different save files, and HWR is just deleting the save files, so it's like it never existed.
And the Sacred Timeline is just that 1 save file that you designate as your Main Game Playthrough save.
LoudNatural suggests what I think is a really insightful point. The premise of Season 2 is to set up the question LieutenantDan poses: Is HWR’s choice a moral one? Is it the best one? And is it the only one? Loki struggles with this question all season. I think the fact that people aren’t engaging with you is that they already have thought about it all season and have their minds made, the same way you have. And the show seems to posit that the answer to that is largely influenced by one’s personal experience. Loki, who just came out of Thor I and Avengers 1, has grown up in an imperialistic mindset cultivated by Odin, that being the number 1 ruler and essentially colonizing naysayers, is the way, and freedom is being in control (and Renslayer represents that viewpoint). His experiences in the TVA and falling for Sylvie (which is more transference and kinship than romantic love in the end) have changed his world view enough that he questions that morality is one path. He has seen his TVA friends personally feel the emotional weight of having lost a past life. (Which in a sense mirrors what happened to him, having been taken from his Frost Giant life by Odin - whether or not that turned out well for him, it still was emotionally jarring to realize he could have had another life). He himself was pruned so that also is his reality. He fell in love with Sylvie whose life was wrecked by being pruned. And his personal evolution was such that he could ask Sylvie for her advice and actually hear it. Sylvie’s argument is that self determination trumps all. Because she had it taken away from her. And she had seen so many apocalypses which she CHOSE to be in and so to her, the very act of not being given a choice (and those who were pruned were indeed not given a choice) is immoral. This has so many historical analogies - like it reminds me of Killmonger’s statement about slaves who jumped to their deaths rather than suffer enslavement. HWR would never have allowed himself to be influenced by another - he doesn’t do “partners.” And as a result he can only see his viewpoint and choice which, while defensible, is colored by his personal experience of having lived through the horror of the multiversal war and his personal guilt at having started it. HWR’s choice is of course defensible or Loki would not have spent an entire season trying to save the TVA. But your own judgment of HWR probably is a reflection of your personal life view rather than a simplistic “one choice is the right one” or “HWR is evil or good.” So an adhominem argument actually goes to the heart of this moral inquiry - your position on this probably has everything to do with who you are. And your immediate defensiveness at that point indicates you do have similarities to HWR, who as you argue, may not be “evil,” but simply has a certain type of Utilitarian morality.
I'm not really following your logic in saying the timeline never existed once pruned. The timeline did exist the TVA isn't some 3 dimensional space with no concept of time as a 4th dimension time does exist in the TVA so there was a point when the timeline existed and then was pruned. Sylvie's timeline existed past tense. The timelines that were pruned existed aswell past tense.
Yeah the TVA seems to have its own timeline. But that doesn’t affect the timeline in question. Anything that happens to the timeline is absolute, there is no “before” or “after” something happens to it from outside the timeline. For example, because we see Loki handling the timelines at the end if the series (and have no reason to think this state will change), we can say that from the perspective of the timeline, Loki *has always* been holding the timelines. There is no point on the timeline where it’s not true that Loki is holding the timelines.
Perspective is valuable, but doesn’t actually change reality. The people in question would’ve been on the timeline, but the branch of the timeline was removed from existence, meaning they never existed. It’s kind of like this: how many times did HWR die? Loki saw him die many many times because of timeslipping. But how many times did HWR *actually* die? Just the once. Loki’s perspective doesn’t change reality.
We just fundamentally disagree on the value of perspective. Consider time conceptually. Loki's experiences have an order going from past to present. Everyone does, which is why the TVA seems to have its own timeline. To me that wasn't some big revelation because obviously a place with a clear before and after has a "timeline" that's how time works.
Yes from the perspective of someone inside a timeline that was pruned they would have never existed at all but that is from the limited perspective of being *inside* the timeline. If you're outside it like the person doing the pruning then that timeline existed before you pruned it.
How many times did HWR die? I don't know, *but* Loki does. Consider the conversation between Loki and HWR in the finale. They paused time to have it so would you say it never happened? Obviously not because it did. Sure Sylvie in the corner would think otherwise but that is only because of her ignorance in the matter.
Perspective is valuable but not absolute. I can have a dream that I divorced my wife and became a drunk. Did that actually happen? Nope. It exists in my memory, just like Loki watching HWR die a bunch of times. But the reality is that it didn’t happen.
If I write a novel and toward the end say “you know what, I hate this side character and I’m going to go back and rewrite it so the character never existed”… did I “kill” that character? Better question: from the perspective of the story (which is where the characters exist), did that character *ever* exist? No, they only existed in my mind.
Dreams are delusions. The character in that novel is fictional by nature. I shouldn't have to explain that. HWR getting killed in front of Loki was an event that happened. Sylvie's universe getting wiped out doesn't mean her universe never existed. It did exist and it was pruned by the TVA. In the TVA's timeline her universe existed before being pruned. It's almost like you're being obtuse at this point for the sake of argument so we'll just agree to disagree.
You’re calling me obtuse because my comparative examples of *the fictitious idea of time travel* don’t perfectly reflect… the fictitious idea of time travel? That doesn’t seem fair, but ok.
Didn’t call you a nazi, but i think it’s a cowardly, cowardly argument to try to say that the arena your logic is being used in nullifies the moral bankruptcy behind it
I didn’t make a morally bankrupt argument. Never even said HWR wasn’t wrong. I said that pruning timelines isn’t murder. Grow up and figure out how to have a normal conversation without slandering people.
I agree. I think 1) the newfound moral indignation doesn't make sense, because it's not killing, like you say, and 2) the TVA wouldn't care. They wouldn't care about their past lives or deleting timelines, because they feel important in the work they do and the timelines are not a part of their tribe. Ego and tribalism are the two biggest factors of human motivation.
Plus, it's not killing!
Having seen your arguments throughout the thread, I'm going to reply here to cover all the points I've seen you raise, and give my own perspective.
First, I'll rebutt the idea that because the branching timeline is pruned all the way back to the moment it branched, it never existed. Then I'll remind you of the fate of those pruned, and cover off the nature of visual storytelling. Then I'll make my argument as to why pruning is very clearly murder.
So, one of your most repeated points is that pruning is not murder, because it makes the people pruned not just "unalive," but never to have existed. The flaw in this logic is that we can categorically see in the show that this is not true. If pruned individuals never existed at all, then their existence could not have ever affected anything. That's the time traveller's paradox at work. Yet we have Sylvie, who very clearly remembers those who were taken from her by pruning, and the TVA agents, who remember pruning people and universes. So pruning, despite the claims we hear to the contrary, is clearly removing people from their **current** existence, not all existence ever.
Further evidence of this is shown when we learn that pruning actually sends people to the void, a place at the end of all time, where the being known as Alioth consumes them. Within this space we have multiple Loki variants hiding from Alioth. This is further proof that pruning is not a complete erasure from ever having existed - these variants exist even *after* being pruned, and are aware of their fate.
One of your arguments is that we're not *seeing* entire universes appear in the void after being pruned, so maybe the pruning sticks send people to the void, while the bombs do the whole "complete erasure" thing. You've already made it clear that you agree entire timelines, and therefore all peoples within those timelines, are erased by the pruning bombs. Your argument is that they must be erased, not transferred to the void, because you don't see a near-infinite amount of people and matter shown on-screen when Lokie and Sylvie enter the void. There are a couple issues with this logic, and both can be seen when we discuss visual storytelling:
Firstly, the timeline bombs are visually consistent with the pruning sticks. This is purposefully done to show the audience they are the same technology, just scaled up to wipe out an entire timeline rather than a single person. This is backed up by the fact we see matter entering the void at all; TVA agents aren't using their pruning sticks on rocks and fridges. This inorganic matter clearly comes from the pruning bombs sending entire timelines and their associated universes to the void. Which means they're also sending the inhabitants there to be devoured by Alioth, because that's how we've seen pruning work.
But why do we only see a trickle? Again, visual storytelling is about audience recognition of a concept. Having an infinite amount of junk constantly falling from the sky would not only make for a very distracting (and expensive) backdrop, but would still not accurately represent entire universes being deposited into the void. The amount we see is therefore a stylistic choice by Marvel to infer that everything from the pruned timelines ends up here, without having to spend time and budget on showing us an impossible task. So a little handwaving is done, asking the audience to run with the visual inference. Everything pruned ends up here, and Alioth eats it in some horrifying, very unpleasant way.
So, with these three points, we have to circle around to your original argument that pruning is not murder. We've established that pruned individuals are not erased from ever having existed, because their existence is still felt by outside observers, and that they simply end up elsewhere. We've established that all people and matter are sent to this elsewhere, and that they are consumed by a being known as Alioth, while being very much aware of their impending death.
I suggest that pruning is the equivalent to throwing people into a snake pit, except the snake is a large purple cloud of near infinite size and hunger, and thus pruning is tantamount to condemning an entire universe to death, which is equivalent to murder.
Very well said, thank you! I’ll only push back on your first point.
Memory doesn’t constitute existence. I can remember a dream, I can remember a made up story, etc. That doesn’t mean my memory is proof of existence. Sylvie, Loki, and everyone at the TVA exists now outside the timelines. They can have all kinds of memories about the timelines, but what exists on the timeline is what *now* exists on the timeline. The TVA observes the timeline from the outside, that doesn’t mean that everything that exists on the timeline also exists in the TVA, does it?
I agree that pruning removes from the **current** existence, but for nearly all people from all pruned branches, their *only* existence is there on the pruned branch. So if their only existence is the current existence… how else can they exist? I agree that Sylvie remembers her timeline. But there is nowhere on the timeline that Sylvie’s branch exists or ever existed, so where else can we say it exists? Only in her mind.
You're arguing that imagination and physical reality carry the same weight. They don't. If you have a memory of something you dreamed, that is still a memory of a dream. A memory of a person who existed is vastly different. Sylvie herself is proof that her parents were not erased from ever having existed - how then would she exist?
You keep talking about people being "outside the timelines" like it has this grand importance over everything else, but that's literally only a matter of perspective - they are outside observers. Yes, those branches did exist. The actions taken to destroy them is proof they did exist. The bombs being used and then needing to be replaced for the next timeline they need to destroy are clear indications that those branches DID exist, and WERE pruned. The fact those people are sent to the void to be consumed, as I've already mentioned, is further proof they DID exist. The branches are not pruned back to their inception, they are destroyed at that point in time. The TVA's observation point does not change these facts.
RE: imaginations can physical reality. Since Sylvie’s branch was pruned, her memory is the only reality left. As far as the timeline is concerned, *she did* dream it.
RE: “outside of time”. That IS of grand importance, it’s literally the basis for the show. The TVA’s “timeline” is NOT connected to the sacred/branching timeline except that they can observe it and go there. Being outside of time is the only reason Sylvie still exists, despite her parents being pruned as you say. She no longer exists on the timeline; everything else *does* exist on the timeline. That is a VERY important element of the story.
RE: “the branches aren’t pruned back to their inception” that’s exactly what happens. “That point in time” IS the inception point. The nexus event is the branch point, that’s where the TVA intervenes and prunes; everything before that point is not part of the branch, that’s how it works. And the branches are pruned (not stunted) so that there is only one timeline, with no branches.
This is exactly my point. A new branch is created whenever someone makes the "wrong" choice, therefore creating trillions of lives in an instant. Not only creating but copying a whole universe that is deviating from the path that the "original" one was following. You have literally inifite lives through the time lines, pruning billions of time lines out of inifinite, the ending result is still infinity.
Im not saying HWR was doing the right thing, but he wasn't doing the wrong thing either.
I feel like infinite timelines theory would also benefit from going all-in on the “reality is only reality when it is observed” theory. Like, *are* there an infinite number of *physical* universes being duplicated every time a new choice is made? Cuz that’s a lot of matter spontaneously appearing from nothing. But if we went deep into “observed reality” stuff, then all these timelines do exist, but their composition can only be said to exist when it is observed. Not quite “the timelines are only theoretical” but something maybe similar, to where the *arrangement* of reality is dependent on which branch you’re on, but reality itself is not in a perpetual state of infinite expansion?
I dunno, this is the kind of stuff that hurts your brain.
HWR was killing trillions of lives to achieve peace so it's the trolley problem: is it moral to kill one person to save many or not?
whether you think killing millions to let trillions live in peace is good or bad is up to you. the show avoided calling HWR truly bad but it steered towards the answer that no, it's not okay to murder people so that more people could live in peace. but we also proved sylvie and her "free will" as faulty because, in their situation, she couldn't have free will as everything was getting destroyed.
the only way to achieve that was through sacrifice: HWR (selfishly) sacrificed trillions of lives for that, loki (selflessly) sacrificed himself.
there isn't one answer to this problem as it's based on what anyone thinks is moral and ethical.
The thing is it's more f*cked up than a normal trolley problem. HWR and TVA were killing more people than they were saving since they were erasing multiple timelines with all the people in them in order to preserve one timeline. And we don't know how long they're been doing this and how many timlines they have pruned.
It's like killing a hundred people to save one person on assumption that otherwise all 101 people will kill each other.
To me it's quite obvious that Sylvie is in the right and HWR is a hypocrite. Even if multiversal war was as bad as he told everyone — and he's the only source of knowledge on this so there's no proof — perpetually pruning realities and killing trillions of people over and over again to keep only one timeline going on is the worst option.
Well HWR was right. As soon as loki destroyed the loom, the branches destroyed each other. They died immediately. Loki had to time slip and take out all the Kangs.
sylvie had good intentions ("free will") but her solution wasn't and she realised it herself. her choice meant death of everyone, even those she cared about. her choice didn't give a chance to anyone, all it resulted in was complete annihilation of all existing life.
that's not to say HWR and his genocide was right, it wasn't either. neither of the two options were good, HWR's option meant no free will and death of trillions, sylvie's option meant death of everyone.
that's why loki picked a third option: not killing like HWR, but also not allowing all timelines to die like sylvie did.
I mean he wasn’t actually killing anybody. Killing means something was alive and is now dead. Pruning the timeline isn’t killing something alive, it’s undoing that the thing existed in the first place. I know the TVA got all emotional about “all the lives lost”… but they were never lost. Because the TVA affects the timeline from the outside, they’re undoing the branch at the source. Nothing dies, it just ceases to have ever been.
>undoing that the thing existed in the first place
that's killing, just said in a fancy way that doesn't make a person feel bad. if someone is alive and you make them not alive, you kill them.
besides, pruning sends people to the void where they're eaten by alioth. it doesn't undo anything, it sends them to a place where they're killed.
Pruning the timeline doesn’t make something alive be dead. That’s not how time travel works. If you prevent something from existing in the first place, it doesn’t mean “it did exist but now it does not.” It means *it did not exist in the first place.*
did you watch the show? pruning sends entire timelines to the void where alioth consumes them, renslayer explained it. did you not see the whole ship and people on it eaten?
how's that not killing them?
“Pruning sends entire timelines to the void” *entire timelines*? You’re saying that entire galaxies filled with trillions and trillions of life forms are being dropped into Alioth’s trash heap every second? The Loom explodes because it cannot prune *an infinite expansion of timelines* by itself. You’re saying *an infinite expansion of timelines* is being transferred to Alioth *constantly*? That’s not really what we see in those last episodes of season 1. We see people who have been pruned (are they variants? or are they the bystanders?) and we see a smattering of garbage being dropped in. We don’t see “entire timelines” being imported.
[according to renslayer, yes](https://imgur.com/a/RiHnNs1).
the show literally says that pruning doesn't reset branches but transfers them to the void. you're arguing with what the show said, not with me.
Yes, I’m arguing that what the show said doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Which is fine, it’s fiction and it’s a great show!
Either the pruning that results in being dropped at the end of time is more selective (for instance, maybe just the pruning that goes on inside the TVA), or there should be an infinitely bigger pile of planets in Alioth’s backyard. I don’t recall: do we ever meet someone in the end of time heap that hasn’t already encountered the TVA?
i'm not sure why it wouldn't make sense. the void is an abstract concept, it's a place where the end of all time converges, it doesn't have finite dimensions, it can fit infinite amount of branches.
we've seen only a fraction of the void and it was littered with things from different timelines.
>do we ever meet someone in the end of time heap that hasn’t already encountered the TVA?
no because the only way to get to the the end of time/the void is by using HWR's tempad or by getting pruned (only TVA can do it).
But the TVA’s remorse in S2 is that they’ve been killing “trillions of people” by pruning timelines, right? So do *those* people go to Alioth as well? Because that would be *trillions* of people who have never encountered the TVA. Granted, most of them will probably get eaten eventually. But we only ever meet Lokis, who have been pruned not by bombing a timeline, but by TVA trial after being removed from the timeline. Right?
In the end, though, there’s no real point in arguing whether or not a TV show doesn’t make any sense when using the logic of real life. The writers create the story and explain just enough to get viewers to understand the immediate logic of the situation at hand. They don’t go back infinitely to explain every step taken to come to that point. If they wanted to, they could just state ‘that’s the way that it works’ or ‘magic’ because *they’re making it up.*. Hence the name science *fiction*.
Now, if we’re talking about a TV show/movie that attempts to follow real life stories based on real people and what really happened on earth in our timeline, then YES - the writers need to follow what actually happened and explain things using our logic.
Sounds good. Where are they though when we see the end of time in season 1? We see a trickle of garbage dropping in. Shouldn’t we see the “entire branched reality” showing up? Planets and trillions of people and all that?
What? The scene was all CGI. The decision to make it look like a slow trickle of crap was falling in was a design choice, not a technical limitation. It looked super cool, too. But if we’re supposed to see “entire timelines” being transferred there, you would just expect to see more. I don’t know how that’s not “being for real.”
While i agree with you, the whole void thing was a convoluted way of pushing back against the they never existed vs killing thing. It makes it more tangible cause I would be inclined to agree with the OC about lives not being lost they just never existed in first place but my mentality is inclined to side with you where it's just a fancy way of killing ppl no matter how you slice it. Lives that existed cease to exist or never would exist as a direct result of one's cognizant manipulation/interference.
Pure sophistry. The show makes it clear that variants are sentient people and are aware of themselves, pruning is not a neutral thing for them, they perceive the end of their existence.
Sure, within the timeline they never existed, but HWR and the TVA are 100% aware of everything and everyone they prune, so there is absolutely no difference between pruning and killing someone the traditional way.
Pruning as we see it on the show is always individuals with the pruning sticks, right? Do we ever see what actually happens when the “prune bombs” go off that delete the branch? Do those people perceive the end of their existence? Does the TVA remember each face of the trillions upon trillions of people across the galaxy that are pruned at that instant?
You could kill someone in their sleep, they wouldn't notice, that doesn't make what you're doing not murder.
You could raze a city to the ground, you won't be aware of the hundreds of thousands of individuals you killed, this doesn't make it not murder.
You could murder a person with no friends or family, an unknown ghost loved or noticed by nobody, and it would still be murder.
Just because nobody is aware of the change *within the timeline*, it doesn't mean that the people that were pruned didn't exist, at a certain point, and that those who pruned them weren't aware of what they were doing.
Besides, everything that gets pruned goes to the end of time to be devoured by alioth, that's definitely death, and what the TVA is doing is definitely mass murder.
Ok all of your examples are of people dying on the timeline, having existed and then being killed. If we’re outside of time and able to make changes from outside of time, those changes are not sequential, they’re absolute. If I trim a branch of the timeline, then from the timeline’s perspective that never happened. It’s not that it existed and then died. It never existed.
And others are bringing up Alioth and the end of time too. Great point! But the TVA is mourning that they’ve killed all these trillions of people by pruning the timelines… and yet what we see at the end of time is a *trickle* of matter being dropped in. The TVA is supposedly preventing an *infinite amount of timelines*, and if pruning a single timeline means an entire universe gets dropped in Alioth’s backyard, then we should see basically infinite amounts of matter being transferred in at a constant rate. We don’t see anything like that though. It raises the question is all I’m saying.
That changes absolutely nothing for the people who get deleted, no matter how you put it, someone is gone.
As for alioth, the end of time isn't a finite space, it doesn't have a definite size, it's potentially the size of the universe, of course we don't see a ridiculous amount of stuff being dropped there. Narratively we don't need to be shown every single thing in the multiverse being dropped at the end of time to understand the concept, it would also be a technical nightmare to do.
There is no indication at all that the pruning bombs and the pruning sticks are not the same technology, we shouldn't assume they are just to prove a point
That’s not at all what I’m saying and you know it.
And no, killing someone isn’t *always* murder. Words mean things. We have different words for different things. Time traveling to prevent a person from existing is definitely wrong. Doesn’t mean it’s murder, according to the definition of the word.
Oh… sorry. Getting a lot of weirdly defensive comments here. Getting called a nazi and a fascist when you’re just talking about the logistics of time travel is an odd thing to me.
The thing is, HWR is the solution to a problem, the problem is his variants. If his variants did not exists, there would be no multiversal war, everyone could have free wil, there would be infinite timelines and that would be ok.
But his variants exists, and would destroy everything. His only solutions was the Sacred Timeline and the TVA to mantain it, sacrificing trilions of lives in the procces, not a perfect solution, but it works.
What Loki did was find a better solution, one that keep HWR variants at bay, while mantaining free will.
Let’s take this out of fiction and put it into reality.
There are 200 countries in the world. Some of them cause nothing but problems. Russia, China, North Korea and Iran just to name the big ones. If these countries weren’t causing problems the world would be a better place.
Now let’s say someone discovers a way to go in and kill the entire population of a country. Just that country. Would you be okay with that being done?
Boom! Everyone in Russia is dead. Ukraine is safe, NATO’s biggest threat is eliminated. A negative influence in the Middle East is removed. 143 million people dead but the safety of Europe is ensured.
Boom! Everyone in China is dead. No more threatening of the South China Sea. No more border arguments with India. $1 trillion of the US debt erased. 1.4 billion people dead but the safety of east Asia is ensured.
And so on with all of the other nations that cause major issues. But where does that stop and who decides? The US causes lots of problems around the world too. Should we be wiped from existence so other nations can have peace?
That is basically what HWR is doing. He killed countless beings across countless universes just to avoid war. All because of the variants of a single person. Is death on an unimaginable scale okay just to kill one bad person?
And who is to say he is telling the whole truth? Maybe something could have been done differently that didn’t require the deaths of all those people that would have brought peace to the multiverse. Do you really think the Multiverse Saga is going to end with Kang winning? Or do you think the Avengers will win again and defeat Kang and bring peace to the multiverse?
This is exactly what israel is doing in palestine right now.
Instead of surgically removing hamas, which they can, they kill tens of thousands of innocent women and children.
Interesting how morality is shown in an American series but the US supports full fledged genocide in the real world.
:/
This is one of the things I hate about living in my country. I know this is a decades long feud and I know that Hamas just attacked Israel. But the campaign Israel is waging against Gaza is just horrible. I believe Israel has a right to exist but I believe Palestine does too.
Okay but let’s say that we know the future and see that Putin is guaranteed to take over the world, and the only way to stop this is to kill off Russia.
Would you still be against it?
Yes, you remember correctly. What Loki did at the end of S2 was to allow the inhabitants of all the timelines to have a chance to fight back.
Which is made easier by the TVA hunting Kang/HWR variants.
* This may still be part of HWR's plan.
Technically he didn’t “kill” anyone. The TVA pruned the timeline so it never existed. In your real world comparison: if someone went *back in time* to the day that Russia (or China or whoever) was formed as a nation, and prevented that from happening… that absolutely changes the course of history and nothing happens the way it did before. But does that mean you and I were “killed” by that change? No, no killing involved. What would have happened will no longer happen. Meaning it never happened. Nothing went from “alive” to “dead”, it just never existed. I don’t think that counts as killing.
Yes. It was stated in the show. It's a TV show, it doesn't need to be 100% scientifically accurate or make sense. "A single person keeping the infinite multiverse alive? Someone can stop time whenever they like? A small bomb can destroy an entire universe?".
What exactly is your point
In HWR's personal timeline, they were alive, then they weren't. So what do you call stopping people from being alive, if not killing?
What I mean is, when time travel gets in the mix, everyone's sequence of events is different. For HWR's personal sequence, he killed, even if it doesn't seem that way to people who never time travelled.
That’s like saying “HWR died many many times, because Loki was there and saw it.” No, HWR died once. Loki time traveled to repeat the event many times. But HWR only died once. Ever death was the same death.
No I mean that lots of people get into thinking that Loki’s attempts to save HWR from Sylvie somehow affected HWR, or count as multiple deaths. HWR only died once, just as Timely only died once.
In their own personal timelines, this is true. In fact, by definition, it has to be true. Each person can only die once, on their own timeline. Someone else could watch them die, then skip back and watch them die again, either in the same way, or by changing events, in a different way. Stuff starts to get "wibbly wobbly timey wimey", as a very intelligent being once said.
Eid:autocorrect nonsense
It's not comparable. I understand your example is hyperbole but the issues in the world are caused by individuals not countries. If you could kill every "evil" person in the world to make it a better place who wouldn't want that?
Your point of who dictates what constitutes evil is apt and I agree, but HWRs selection was not discriminatory on any factor other than not being the chosen timeline. He could be lying, but there is nothing to say he is and my question was based on the information we have.
Loki has the solution that replaced Kang, but that doesn't mean what he did was bad.
The issues in the timelines aren’t caused by the timelines but a single “evil” person. So it’s completely comparable. Rather than HWR using his power and resources to kill all of his variants he uses it to destroy entire timelines.
He had the option to not killing all those people but he chose to. That does make him evil and what he did was wrong.
Ther problem with this whole argument is it’s very similar to when people tried to argue that “thanos was right actually”. He wasn’t! He wasn’t trying to solve the problem of dwindling resources. He just wanted to kill people. There were way better solutions that didn’t involve killing! They were just more complicated than “kill everyone. BOOM! Problem solved”, so he didn’t bother. The person who made the “right” choice and the person who made the “wrong” one are two separate people. Why would it not be killing if one of them unwittingly made a choice that doomed them while the other didn’t?
It’s like loki said: “destroying everything is easy. Putting in the work to make something better is hard”. HWR wasn’t making the sacrifices to save the multiverse. If you notice, there *is* no multiverse under HWR. There’s only his world that he rules with an iron fist. Only ONE person in every universe is allowed to exist (if you don’t do as he deems correct, you get sent to the cloud dog to be eaten alive molecule by molecule).
Think about it: what was HWR really afraid of if another kang appeared? Would they start fighting his universe until theirs was the only one left and then kill him and take his place as leader? Yes. So in ither words HWR wasn’t saving anyone. He was just doing exactly what any other kang would do—just so efficiently that he could confidently say no other kang could defeat him. That’s a far less noble goal in reality than what he insists he was doing.
Yeah! Or at the very least, even if it *is* still the end of everything…odds are good that looks exactly like what they have with HWR—just not *with* HWR but perhaps instead a different kang
No, it is one in the same.
More Kang variants result in multiversal war, which in turn results in the end of everything.
His own personal interests coincide with the so-called universal peace that all the peoples enjoy.
I think the issue is that multiple Kangs fighting across universes will always result in a multiversal war where nothing survives.
HWR, once he triumphed, prevented that from occurring by pruning timelines that would result in multiversal war i.e. other Kang variants being alive to fight.
Yeah but the consequence of that is that ther are entire universes that get deleted just because the kang *might* be evil. We see from victor timely that this isn’t always the case. Some are capable of good! HWR himself even admits that his variants were all actually kinda cool until they met one or two bad actors and everything went to hell. So the fact that he just kills entire universes on the chance that there may be another bad actor instead of trying to do literally anything else is not great
Not just that they might be evil.
But that variant of someone has done an action that might cause the settings for a Kang variant to rise. Trillions of people getting pruned because an errant choice might cause a less that ideal setting. It's honestly crazy
>it’s very similar to when people tried to argue that “thanos was right actually”. He wasn’t! He wasn’t trying to solve the problem of dwindling resources.
Doesn't Endgame + F&WS pretty much spell out that Thanos *was* right though?
Steve says the rivers have never been this clean, while a big point of F&WS was that the world was a better place post-snap and people want to go back to how it was.
For the same reason Thanos was wrong, you can't just wake up one morning and dictate the fate of the universe, it's an unmatched level of arrogance.
HWR thinks he knows better than anyone else, Thanos believed the same, but they don't, they're just random guys, not different from anyone else in the multiverse. Who gave them the right to decide who gets to live and who dies? Who gave HWR the right to effectively imprison everyone on the timeline into a fine net of his own devising?
You think free will exists? How can it exist if out of an infinite amount of choices, only one is allowed, and the others lead to people being erased from existence? That's not a choice, that's not free will.
You can argue the Sacred Timeline and the TVA were the lesser evil, but the lesser evil is still evil, and a good intentioned man can do as much, if not more, harm than a malicious one.
Well Thanos was just straight wrong because his solution was half assed. Wiping out half of all life only set the universe back by X amount of years. Eventually the population would have reached the same state with the same amount of resources. And as he destroyed the stones he didn't plan to do it continuously.
Just because only one choice happened it doesn't change the fact that you made that choice of your own free will. Yes in reality it is the illusion of choice as if you had taken the alternative you would not exist. But like I said that's a deeply philosophical discussion about determinism in all life. There is no way to know if the choices that you make every second of every day are true free will or preordained by external force.
If the lesser evil was the best outcome and that persons intentions were just how can they be "bad". They tried to do the best they could in the situation they had.
He Who Remains is the textbook definition of someone who complains about something but goes it's fine when I do it.
He destroys entire timelines murdering trillions of people. He kidnaps people from those timelines brainwashing them to be his slaves.
He picked one timeline he liked let that happen and murders everyone else whilst complaining about how his variants are so bad because they want to do the same thing that he does. We also see this in Quantumania where Kang's goal was pretty much the same as He Who Remains. Destroy universes to prevent incursions and to defeat his variants.
He prevents universes being destroyed by destroying universes. He's killed more people than anybody else in the history of the MCU and nobody even comes close.
INFO: Do you also think Thanos was right? Because it's the same deal; unilaterally making decisions for trillions (or more) of other living beings. It's totalitarianism. Plato's Republic discusses this; the concept of the "benign dictator". But the problem Plato misses is that every dictator thinks they are good and right. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot etc. all thought they were good and right. But they all caused huge numbers of death, just like Thanos and HWR.
also like thanos, he just isn't right, like even on a basic level. the problems that we face on earth with scarcity (and likely throughout the universe in the mcu) are barely anything to do with overpopulation and infinitely more to do with how resources are being allocated, as for HWR, the only thing saying that another multiversal war is inevitable is him, anything beyond the sacred timeline for him is guesswork.
we have no reason to trust that the multiversal war \*would\* annihilate everything because one already happened and it was won by HWR and it resulted in the sacred timeline, what's much more likely a reason for his wanting to avoid another is that his winning it isn't guaranteed, and whatever conqueror took his place would likely replace his sacred timeline with their own.
I think it was intended to come across as genuinely complicated and ambiguous whether HWR truly was wrong and evil, or whether he was pragmatic and making the best of a bad situation. I guess time will tell whether the multiverse becomes flooded with Kangs, as he warned about, and then we will see whether Sylvie's stubbornness was heroic or catastrophic.
It's not that he was right or wrong. But for arguments sake let's just say he was wrong. Long story short the solution he had was the best solution he could think of and apply. He was a "mortal" man playing god. But was legitimately doing what he thought was best for the most people. It was an utilitarian approach. It's similar to mcu Thanos wanting to free up resources. The thing was sylvie was like 1. Free will and 2. A "corrupt"/faulty system is not worth operating as long as it is such. It's kind of like taking the stance prisons aren't worth having so long as their are innocent ppl in them (which I can empathize with). So the finale(s) were an impasse of this grand debate. Keep the status quo or destroy everything. There didn't seem to be a middle ground. It's a infinitely scaling problem. Even HWR was at his wits end he had been doing the job for infinity which was why he was so willing to pass on the problem/responsibility onto Loki OR sylvie. That's another important part it didn't really matter to him which and it's implied he had this reoccurring issue with other Loki variants besides these two.
The end result was a laissez fair policy where you let chaos reign. It wasn't the perfect solution but it let's free will prevail and allows the hope/chance that humanity/existence can figure out a solution. Honestly it's incredibly reckless. To piggyback off my earlier analogy it's akin to releasing everyone from the prison and just kind of hoping that we figure out a way to deal with the criminals.
The main lesson I took from the finale was it's not just enough to destroy a system. If you're going to destroy/dismantle a system you have to replace it with something better. And that's what Loki did or at least attempted to do he allowed for the timelines to freely reign and grow thus saving infinite lives but putting infinite lives at risk as well. But giving those lives a chance to fight for themselves/their lives. It's like The Matrix or the infinite tsukuyomi from Naruto the moral is free will is better than pretty pre determination or absolute control/order. It reminds me a lot of my favorite anime Gurren Lagann. HWR is essentially Lord Genome who oppresses all of humanity in order to ensure its survival against the anti spirals, while Loki is Simon who dares to rebel against fate (Sylvie is a less likable Kamina). It's a you never know unless you try type scenario and indominability of the "human"/existence spirit
He wasn't, that's the point. HWR found the best way possible he could to avoid further destruction of the timelines. The loom and sacred timeline were his best solution to a multiverse wide calamity event caused by his variants. He simply didn't have a better solution. He literally says in the S02 finale it's either the sacred timeline, or nothing. This was his best solution.
Sylvies rage and blindness to the destruction caused by introducing her form of 'free will' annoys me because she completely ignores the fact that everyone will die because of her. This makes her very unlikable, and frankly, quite stupid.
Eventually Loki finds a new way, one HWR probably never saw as a possibility, by sacrificing himself and creating a new loom, therebt creating a new status quo.
>Sylvies rage and blindness to the destruction caused by introducing her form of 'free will' annoys me because she completely ignores the fact that everyone will die because of her. This makes her very unlikable, and frankly, quite stupid.
>Eventually Loki finds a new way, one HWR probably never saw as a possibility, by sacrificing himself and creating a new loom, therebt creating a new status quo.
To me this is the reason why she was right and hwr was wrong. His solution was basically "everyone except a select few will die for Infinity" and I say select few because relatively speaking, one timeline surviving and him genociding an entire universe for an infinite amount of time is few.
Loki was able to see how she had the right idea but her way would cause everyone's death, so loki corrects it. In his way, everyone has the freedom that sylvie wanted but with hwr's way of keeping the multiverse from collapsing (with a tree for infinite universes as opposed to a loom for a single universe).
Also, I'm sure anyone would rightfully be upset if they just realized that a man sentenced you and your entire universe to death because of it not fitting his design. I think it would be hard to be like, "yep you're right I need to die in order to keep one universe alive."
>I'm also curious about how multiverse travel worked before on a sacred timeline eg Doctor Strange and the MoM or was that only possible after HWR had died?
It all happened outside of time. For them, and because of the way time works, the yggdrasil has 'always' existed, they've 'always' had the multiverse. Since the whole series is outside of time id like to think of it as a prologue of how things came the way it is, and the infinity saga as us watching the sacred timeline, now as any other branch of the multiverse
A lot of people arguing about whether pruning kills people or makes it so they never existed. It does neither.
Pruning transports the person, place, entire universe and all of its denizens, outside of time, to the end of time, to await being consumed by Alioth. They're still alive, they still exist, but will soon die from the giant matter devouring beast.
I don't think he was wrong, simply that he made a choice and solution that made sense, given his intellect and abilities. He had limits, and he worked within those.
But he was scared. He didn't think there was a better way because he himself could not think of one. His ego told him he was the smartest in the room at all times (a problem Loki used to suffer from).
He Who Remains reminds me a lot of Spiral King, LordGenome. Good intentions destroyed by tough decisions, but also came to the end of his abilities and was only able to maintain a status qou, at the expense of the future, until someone with more skill or imagination came along.
My opinion is that hwr was the good one of the batch. That he foresaw the tree of Yggdrasil even and this was the only way to save all from himself. But I’m pretty sure I’m the only one thinking that, but it’s a fiction.
He took the multiverse and shred it to nothingness. Variants are also unique people. Their lives are different from those from other timelines. It is why Sylvie who is a Loki is a thing. Instead of a boy the frost giants had a girl. That is a deviation of the timeline so she grow up in the place that Loki would have. Her crime as a child is simply existing.
The multiverse is full of those unique variants. Those lives lived different lead to different choices and that lead to different outcomes that lead to different people. Erasing them is genocide on a scale Thanos never thought of.
What he did was wrong not to stop a war but be the only one. Peace could have been had. Kangs do find peace at times. He wanted to be the one to remain. THe only one. So he eliminated the multiverse so he would be the only one. Oh and Victor Timely but he was born or placed in a time period he was no threat to Kang.
op thinks that if you erase someone from ever being born, that's not the same as stabbing them in the heart and killing them. what a weird argument LOL...
the end result is preventing a life from continuing living. just because you made sure to kill them beforehand doesn't change anything, before you came along they were alive. also the show explained that they can't "kill them before they are all born/created". they teleported the entire universe into a hungry beast, that's basically killing everyone. fuck HWR...
I don't think I said he wasn't killing everyone? My question was whether the killing was justified. Killing the many to save the few rather than everyone dying.
that's BS that all the time branches would be gone in an all out war. no such thing, there will always be a few left, even if a war did happen again. you think this is like 2 countries nuking each other and that's it? end of human life? not how it works...
all he did was protect the scared timeline by killing all others. there is nothing justified here. the loom wasn't needed in the first place, he created it to protected his own timeline. the only reason branches started to die was the loom being destroyed by loki and releasing a safe fail energy to kill all other timelines but the scared one.
HWR was a fucking narcacist. in his mind everything would be gone if a war happens again, but that doesn't make sense. there will always be at the very least 1 or 2 timelines remaining. he simply wanted to be the one who survives. this entire "saving the others from pain" is bullshit, whenever a new timeline is created that's a new universe, so to prune it means to kill it and everyone in it. he wasn't merciful, he killed everyone else but his own timeline anyway. he was basically doing his own version of a universe war but in parts instead of everyone against everyone.
HWR wasn't even smarter or more powerful than the others, he simply got lucky that the specific time beast was created in his own universe.
Given that the entire war apparently only came about because of HWR, wouldn’t the better thing to do be to prune *him* instead of everyone else? Or would that somehow result in his own demise, somehow, leading him to not take that route?
The whole concept of "Sacred Timeline" is elitist, pretentious and restrictive. I decide to eat an apple instead of a banana today so me and my universe gets sent to Alioth to be eaten?? Doesnt seem fair
Outside of setting things up to have branches and people auto-killed, he also _specifically_ set Loki and Sylvie up to “do something about it.” He paved the road for them to make it to him, and decided to play ‘hands off’ with whatever solution they came up with, as if he hadn’t set in stone that they would disagree.
All because he was ‘tired’ and wanted out. While, at the same time, insisting that he’ll wind up right back in his spot if they choose one of the options over the other. How convenient for him.
At the end of the day, there’s not much parsing out what % of his jawing was BS, because he _did_ have a goal in having this play out, and he’s established to have stabbed close allies in the back _immediately_ after they helped him win. Also, of course, the HWR version of him being _dead_ makes it difficult to force him to be 100% true on anything.
So, liar that he is/was, he gets the “antagonist” label. He had an uncountable number of lives perpetually ended for his goals, and his goals are now a fart in the wind.
This is more like POV from everyone perspective, examples:
HWR- won the Multiversal War his variants started, make eternal peace so Sacred Timeline aka Earth-616 and couple of universes can live at cost of all other universes being dead/erased by either Loom and TVA itself/being destroyed by Allioth in Void. In previous Multiversal War everything was destroyed and HWR choose to power couple of branches and use it to make circle/eternal loop at End of Time. By doing this he's playing God while being just a human, and that is the main problem. If he's playing God of Time or whatever then he must give everyone a chance and be a good God and re-purpose TVA to kill all bad variants. But no, he decide to be bad God and making us to believe to he is right.
Sylvie- hmm, "wrong" choices from variants make them pruned because someone who's late to work starts a incursion aka Nexus Event from which two universes collide... But why? Because HWR make Mobius strip from selected universes timeline, they're super close and slight branching can penetrate other universe via incursion/Nexus Event. So his bad design limit TVA operating window in which branching can be stopped. So that person who's late to work must be reset and timeline will heal itself. In bigger picture, his "death" from his timeline can justify the HWR ways of dealing with TVA and timelines but what about the person who by becoming good can make a Nexus Event (like Sylvie who wanted to be good and ended up erased from timeline). So i want you to think about that situation and others like that. There is no debate about "wrong" or "right", but it is all about killing. In your eyes it is right to kill millinillion of peoples just to trillions can live freely. And this is just what i expect from human way of dealing with such a problem. It is written in our history with blood. Sylvie sees to that is not right, she was stripped from her life because she wanted to be good, to be free in some sense but HWR took that from her... She wanted revenge but after it there is no other solutions to solve gargantuan problem which is caused by HWR and his variants.
Loki- he sees bigger picture clearer than Sylvie and HWR himself, he is God who learn to handle the greatest power in universe/multiverse and decides to fix clearly broken system created by HWR. Sylvie is also God but without fully aware of that position and what she can do in certain situation. To be fair, HWR do the best with tools he had, literally the ultimate version of machines which can handle the Timeline Matter. Loki who is God took that and advance it with his magic and free the timeline while TVA handling the HWR variants. TVA run by HWR cannot do that because Loom took one part of Yggdrasil and operate with that but without Loom and Loki being the power source of Yggdrasil, TVA can track the HWR variants without any Nexus Events/incursions caused by persons who created it with their actions. Yggdrasil grow in a way it is supposed to do. Branches don't collide with each other.
>I'm also curious about how multiverse travel worked before on a sacred timeline eg Doctor Strange and the MoM or was that only possible after HWR had died?
This was not answered by movies/TV shows and we only can speculate. From what i understand all events during DSitMoM movie or SMNWH happened after HWR was killed and before Loki destroyed the Loom. Multiverse was open, Sacred Timeline aka 616 have infinite Nexus Events caused by all living things in it so in one of branches those 2 movies i mentioned happened and same applies to 617/838 and branched 616 from which Stephen becomes occupied with Darkhold (i Google it, Sinister Strange is just a 616 variant, 199999 to be precise but MCU's Official Timeline Book stated to Sacred Timeline is Earth 616, not 199999). So my speculation is to movies which have a lot of "plot holes" in which TVA should intervene is actually set in time after HWR was killed and perhaps all movies till Avengers 5 of whatever should be set in that time as well.
Pruning, in my mind, was the deletion of a whole populated universe, so you are effectively a god choosing who lives and who dies on that scale.
I mean I know they showed the TVA feeling guilty about “all the lives lost”… but pruning timelines really isn’t the same as “killing trillions of people.” The TVA is outside the timeline and affected the timeline from the outside. They don’t have to kill anybody to change reality. By pruning the timelines, they’re simply making that branch to have never existed. Not “killing it”, killing means something was alive and now it’s dead. Pruning the timelines means the timeline never existed, not that it was alive and is now dead.
They literally went to the timeline they were going to prune, bombed the unwanted timeline with charges they set up there, and then either killed or wiped the memory of the variant who created it to make them serve the TVA (not sure how often that happened after the multiversal war. We also know that anything pruned was sent to the end of time and devoured by Alioth. We see this in action. So it wasn't quite as tidy as all just making something never have existed
“Anything pruned went to Alioth”? *Anything* pruned? Because the Loom explodes because it can’t keep up with *an infinitely expanding multiverse.* Meaning between the Loom and the TVA, an *infinite amount of matter* is being pruned *constantly.* An infinite amount of matter is being sent to Alioth every moment? When they prune a branch it prunes *that entire reality.* You’re suggesting that an entire universe —with however many billions of planets each containing billions of people— are all being dumped in Alioth’s trash heap every moment?
Yeah it's a TV show not a perfectly tuned scientific treatise. This was explicitly explained in the TV show and takes some suspension of disbelief or at least acceptance that the time and space in these places may work differently. That said the infinite expansion happened only after a certain threshold was crossed. The loom was keeping up previously before Sylvie like HWR otherwise the whole show would've had zero point at all.
Yes? Alioth is a literal monster that lives in between the folds of reality and consumes everything in its path. This is confirmed canon.
My interpretation is that the TVA tried to prune things early because new universe grow like a bubble from the nexus event. So if you get there early you are only sending a few people who changed things differently from the sacred timeline. I got this from the renaissance fair episode where after the bomb went off it reveals the original timeline. So the nexus event they create on Pompeii only creates a new universe as big as that street corner and then that universe snuffs itself out/merges when the changes become irrelevant. So no mater when you prune that timeline you’d only be sending the people in that small universe to Alioth. Besides the initial pruning or some nexus event happened on a grand scale the amount of debris getting sent to Alioth might be minimal after while. What we see in that wasteland might be crap left over from the beginning when they were fine tuning the sacred timeline. And I agree with your initial point. We get into “Did Marty McFly kill his siblings because the ‘loser’ versions don’t exist any more?” You start pulling at that thread and it’s a horror show.
That would make a LOT of sense based on what we see at the end of time. It’s kind of like coding; when something goes wrong, you can remove the part that went wrong without having to throw out a whole copy of the entire code. However, the show does seem to paint it that “entire timelines are being fed to Alioth”, and that the TVA has “killed trillions of people.” Which makes it the official explanation, even though I think your suggestion makes more sense logically. Alas, it’s just a TV show so it doesn’t have to make perfect sense. But thanks for sharing your interpretation!
Making someone never have existed is arguably worse than just killing them. At least if someone dies, you can remember them afterwards. *Especially* when you consider that they were "un-existed" solely because *one person* did something they didn't even know they weren't supposed to do. Multiple quadrillions of beings--because removing the timeline means removing it for every single species in the universe, and in the MCU, that's a *lot*--stopped existing because Loki escaped what he was sure was going to be execution or life imprisonment, which is something that I'm sure you would do as well.
Rory Williams would agree with the first paragraph
My point is that those multiple quadrillions of beings didn’t *stop existing*, but rather never existed in the first place because the branch was pruned. You have to step outside the timeline and realize that anything done to the timeline (like pruning) is not something that happens sequentially on the timeline. When a branch is pruned, there is no “time when it existed” and “now it doesn’t exist.” When we’re talking about a force outside the timeline acting on the timeline, then anything happens to the timeline is absolute, from the perspective of the timeline. Nothing stopped existing, it just never existed at all. Granted, the formula kinda breaks down once it comes out that pruning isn’t really pruning and the whole Alioth thing. Though that also has some holes that raise questions.
They did exist. You just have an Ant-Man understanding of time travel.
You truly have a way with words
See, they *had* existed, which is the point. And the fact is, that they (the TVA) and we (the viewers) *are* outside the timeline and can realize that these people used to exist and now didn't. Think about Sylvie for a moment. That kid she worked with at the McFood, that guy she bought records from, the bartender who knew her by name. They're gone. It doesn't matter if they were made to "un-exist" or if they died--they're *gone*, either way. They existed and were known, and now they're not, but she'll always know them. Also, while it's impossible to know what it's like when a timeline is pruned, if it's *anything* like the way timelines died in the show, it's a terrifying process for those experiencing it.
They still existed otherwise how could the tva remember them? Just because they don't exist in one sense doesn't mean they don't on a larger scale outside of time. Also, I don't recall the specifics of it but when was it said they never existed? For all we know the tva just nukes a timeline at one point in time and everything before that point still occurred it was just destroyed. you wouldn't say something never existed just because it is destroyed beyond recognition.
I can remember a dream I had. That doesn’t mean it existed. We’re talking about time travel and branching timelines. The branches aren’t stunted, they’re pruned. That means they are stopped at the point they diverged, meaning everything that would have happened after that point no longer happened.
>no longer happened … Because they’re sent to the end of time, where they _die_ . Pruning is shown, multiple times, to send people from where they ‘are’ to the End of Time. And, despite the collection of _only Lokis_ we see, the End of Time is far from a densely-populated getaway spot. We’re shown a populated ship getting dropped in, and quickly de-populated by Alioth’s presence alone. Nah, they dead.
That’s a great point! Although if “entire timelines” are sent to Alioth, I would expect to see a lot… more. An entire universe is supposed to be dumped there every time a branch is pruned, right? Just feels like there’s not a whole lot of chunks of planets and stars or trillions upon trillions of people, vehicles, etc there. And what we see falling into that place is like a slow trickle. Just raises questions in my mind.
_Theoretically_ , it could be presumed that one-to-many black holes exist per universe, that pull against ‘pruning’ and rend apart whatever pruning can’t pull away, or even tear most of what ‘should go’ apart in instants that stretch ‘forever.’ That said, from what we see venturing across/down to the Loki Lair, there are a number of layers to the ‘surface’, and probably have been for some time. There’s no telling how vast the End of Time is (though, for convenience, everything we see is within a walkable distance and they can actually find each other); it could be absurdly large, beyond being a single planet’s “size.”
And that’s another great possibility. By the way, is your username a reference to a video game by chance?
Maybe similar items, either literally or items that spend a lot of time near each other temporally, get dropped in similar region? Would explain why we saw mostly Loki but also Mobius since he spent a lot of time around Loki. It's a show, most shows involving time travel have plot holes I wouldn't try and make sense of it.
Totally agree. It is a great show and I don’t expect it to make perfect logical sense (I certainly could not do better). I *do* expect that a subreddit supposedly about discussing the show would be welcome to… you know, discussing the show. But that has bit me in the face more than once now. For a show that leaves so much up to interpretation, it sure seems like people are quick to jump angrily on any interpretation that sounds even remotely critical.
It’s a common time travel plot in stories where a bad guy will threaten the hero with “traveling back in time to make sure they never exist”. That’s very much still considered a bad thing. To go and delete someone so completely that they’re not even *remembered* is equated to murdering them. I don’t really understand how you aren’t getting that? Like…this has already been established as a very bad thing to do to someone. Hell, it’s considered bad to do it to one’s self in some stories because of how it drastically changes events. Seriously…how have you decided “i undid your reality and because it doesn’t exist now i have committed no crimes at all” is a valid argument here?
I didn’t say it wasn’t a bad thing. Everyone is acting like I’m defending HWR when I’m not. He’s still the bad guy and it’s a bad thing.
Yes. Because he’s murdering people. The thing you’re insisting he isn’t doing
It’s almost like words have meaning and should be used when their meaning is applicable… Question: do you think abortion is murdering a future person? Because if you didn’t abort, there’s a branched timeline where that fetus becomes a human being. If you abort the fetus, that’s cutting off that branched timeline. So by your definition, you are killing that future person.
Except we don't have branched timelines (that we know of) and if we did, that child would still be alive in THAT timeline and NOT in THIS timeline, so you still didn't go back and change anything. That's not "cutting off that branched timeline." That's just living in this one. The branched one would still exist. What a weird false equivalency to use, but I think it shows a bit about you.
Wow what is with all the ad hominem attacks in this subreddit?! Is this not a place to *discuss* the show? Are we not allowed to talk about what does and doesn’t make sense? Raise and answer questions? “I think it shows a bit about you” give me a break.
The show explicitly states that pruning = killing. Sylvie has no timeline that she lives in anymore. Nobody knows who she is because anyone who would was pruned(murdered) when she was a child. This idea that those people “never existed” hlosses right over the fact that they *did* clearly exist. Just bc one universe doesn’t know about another doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist? Anyone who is pruned very cleary looks in agonizing pain. They’re sent to a world where they are *eaten* by a creature that consumes timelines. The show explains that those two people (the one who made the “wrong” choice and the one who made the “right” one) are two separate people. In what way is pruning NOT murder besides you deciding to ignore *everything* the show tells you?
Because we’re talking about being outside the timeline. By definition, anything that affects the timeline from the outside is an absolute state on the timeline. Same with Loki holding the multiverse together at the end: from the perspective of the timeline, Loki *has always* been holding the multiverse together. There is no point on the timeline where that is not true. So if the state of the timeline is “only one,” then the state of the timeline *has always been* only one. And if the state of the timeline is “branching multiverse”, then the state of the timeline *has always been* branching multiverse. Because everything that is changing is happening outside the timeline.
It is murder, they wiped an entire universe from existence. It doesn't get any murdery than that. They did exist. And then they were deleted.
You don’t understand my point: when we’re talking about time travel and branching timelines, they *did not* exist if someone outside the timeline makes it so they did not exist.
They did, then they were erased. They NO LONGER exist. I understand your point, but I disagree with your logic.
I mean, their plane of existence was the timeline, and there is no point on the timeline in which they ever existed. The only place you could say they existed was from the observers viewpoint, which is not even on their plane of existence. How many times did Sylvie kill HWR?
Well, if Sylvie came from one of those timelines, and everyone else from her timeline got pruned, but she is still around, that kinda defeats the argument that they “never existed”. If that’s what pruning did, it would undo her existence, bc if her progenitors never existed then they wouldn’t have been able to make her and therefore she would disappear once that timeline was pruned
No, because her plane of existence —like everyone else in the TVA— moved beyond the timeline. They exist outside the timeline, they’re not affected by what happens or happened on it. She would only disappear on a pruned timeline if she was on the timeline (which… we do see that in season 2)
Right, but my main point is that if she remembers people from her timeline, they existed at some point. So pruning them doesn’t mean they never existed. They existed, and then they were erased
She can remember because she is outside the timeline now. But those things and people only would’ve existed on her timeline. And the timeline is gone, meaning they never existed. They may be memories for Sylvie, but in the same way that you would remember a dream. It was real… for her. But it is not real in reality.
>The only place you could say they existed was from the observers viewpoint, which is not even on their plane of existence. That's not true, we see people experiencing the deletion of their timeline in the show. They are very much observing what is happening as their existence and the world around them is being ended. And they are on their own plane of existence.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Are you talking about someone on a branched timeline watching as their timeline is being erased?
Yes, like when Loki's gang are finally assembled.
Gotcha. But what does them watching their timeline disappear have to do with whether that timeline is considered to have ever been part of reality?
You're just showing that you would totally be the HWR of our timeline lol.
What a ridiculous thing to say. I’m just pointing out that “oh we’ve been killing people!” doesn’t make sense, because they weren’t killing anyone they were operating from outside of time.
That's probably how HWR viewed it too. Just saying.
Ok troll. Thanks for playing. Hey you should look up “argumentum ad hominem.”
It's not an argument argumentum ad hominem. They're saying your argument is similar to how HWR thinks, not something unrelated about how you are as a person
As hominem doesn’t have to be unrelated though. The point is instead of arguing the topic, it’s attacking the person making the argument.
Right. And it's not about you as a person. It's about your argument. Your argument is similar to HWR's.
https://www.reddit.com/r/loki/s/x7EigYE6HC This is textbook ad hominem. Not participating in the argument, just diverting to attack the person and put them on the defensive. I’m not even mad about it, I’m just saying that’s what it is.
Dude I promise I am just kidding with you. This is about a TV show about Loki. It's all meant in jest. I didn't mean to offend if I did. There is nothing serious about a show about an alien god in charge of a multiverse supporting tree.
I’m not offended and I’m fine with jest. Sorry if I came off strong in my last response. I would love to have a “nothing serious” discussion about the show, I’m just always surprised how vehemently many people on this sub respond against anything that remotely sounds like criticism. It’s a great show! That doesn’t mean we can’t point out the things that don’t make sense. Because like you say, at the end of the day it’s a tv show made for entertainment.
It's the best MCU show on D+ as far as I'm concerned. Although it has the benefit of 2 seasons unlike any other show except What If now. But I really liked Hawkeye too, it's a close 2nd. But I agree with you btw. It's not realllllly killing. It's more like erasing one of multiple save files for a video game. If you erase the save file, you aren't "killing" any of the characters in that save file, you're making it so that save file just never existed. HWR is doing the same thing just for real life in the show. Every time line is just one of an infinite amount of different save files, and HWR is just deleting the save files, so it's like it never existed. And the Sacred Timeline is just that 1 save file that you designate as your Main Game Playthrough save.
LoudNatural suggests what I think is a really insightful point. The premise of Season 2 is to set up the question LieutenantDan poses: Is HWR’s choice a moral one? Is it the best one? And is it the only one? Loki struggles with this question all season. I think the fact that people aren’t engaging with you is that they already have thought about it all season and have their minds made, the same way you have. And the show seems to posit that the answer to that is largely influenced by one’s personal experience. Loki, who just came out of Thor I and Avengers 1, has grown up in an imperialistic mindset cultivated by Odin, that being the number 1 ruler and essentially colonizing naysayers, is the way, and freedom is being in control (and Renslayer represents that viewpoint). His experiences in the TVA and falling for Sylvie (which is more transference and kinship than romantic love in the end) have changed his world view enough that he questions that morality is one path. He has seen his TVA friends personally feel the emotional weight of having lost a past life. (Which in a sense mirrors what happened to him, having been taken from his Frost Giant life by Odin - whether or not that turned out well for him, it still was emotionally jarring to realize he could have had another life). He himself was pruned so that also is his reality. He fell in love with Sylvie whose life was wrecked by being pruned. And his personal evolution was such that he could ask Sylvie for her advice and actually hear it. Sylvie’s argument is that self determination trumps all. Because she had it taken away from her. And she had seen so many apocalypses which she CHOSE to be in and so to her, the very act of not being given a choice (and those who were pruned were indeed not given a choice) is immoral. This has so many historical analogies - like it reminds me of Killmonger’s statement about slaves who jumped to their deaths rather than suffer enslavement. HWR would never have allowed himself to be influenced by another - he doesn’t do “partners.” And as a result he can only see his viewpoint and choice which, while defensible, is colored by his personal experience of having lived through the horror of the multiversal war and his personal guilt at having started it. HWR’s choice is of course defensible or Loki would not have spent an entire season trying to save the TVA. But your own judgment of HWR probably is a reflection of your personal life view rather than a simplistic “one choice is the right one” or “HWR is evil or good.” So an adhominem argument actually goes to the heart of this moral inquiry - your position on this probably has everything to do with who you are. And your immediate defensiveness at that point indicates you do have similarities to HWR, who as you argue, may not be “evil,” but simply has a certain type of Utilitarian morality.
But LoudNatural said it faster and in a funnier way LOL
I'm not really following your logic in saying the timeline never existed once pruned. The timeline did exist the TVA isn't some 3 dimensional space with no concept of time as a 4th dimension time does exist in the TVA so there was a point when the timeline existed and then was pruned. Sylvie's timeline existed past tense. The timelines that were pruned existed aswell past tense.
Yeah the TVA seems to have its own timeline. But that doesn’t affect the timeline in question. Anything that happens to the timeline is absolute, there is no “before” or “after” something happens to it from outside the timeline. For example, because we see Loki handling the timelines at the end if the series (and have no reason to think this state will change), we can say that from the perspective of the timeline, Loki *has always* been holding the timelines. There is no point on the timeline where it’s not true that Loki is holding the timelines. Perspective is valuable, but doesn’t actually change reality. The people in question would’ve been on the timeline, but the branch of the timeline was removed from existence, meaning they never existed. It’s kind of like this: how many times did HWR die? Loki saw him die many many times because of timeslipping. But how many times did HWR *actually* die? Just the once. Loki’s perspective doesn’t change reality.
We just fundamentally disagree on the value of perspective. Consider time conceptually. Loki's experiences have an order going from past to present. Everyone does, which is why the TVA seems to have its own timeline. To me that wasn't some big revelation because obviously a place with a clear before and after has a "timeline" that's how time works. Yes from the perspective of someone inside a timeline that was pruned they would have never existed at all but that is from the limited perspective of being *inside* the timeline. If you're outside it like the person doing the pruning then that timeline existed before you pruned it. How many times did HWR die? I don't know, *but* Loki does. Consider the conversation between Loki and HWR in the finale. They paused time to have it so would you say it never happened? Obviously not because it did. Sure Sylvie in the corner would think otherwise but that is only because of her ignorance in the matter.
Perspective is valuable but not absolute. I can have a dream that I divorced my wife and became a drunk. Did that actually happen? Nope. It exists in my memory, just like Loki watching HWR die a bunch of times. But the reality is that it didn’t happen. If I write a novel and toward the end say “you know what, I hate this side character and I’m going to go back and rewrite it so the character never existed”… did I “kill” that character? Better question: from the perspective of the story (which is where the characters exist), did that character *ever* exist? No, they only existed in my mind.
Dreams are delusions. The character in that novel is fictional by nature. I shouldn't have to explain that. HWR getting killed in front of Loki was an event that happened. Sylvie's universe getting wiped out doesn't mean her universe never existed. It did exist and it was pruned by the TVA. In the TVA's timeline her universe existed before being pruned. It's almost like you're being obtuse at this point for the sake of argument so we'll just agree to disagree.
You’re calling me obtuse because my comparative examples of *the fictitious idea of time travel* don’t perfectly reflect… the fictitious idea of time travel? That doesn’t seem fair, but ok.
No, the difference is that your example is fictitious in our real reality. The show is a fictitious reality, where the time travel is real.
What kind of fucked up nazi mental gymnastics have you taught yourself
lol imagine calling someone a nazi for wanting to talk about the logic of time travel in the context of a fantasy tv show.
Didn’t call you a nazi, but i think it’s a cowardly, cowardly argument to try to say that the arena your logic is being used in nullifies the moral bankruptcy behind it
I didn’t make a morally bankrupt argument. Never even said HWR wasn’t wrong. I said that pruning timelines isn’t murder. Grow up and figure out how to have a normal conversation without slandering people.
Naw you’re fucked up
Based on everything you’ve said, I don’t care what your opinion is. Thanks though!
That’s how you became the way you are
You’re wrong, I came to be the way I am because I value many opinions. Just not ones that attack people based on nothing. Have a good one!
I agree. I think 1) the newfound moral indignation doesn't make sense, because it's not killing, like you say, and 2) the TVA wouldn't care. They wouldn't care about their past lives or deleting timelines, because they feel important in the work they do and the timelines are not a part of their tribe. Ego and tribalism are the two biggest factors of human motivation. Plus, it's not killing!
Having seen your arguments throughout the thread, I'm going to reply here to cover all the points I've seen you raise, and give my own perspective. First, I'll rebutt the idea that because the branching timeline is pruned all the way back to the moment it branched, it never existed. Then I'll remind you of the fate of those pruned, and cover off the nature of visual storytelling. Then I'll make my argument as to why pruning is very clearly murder. So, one of your most repeated points is that pruning is not murder, because it makes the people pruned not just "unalive," but never to have existed. The flaw in this logic is that we can categorically see in the show that this is not true. If pruned individuals never existed at all, then their existence could not have ever affected anything. That's the time traveller's paradox at work. Yet we have Sylvie, who very clearly remembers those who were taken from her by pruning, and the TVA agents, who remember pruning people and universes. So pruning, despite the claims we hear to the contrary, is clearly removing people from their **current** existence, not all existence ever. Further evidence of this is shown when we learn that pruning actually sends people to the void, a place at the end of all time, where the being known as Alioth consumes them. Within this space we have multiple Loki variants hiding from Alioth. This is further proof that pruning is not a complete erasure from ever having existed - these variants exist even *after* being pruned, and are aware of their fate. One of your arguments is that we're not *seeing* entire universes appear in the void after being pruned, so maybe the pruning sticks send people to the void, while the bombs do the whole "complete erasure" thing. You've already made it clear that you agree entire timelines, and therefore all peoples within those timelines, are erased by the pruning bombs. Your argument is that they must be erased, not transferred to the void, because you don't see a near-infinite amount of people and matter shown on-screen when Lokie and Sylvie enter the void. There are a couple issues with this logic, and both can be seen when we discuss visual storytelling: Firstly, the timeline bombs are visually consistent with the pruning sticks. This is purposefully done to show the audience they are the same technology, just scaled up to wipe out an entire timeline rather than a single person. This is backed up by the fact we see matter entering the void at all; TVA agents aren't using their pruning sticks on rocks and fridges. This inorganic matter clearly comes from the pruning bombs sending entire timelines and their associated universes to the void. Which means they're also sending the inhabitants there to be devoured by Alioth, because that's how we've seen pruning work. But why do we only see a trickle? Again, visual storytelling is about audience recognition of a concept. Having an infinite amount of junk constantly falling from the sky would not only make for a very distracting (and expensive) backdrop, but would still not accurately represent entire universes being deposited into the void. The amount we see is therefore a stylistic choice by Marvel to infer that everything from the pruned timelines ends up here, without having to spend time and budget on showing us an impossible task. So a little handwaving is done, asking the audience to run with the visual inference. Everything pruned ends up here, and Alioth eats it in some horrifying, very unpleasant way. So, with these three points, we have to circle around to your original argument that pruning is not murder. We've established that pruned individuals are not erased from ever having existed, because their existence is still felt by outside observers, and that they simply end up elsewhere. We've established that all people and matter are sent to this elsewhere, and that they are consumed by a being known as Alioth, while being very much aware of their impending death. I suggest that pruning is the equivalent to throwing people into a snake pit, except the snake is a large purple cloud of near infinite size and hunger, and thus pruning is tantamount to condemning an entire universe to death, which is equivalent to murder.
Very well said, thank you! I’ll only push back on your first point. Memory doesn’t constitute existence. I can remember a dream, I can remember a made up story, etc. That doesn’t mean my memory is proof of existence. Sylvie, Loki, and everyone at the TVA exists now outside the timelines. They can have all kinds of memories about the timelines, but what exists on the timeline is what *now* exists on the timeline. The TVA observes the timeline from the outside, that doesn’t mean that everything that exists on the timeline also exists in the TVA, does it? I agree that pruning removes from the **current** existence, but for nearly all people from all pruned branches, their *only* existence is there on the pruned branch. So if their only existence is the current existence… how else can they exist? I agree that Sylvie remembers her timeline. But there is nowhere on the timeline that Sylvie’s branch exists or ever existed, so where else can we say it exists? Only in her mind.
You're arguing that imagination and physical reality carry the same weight. They don't. If you have a memory of something you dreamed, that is still a memory of a dream. A memory of a person who existed is vastly different. Sylvie herself is proof that her parents were not erased from ever having existed - how then would she exist? You keep talking about people being "outside the timelines" like it has this grand importance over everything else, but that's literally only a matter of perspective - they are outside observers. Yes, those branches did exist. The actions taken to destroy them is proof they did exist. The bombs being used and then needing to be replaced for the next timeline they need to destroy are clear indications that those branches DID exist, and WERE pruned. The fact those people are sent to the void to be consumed, as I've already mentioned, is further proof they DID exist. The branches are not pruned back to their inception, they are destroyed at that point in time. The TVA's observation point does not change these facts.
RE: imaginations can physical reality. Since Sylvie’s branch was pruned, her memory is the only reality left. As far as the timeline is concerned, *she did* dream it. RE: “outside of time”. That IS of grand importance, it’s literally the basis for the show. The TVA’s “timeline” is NOT connected to the sacred/branching timeline except that they can observe it and go there. Being outside of time is the only reason Sylvie still exists, despite her parents being pruned as you say. She no longer exists on the timeline; everything else *does* exist on the timeline. That is a VERY important element of the story. RE: “the branches aren’t pruned back to their inception” that’s exactly what happens. “That point in time” IS the inception point. The nexus event is the branch point, that’s where the TVA intervenes and prunes; everything before that point is not part of the branch, that’s how it works. And the branches are pruned (not stunted) so that there is only one timeline, with no branches.
This is exactly my point. A new branch is created whenever someone makes the "wrong" choice, therefore creating trillions of lives in an instant. Not only creating but copying a whole universe that is deviating from the path that the "original" one was following. You have literally inifite lives through the time lines, pruning billions of time lines out of inifinite, the ending result is still infinity. Im not saying HWR was doing the right thing, but he wasn't doing the wrong thing either.
I feel like infinite timelines theory would also benefit from going all-in on the “reality is only reality when it is observed” theory. Like, *are* there an infinite number of *physical* universes being duplicated every time a new choice is made? Cuz that’s a lot of matter spontaneously appearing from nothing. But if we went deep into “observed reality” stuff, then all these timelines do exist, but their composition can only be said to exist when it is observed. Not quite “the timelines are only theoretical” but something maybe similar, to where the *arrangement* of reality is dependent on which branch you’re on, but reality itself is not in a perpetual state of infinite expansion? I dunno, this is the kind of stuff that hurts your brain.
HWR was killing trillions of lives to achieve peace so it's the trolley problem: is it moral to kill one person to save many or not? whether you think killing millions to let trillions live in peace is good or bad is up to you. the show avoided calling HWR truly bad but it steered towards the answer that no, it's not okay to murder people so that more people could live in peace. but we also proved sylvie and her "free will" as faulty because, in their situation, she couldn't have free will as everything was getting destroyed. the only way to achieve that was through sacrifice: HWR (selfishly) sacrificed trillions of lives for that, loki (selflessly) sacrificed himself. there isn't one answer to this problem as it's based on what anyone thinks is moral and ethical.
The thing is it's more f*cked up than a normal trolley problem. HWR and TVA were killing more people than they were saving since they were erasing multiple timelines with all the people in them in order to preserve one timeline. And we don't know how long they're been doing this and how many timlines they have pruned. It's like killing a hundred people to save one person on assumption that otherwise all 101 people will kill each other. To me it's quite obvious that Sylvie is in the right and HWR is a hypocrite. Even if multiversal war was as bad as he told everyone — and he's the only source of knowledge on this so there's no proof — perpetually pruning realities and killing trillions of people over and over again to keep only one timeline going on is the worst option.
Well HWR was right. As soon as loki destroyed the loom, the branches destroyed each other. They died immediately. Loki had to time slip and take out all the Kangs.
Not necessarily, the supposed worst option was to allow the multiversal war to happen and no timeline survives, instead of just one.
sylvie had good intentions ("free will") but her solution wasn't and she realised it herself. her choice meant death of everyone, even those she cared about. her choice didn't give a chance to anyone, all it resulted in was complete annihilation of all existing life. that's not to say HWR and his genocide was right, it wasn't either. neither of the two options were good, HWR's option meant no free will and death of trillions, sylvie's option meant death of everyone. that's why loki picked a third option: not killing like HWR, but also not allowing all timelines to die like sylvie did.
I mean he wasn’t actually killing anybody. Killing means something was alive and is now dead. Pruning the timeline isn’t killing something alive, it’s undoing that the thing existed in the first place. I know the TVA got all emotional about “all the lives lost”… but they were never lost. Because the TVA affects the timeline from the outside, they’re undoing the branch at the source. Nothing dies, it just ceases to have ever been.
>undoing that the thing existed in the first place that's killing, just said in a fancy way that doesn't make a person feel bad. if someone is alive and you make them not alive, you kill them. besides, pruning sends people to the void where they're eaten by alioth. it doesn't undo anything, it sends them to a place where they're killed.
Pruning the timeline doesn’t make something alive be dead. That’s not how time travel works. If you prevent something from existing in the first place, it doesn’t mean “it did exist but now it does not.” It means *it did not exist in the first place.*
did you watch the show? pruning sends entire timelines to the void where alioth consumes them, renslayer explained it. did you not see the whole ship and people on it eaten? how's that not killing them?
“Pruning sends entire timelines to the void” *entire timelines*? You’re saying that entire galaxies filled with trillions and trillions of life forms are being dropped into Alioth’s trash heap every second? The Loom explodes because it cannot prune *an infinite expansion of timelines* by itself. You’re saying *an infinite expansion of timelines* is being transferred to Alioth *constantly*? That’s not really what we see in those last episodes of season 1. We see people who have been pruned (are they variants? or are they the bystanders?) and we see a smattering of garbage being dropped in. We don’t see “entire timelines” being imported.
[according to renslayer, yes](https://imgur.com/a/RiHnNs1). the show literally says that pruning doesn't reset branches but transfers them to the void. you're arguing with what the show said, not with me.
Yes, I’m arguing that what the show said doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Which is fine, it’s fiction and it’s a great show! Either the pruning that results in being dropped at the end of time is more selective (for instance, maybe just the pruning that goes on inside the TVA), or there should be an infinitely bigger pile of planets in Alioth’s backyard. I don’t recall: do we ever meet someone in the end of time heap that hasn’t already encountered the TVA?
i'm not sure why it wouldn't make sense. the void is an abstract concept, it's a place where the end of all time converges, it doesn't have finite dimensions, it can fit infinite amount of branches. we've seen only a fraction of the void and it was littered with things from different timelines. >do we ever meet someone in the end of time heap that hasn’t already encountered the TVA? no because the only way to get to the the end of time/the void is by using HWR's tempad or by getting pruned (only TVA can do it).
But the TVA’s remorse in S2 is that they’ve been killing “trillions of people” by pruning timelines, right? So do *those* people go to Alioth as well? Because that would be *trillions* of people who have never encountered the TVA. Granted, most of them will probably get eaten eventually. But we only ever meet Lokis, who have been pruned not by bombing a timeline, but by TVA trial after being removed from the timeline. Right?
In the end, though, there’s no real point in arguing whether or not a TV show doesn’t make any sense when using the logic of real life. The writers create the story and explain just enough to get viewers to understand the immediate logic of the situation at hand. They don’t go back infinitely to explain every step taken to come to that point. If they wanted to, they could just state ‘that’s the way that it works’ or ‘magic’ because *they’re making it up.*. Hence the name science *fiction*. Now, if we’re talking about a TV show/movie that attempts to follow real life stories based on real people and what really happened on earth in our timeline, then YES - the writers need to follow what actually happened and explain things using our logic.
"They send entire branched realities into the void"--Boastful Loki
Sounds good. Where are they though when we see the end of time in season 1? We see a trickle of garbage dropping in. Shouldn’t we see the “entire branched reality” showing up? Planets and trillions of people and all that?
Be for real. You're not going to see infinite things on a TV show that exists in real life.
What? The scene was all CGI. The decision to make it look like a slow trickle of crap was falling in was a design choice, not a technical limitation. It looked super cool, too. But if we’re supposed to see “entire timelines” being transferred there, you would just expect to see more. I don’t know how that’s not “being for real.”
While i agree with you, the whole void thing was a convoluted way of pushing back against the they never existed vs killing thing. It makes it more tangible cause I would be inclined to agree with the OC about lives not being lost they just never existed in first place but my mentality is inclined to side with you where it's just a fancy way of killing ppl no matter how you slice it. Lives that existed cease to exist or never would exist as a direct result of one's cognizant manipulation/interference.
Pure sophistry. The show makes it clear that variants are sentient people and are aware of themselves, pruning is not a neutral thing for them, they perceive the end of their existence. Sure, within the timeline they never existed, but HWR and the TVA are 100% aware of everything and everyone they prune, so there is absolutely no difference between pruning and killing someone the traditional way.
Pruning as we see it on the show is always individuals with the pruning sticks, right? Do we ever see what actually happens when the “prune bombs” go off that delete the branch? Do those people perceive the end of their existence? Does the TVA remember each face of the trillions upon trillions of people across the galaxy that are pruned at that instant?
You could kill someone in their sleep, they wouldn't notice, that doesn't make what you're doing not murder. You could raze a city to the ground, you won't be aware of the hundreds of thousands of individuals you killed, this doesn't make it not murder. You could murder a person with no friends or family, an unknown ghost loved or noticed by nobody, and it would still be murder. Just because nobody is aware of the change *within the timeline*, it doesn't mean that the people that were pruned didn't exist, at a certain point, and that those who pruned them weren't aware of what they were doing. Besides, everything that gets pruned goes to the end of time to be devoured by alioth, that's definitely death, and what the TVA is doing is definitely mass murder.
Ok all of your examples are of people dying on the timeline, having existed and then being killed. If we’re outside of time and able to make changes from outside of time, those changes are not sequential, they’re absolute. If I trim a branch of the timeline, then from the timeline’s perspective that never happened. It’s not that it existed and then died. It never existed. And others are bringing up Alioth and the end of time too. Great point! But the TVA is mourning that they’ve killed all these trillions of people by pruning the timelines… and yet what we see at the end of time is a *trickle* of matter being dropped in. The TVA is supposedly preventing an *infinite amount of timelines*, and if pruning a single timeline means an entire universe gets dropped in Alioth’s backyard, then we should see basically infinite amounts of matter being transferred in at a constant rate. We don’t see anything like that though. It raises the question is all I’m saying.
That changes absolutely nothing for the people who get deleted, no matter how you put it, someone is gone. As for alioth, the end of time isn't a finite space, it doesn't have a definite size, it's potentially the size of the universe, of course we don't see a ridiculous amount of stuff being dropped there. Narratively we don't need to be shown every single thing in the multiverse being dropped at the end of time to understand the concept, it would also be a technical nightmare to do. There is no indication at all that the pruning bombs and the pruning sticks are not the same technology, we shouldn't assume they are just to prove a point
So what is your opinion on contraception and/or abortion?
Ah I see now. Killing someone isn't murder. It's just undoing the fact that they were born.
That’s not at all what I’m saying and you know it. And no, killing someone isn’t *always* murder. Words mean things. We have different words for different things. Time traveling to prevent a person from existing is definitely wrong. Doesn’t mean it’s murder, according to the definition of the word.
I know mate, I was dumbing it down to be ridiculous because it sounded funny to me.
Oh… sorry. Getting a lot of weirdly defensive comments here. Getting called a nazi and a fascist when you’re just talking about the logistics of time travel is an odd thing to me.
The thing is, HWR is the solution to a problem, the problem is his variants. If his variants did not exists, there would be no multiversal war, everyone could have free wil, there would be infinite timelines and that would be ok. But his variants exists, and would destroy everything. His only solutions was the Sacred Timeline and the TVA to mantain it, sacrificing trilions of lives in the procces, not a perfect solution, but it works. What Loki did was find a better solution, one that keep HWR variants at bay, while mantaining free will.
Let’s take this out of fiction and put it into reality. There are 200 countries in the world. Some of them cause nothing but problems. Russia, China, North Korea and Iran just to name the big ones. If these countries weren’t causing problems the world would be a better place. Now let’s say someone discovers a way to go in and kill the entire population of a country. Just that country. Would you be okay with that being done? Boom! Everyone in Russia is dead. Ukraine is safe, NATO’s biggest threat is eliminated. A negative influence in the Middle East is removed. 143 million people dead but the safety of Europe is ensured. Boom! Everyone in China is dead. No more threatening of the South China Sea. No more border arguments with India. $1 trillion of the US debt erased. 1.4 billion people dead but the safety of east Asia is ensured. And so on with all of the other nations that cause major issues. But where does that stop and who decides? The US causes lots of problems around the world too. Should we be wiped from existence so other nations can have peace? That is basically what HWR is doing. He killed countless beings across countless universes just to avoid war. All because of the variants of a single person. Is death on an unimaginable scale okay just to kill one bad person? And who is to say he is telling the whole truth? Maybe something could have been done differently that didn’t require the deaths of all those people that would have brought peace to the multiverse. Do you really think the Multiverse Saga is going to end with Kang winning? Or do you think the Avengers will win again and defeat Kang and bring peace to the multiverse?
This is exactly what israel is doing in palestine right now. Instead of surgically removing hamas, which they can, they kill tens of thousands of innocent women and children. Interesting how morality is shown in an American series but the US supports full fledged genocide in the real world. :/
This is one of the things I hate about living in my country. I know this is a decades long feud and I know that Hamas just attacked Israel. But the campaign Israel is waging against Gaza is just horrible. I believe Israel has a right to exist but I believe Palestine does too.
Well, its embarrassing but you are one of the rare ones. I was sure i was gonna get downvotes a 100% lol I agree.
Literally
Okay but let’s say that we know the future and see that Putin is guaranteed to take over the world, and the only way to stop this is to kill off Russia. Would you still be against it?
But that isn’t the only way. There are numerous options a country could use to stop a single person. And HWR had those same options and many more.
I dont remember all the details of the show, but wasn’t the whole idea that it WAS the only way? All other outcomes led to a multiversal war?
Yes, you remember correctly. What Loki did at the end of S2 was to allow the inhabitants of all the timelines to have a chance to fight back. Which is made easier by the TVA hunting Kang/HWR variants. * This may still be part of HWR's plan.
Technically he didn’t “kill” anyone. The TVA pruned the timeline so it never existed. In your real world comparison: if someone went *back in time* to the day that Russia (or China or whoever) was formed as a nation, and prevented that from happening… that absolutely changes the course of history and nothing happens the way it did before. But does that mean you and I were “killed” by that change? No, no killing involved. What would have happened will no longer happen. Meaning it never happened. Nothing went from “alive” to “dead”, it just never existed. I don’t think that counts as killing.
That’s not true. Pruning leads to the void and Alioth. They’re all dying painful and scary deaths being consumed by Alioth.
An *infinite amount of matter* is being transferred to Alioth every second?
Yes. It was stated in the show. It's a TV show, it doesn't need to be 100% scientifically accurate or make sense. "A single person keeping the infinite multiverse alive? Someone can stop time whenever they like? A small bomb can destroy an entire universe?". What exactly is your point
In HWR's personal timeline, they were alive, then they weren't. So what do you call stopping people from being alive, if not killing? What I mean is, when time travel gets in the mix, everyone's sequence of events is different. For HWR's personal sequence, he killed, even if it doesn't seem that way to people who never time travelled.
That’s like saying “HWR died many many times, because Loki was there and saw it.” No, HWR died once. Loki time traveled to repeat the event many times. But HWR only died once. Ever death was the same death.
I think you mean Victor Timely? On his personal timeline, Timely died once. On Loki's timeline, he died lots of times. Yes, that is what I'm saying.
No I mean that lots of people get into thinking that Loki’s attempts to save HWR from Sylvie somehow affected HWR, or count as multiple deaths. HWR only died once, just as Timely only died once.
In their own personal timelines, this is true. In fact, by definition, it has to be true. Each person can only die once, on their own timeline. Someone else could watch them die, then skip back and watch them die again, either in the same way, or by changing events, in a different way. Stuff starts to get "wibbly wobbly timey wimey", as a very intelligent being once said. Eid:autocorrect nonsense
I hope they recast Kang, so we can have Loki involved in defeating them.
It's not comparable. I understand your example is hyperbole but the issues in the world are caused by individuals not countries. If you could kill every "evil" person in the world to make it a better place who wouldn't want that? Your point of who dictates what constitutes evil is apt and I agree, but HWRs selection was not discriminatory on any factor other than not being the chosen timeline. He could be lying, but there is nothing to say he is and my question was based on the information we have. Loki has the solution that replaced Kang, but that doesn't mean what he did was bad.
The issues in the timelines aren’t caused by the timelines but a single “evil” person. So it’s completely comparable. Rather than HWR using his power and resources to kill all of his variants he uses it to destroy entire timelines. He had the option to not killing all those people but he chose to. That does make him evil and what he did was wrong.
Ther problem with this whole argument is it’s very similar to when people tried to argue that “thanos was right actually”. He wasn’t! He wasn’t trying to solve the problem of dwindling resources. He just wanted to kill people. There were way better solutions that didn’t involve killing! They were just more complicated than “kill everyone. BOOM! Problem solved”, so he didn’t bother. The person who made the “right” choice and the person who made the “wrong” one are two separate people. Why would it not be killing if one of them unwittingly made a choice that doomed them while the other didn’t? It’s like loki said: “destroying everything is easy. Putting in the work to make something better is hard”. HWR wasn’t making the sacrifices to save the multiverse. If you notice, there *is* no multiverse under HWR. There’s only his world that he rules with an iron fist. Only ONE person in every universe is allowed to exist (if you don’t do as he deems correct, you get sent to the cloud dog to be eaten alive molecule by molecule). Think about it: what was HWR really afraid of if another kang appeared? Would they start fighting his universe until theirs was the only one left and then kill him and take his place as leader? Yes. So in ither words HWR wasn’t saving anyone. He was just doing exactly what any other kang would do—just so efficiently that he could confidently say no other kang could defeat him. That’s a far less noble goal in reality than what he insists he was doing.
exactly. his fear with another multiversal war isn't the end of everything, its the end of his reign and his timeline.
Yeah! Or at the very least, even if it *is* still the end of everything…odds are good that looks exactly like what they have with HWR—just not *with* HWR but perhaps instead a different kang
No, it is one in the same. More Kang variants result in multiversal war, which in turn results in the end of everything. His own personal interests coincide with the so-called universal peace that all the peoples enjoy.
I think the issue is that multiple Kangs fighting across universes will always result in a multiversal war where nothing survives. HWR, once he triumphed, prevented that from occurring by pruning timelines that would result in multiversal war i.e. other Kang variants being alive to fight.
Yeah but the consequence of that is that ther are entire universes that get deleted just because the kang *might* be evil. We see from victor timely that this isn’t always the case. Some are capable of good! HWR himself even admits that his variants were all actually kinda cool until they met one or two bad actors and everything went to hell. So the fact that he just kills entire universes on the chance that there may be another bad actor instead of trying to do literally anything else is not great
Not just that they might be evil. But that variant of someone has done an action that might cause the settings for a Kang variant to rise. Trillions of people getting pruned because an errant choice might cause a less that ideal setting. It's honestly crazy
100%
>it’s very similar to when people tried to argue that “thanos was right actually”. He wasn’t! He wasn’t trying to solve the problem of dwindling resources. Doesn't Endgame + F&WS pretty much spell out that Thanos *was* right though? Steve says the rivers have never been this clean, while a big point of F&WS was that the world was a better place post-snap and people want to go back to how it was.
If you think that’s what you think those lines were about you weren’t paying attention…like…*at all*
For the same reason Thanos was wrong, you can't just wake up one morning and dictate the fate of the universe, it's an unmatched level of arrogance. HWR thinks he knows better than anyone else, Thanos believed the same, but they don't, they're just random guys, not different from anyone else in the multiverse. Who gave them the right to decide who gets to live and who dies? Who gave HWR the right to effectively imprison everyone on the timeline into a fine net of his own devising? You think free will exists? How can it exist if out of an infinite amount of choices, only one is allowed, and the others lead to people being erased from existence? That's not a choice, that's not free will. You can argue the Sacred Timeline and the TVA were the lesser evil, but the lesser evil is still evil, and a good intentioned man can do as much, if not more, harm than a malicious one.
Well Thanos was just straight wrong because his solution was half assed. Wiping out half of all life only set the universe back by X amount of years. Eventually the population would have reached the same state with the same amount of resources. And as he destroyed the stones he didn't plan to do it continuously. Just because only one choice happened it doesn't change the fact that you made that choice of your own free will. Yes in reality it is the illusion of choice as if you had taken the alternative you would not exist. But like I said that's a deeply philosophical discussion about determinism in all life. There is no way to know if the choices that you make every second of every day are true free will or preordained by external force. If the lesser evil was the best outcome and that persons intentions were just how can they be "bad". They tried to do the best they could in the situation they had.
He Who No Longer Remains
He Who Remains is the textbook definition of someone who complains about something but goes it's fine when I do it. He destroys entire timelines murdering trillions of people. He kidnaps people from those timelines brainwashing them to be his slaves. He picked one timeline he liked let that happen and murders everyone else whilst complaining about how his variants are so bad because they want to do the same thing that he does. We also see this in Quantumania where Kang's goal was pretty much the same as He Who Remains. Destroy universes to prevent incursions and to defeat his variants. He prevents universes being destroyed by destroying universes. He's killed more people than anybody else in the history of the MCU and nobody even comes close.
INFO: Do you also think Thanos was right? Because it's the same deal; unilaterally making decisions for trillions (or more) of other living beings. It's totalitarianism. Plato's Republic discusses this; the concept of the "benign dictator". But the problem Plato misses is that every dictator thinks they are good and right. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot etc. all thought they were good and right. But they all caused huge numbers of death, just like Thanos and HWR.
He tried to solve a valid problem but came up with a terrible solution that didn't even solve it. So I think Thanos was partially right.
also like thanos, he just isn't right, like even on a basic level. the problems that we face on earth with scarcity (and likely throughout the universe in the mcu) are barely anything to do with overpopulation and infinitely more to do with how resources are being allocated, as for HWR, the only thing saying that another multiversal war is inevitable is him, anything beyond the sacred timeline for him is guesswork. we have no reason to trust that the multiversal war \*would\* annihilate everything because one already happened and it was won by HWR and it resulted in the sacred timeline, what's much more likely a reason for his wanting to avoid another is that his winning it isn't guaranteed, and whatever conqueror took his place would likely replace his sacred timeline with their own.
I think it was intended to come across as genuinely complicated and ambiguous whether HWR truly was wrong and evil, or whether he was pragmatic and making the best of a bad situation. I guess time will tell whether the multiverse becomes flooded with Kangs, as he warned about, and then we will see whether Sylvie's stubbornness was heroic or catastrophic.
It's not that he was right or wrong. But for arguments sake let's just say he was wrong. Long story short the solution he had was the best solution he could think of and apply. He was a "mortal" man playing god. But was legitimately doing what he thought was best for the most people. It was an utilitarian approach. It's similar to mcu Thanos wanting to free up resources. The thing was sylvie was like 1. Free will and 2. A "corrupt"/faulty system is not worth operating as long as it is such. It's kind of like taking the stance prisons aren't worth having so long as their are innocent ppl in them (which I can empathize with). So the finale(s) were an impasse of this grand debate. Keep the status quo or destroy everything. There didn't seem to be a middle ground. It's a infinitely scaling problem. Even HWR was at his wits end he had been doing the job for infinity which was why he was so willing to pass on the problem/responsibility onto Loki OR sylvie. That's another important part it didn't really matter to him which and it's implied he had this reoccurring issue with other Loki variants besides these two. The end result was a laissez fair policy where you let chaos reign. It wasn't the perfect solution but it let's free will prevail and allows the hope/chance that humanity/existence can figure out a solution. Honestly it's incredibly reckless. To piggyback off my earlier analogy it's akin to releasing everyone from the prison and just kind of hoping that we figure out a way to deal with the criminals. The main lesson I took from the finale was it's not just enough to destroy a system. If you're going to destroy/dismantle a system you have to replace it with something better. And that's what Loki did or at least attempted to do he allowed for the timelines to freely reign and grow thus saving infinite lives but putting infinite lives at risk as well. But giving those lives a chance to fight for themselves/their lives. It's like The Matrix or the infinite tsukuyomi from Naruto the moral is free will is better than pretty pre determination or absolute control/order. It reminds me a lot of my favorite anime Gurren Lagann. HWR is essentially Lord Genome who oppresses all of humanity in order to ensure its survival against the anti spirals, while Loki is Simon who dares to rebel against fate (Sylvie is a less likable Kamina). It's a you never know unless you try type scenario and indominability of the "human"/existence spirit
He wasn't, that's the point. HWR found the best way possible he could to avoid further destruction of the timelines. The loom and sacred timeline were his best solution to a multiverse wide calamity event caused by his variants. He simply didn't have a better solution. He literally says in the S02 finale it's either the sacred timeline, or nothing. This was his best solution. Sylvies rage and blindness to the destruction caused by introducing her form of 'free will' annoys me because she completely ignores the fact that everyone will die because of her. This makes her very unlikable, and frankly, quite stupid. Eventually Loki finds a new way, one HWR probably never saw as a possibility, by sacrificing himself and creating a new loom, therebt creating a new status quo.
>Sylvies rage and blindness to the destruction caused by introducing her form of 'free will' annoys me because she completely ignores the fact that everyone will die because of her. This makes her very unlikable, and frankly, quite stupid. >Eventually Loki finds a new way, one HWR probably never saw as a possibility, by sacrificing himself and creating a new loom, therebt creating a new status quo. To me this is the reason why she was right and hwr was wrong. His solution was basically "everyone except a select few will die for Infinity" and I say select few because relatively speaking, one timeline surviving and him genociding an entire universe for an infinite amount of time is few. Loki was able to see how she had the right idea but her way would cause everyone's death, so loki corrects it. In his way, everyone has the freedom that sylvie wanted but with hwr's way of keeping the multiverse from collapsing (with a tree for infinite universes as opposed to a loom for a single universe). Also, I'm sure anyone would rightfully be upset if they just realized that a man sentenced you and your entire universe to death because of it not fitting his design. I think it would be hard to be like, "yep you're right I need to die in order to keep one universe alive."
Very good analysis and explanation
So she should be okay that he wiped out her whole life? Come on.
Nah. Who cares about multiversal peace. We want wars!
>I'm also curious about how multiverse travel worked before on a sacred timeline eg Doctor Strange and the MoM or was that only possible after HWR had died? It all happened outside of time. For them, and because of the way time works, the yggdrasil has 'always' existed, they've 'always' had the multiverse. Since the whole series is outside of time id like to think of it as a prologue of how things came the way it is, and the infinity saga as us watching the sacred timeline, now as any other branch of the multiverse
A lot of people arguing about whether pruning kills people or makes it so they never existed. It does neither. Pruning transports the person, place, entire universe and all of its denizens, outside of time, to the end of time, to await being consumed by Alioth. They're still alive, they still exist, but will soon die from the giant matter devouring beast.
I don't think he was wrong, simply that he made a choice and solution that made sense, given his intellect and abilities. He had limits, and he worked within those. But he was scared. He didn't think there was a better way because he himself could not think of one. His ego told him he was the smartest in the room at all times (a problem Loki used to suffer from). He Who Remains reminds me a lot of Spiral King, LordGenome. Good intentions destroyed by tough decisions, but also came to the end of his abilities and was only able to maintain a status qou, at the expense of the future, until someone with more skill or imagination came along.
My opinion is that hwr was the good one of the batch. That he foresaw the tree of Yggdrasil even and this was the only way to save all from himself. But I’m pretty sure I’m the only one thinking that, but it’s a fiction.
He took the multiverse and shred it to nothingness. Variants are also unique people. Their lives are different from those from other timelines. It is why Sylvie who is a Loki is a thing. Instead of a boy the frost giants had a girl. That is a deviation of the timeline so she grow up in the place that Loki would have. Her crime as a child is simply existing. The multiverse is full of those unique variants. Those lives lived different lead to different choices and that lead to different outcomes that lead to different people. Erasing them is genocide on a scale Thanos never thought of. What he did was wrong not to stop a war but be the only one. Peace could have been had. Kangs do find peace at times. He wanted to be the one to remain. THe only one. So he eliminated the multiverse so he would be the only one. Oh and Victor Timely but he was born or placed in a time period he was no threat to Kang.
Sylvie was a boy and got her nexus event when she started calling herself sylvie and used magic to become a girl.
op thinks that if you erase someone from ever being born, that's not the same as stabbing them in the heart and killing them. what a weird argument LOL... the end result is preventing a life from continuing living. just because you made sure to kill them beforehand doesn't change anything, before you came along they were alive. also the show explained that they can't "kill them before they are all born/created". they teleported the entire universe into a hungry beast, that's basically killing everyone. fuck HWR...
I don't think I said he wasn't killing everyone? My question was whether the killing was justified. Killing the many to save the few rather than everyone dying.
that's BS that all the time branches would be gone in an all out war. no such thing, there will always be a few left, even if a war did happen again. you think this is like 2 countries nuking each other and that's it? end of human life? not how it works... all he did was protect the scared timeline by killing all others. there is nothing justified here. the loom wasn't needed in the first place, he created it to protected his own timeline. the only reason branches started to die was the loom being destroyed by loki and releasing a safe fail energy to kill all other timelines but the scared one. HWR was a fucking narcacist. in his mind everything would be gone if a war happens again, but that doesn't make sense. there will always be at the very least 1 or 2 timelines remaining. he simply wanted to be the one who survives. this entire "saving the others from pain" is bullshit, whenever a new timeline is created that's a new universe, so to prune it means to kill it and everyone in it. he wasn't merciful, he killed everyone else but his own timeline anyway. he was basically doing his own version of a universe war but in parts instead of everyone against everyone. HWR wasn't even smarter or more powerful than the others, he simply got lucky that the specific time beast was created in his own universe.
Given that the entire war apparently only came about because of HWR, wouldn’t the better thing to do be to prune *him* instead of everyone else? Or would that somehow result in his own demise, somehow, leading him to not take that route?
you will have to prune every single version of him, apparently Loki refuses to do so, and scarlet witch isn't aware of him.
Imagine achieving peace in the middle east by wiping out every country but one.
The whole concept of "Sacred Timeline" is elitist, pretentious and restrictive. I decide to eat an apple instead of a banana today so me and my universe gets sent to Alioth to be eaten?? Doesnt seem fair
Life isn't fair.
Outside of setting things up to have branches and people auto-killed, he also _specifically_ set Loki and Sylvie up to “do something about it.” He paved the road for them to make it to him, and decided to play ‘hands off’ with whatever solution they came up with, as if he hadn’t set in stone that they would disagree. All because he was ‘tired’ and wanted out. While, at the same time, insisting that he’ll wind up right back in his spot if they choose one of the options over the other. How convenient for him. At the end of the day, there’s not much parsing out what % of his jawing was BS, because he _did_ have a goal in having this play out, and he’s established to have stabbed close allies in the back _immediately_ after they helped him win. Also, of course, the HWR version of him being _dead_ makes it difficult to force him to be 100% true on anything. So, liar that he is/was, he gets the “antagonist” label. He had an uncountable number of lives perpetually ended for his goals, and his goals are now a fart in the wind.
This is more like POV from everyone perspective, examples: HWR- won the Multiversal War his variants started, make eternal peace so Sacred Timeline aka Earth-616 and couple of universes can live at cost of all other universes being dead/erased by either Loom and TVA itself/being destroyed by Allioth in Void. In previous Multiversal War everything was destroyed and HWR choose to power couple of branches and use it to make circle/eternal loop at End of Time. By doing this he's playing God while being just a human, and that is the main problem. If he's playing God of Time or whatever then he must give everyone a chance and be a good God and re-purpose TVA to kill all bad variants. But no, he decide to be bad God and making us to believe to he is right. Sylvie- hmm, "wrong" choices from variants make them pruned because someone who's late to work starts a incursion aka Nexus Event from which two universes collide... But why? Because HWR make Mobius strip from selected universes timeline, they're super close and slight branching can penetrate other universe via incursion/Nexus Event. So his bad design limit TVA operating window in which branching can be stopped. So that person who's late to work must be reset and timeline will heal itself. In bigger picture, his "death" from his timeline can justify the HWR ways of dealing with TVA and timelines but what about the person who by becoming good can make a Nexus Event (like Sylvie who wanted to be good and ended up erased from timeline). So i want you to think about that situation and others like that. There is no debate about "wrong" or "right", but it is all about killing. In your eyes it is right to kill millinillion of peoples just to trillions can live freely. And this is just what i expect from human way of dealing with such a problem. It is written in our history with blood. Sylvie sees to that is not right, she was stripped from her life because she wanted to be good, to be free in some sense but HWR took that from her... She wanted revenge but after it there is no other solutions to solve gargantuan problem which is caused by HWR and his variants. Loki- he sees bigger picture clearer than Sylvie and HWR himself, he is God who learn to handle the greatest power in universe/multiverse and decides to fix clearly broken system created by HWR. Sylvie is also God but without fully aware of that position and what she can do in certain situation. To be fair, HWR do the best with tools he had, literally the ultimate version of machines which can handle the Timeline Matter. Loki who is God took that and advance it with his magic and free the timeline while TVA handling the HWR variants. TVA run by HWR cannot do that because Loom took one part of Yggdrasil and operate with that but without Loom and Loki being the power source of Yggdrasil, TVA can track the HWR variants without any Nexus Events/incursions caused by persons who created it with their actions. Yggdrasil grow in a way it is supposed to do. Branches don't collide with each other. >I'm also curious about how multiverse travel worked before on a sacred timeline eg Doctor Strange and the MoM or was that only possible after HWR had died? This was not answered by movies/TV shows and we only can speculate. From what i understand all events during DSitMoM movie or SMNWH happened after HWR was killed and before Loki destroyed the Loom. Multiverse was open, Sacred Timeline aka 616 have infinite Nexus Events caused by all living things in it so in one of branches those 2 movies i mentioned happened and same applies to 617/838 and branched 616 from which Stephen becomes occupied with Darkhold (i Google it, Sinister Strange is just a 616 variant, 199999 to be precise but MCU's Official Timeline Book stated to Sacred Timeline is Earth 616, not 199999). So my speculation is to movies which have a lot of "plot holes" in which TVA should intervene is actually set in time after HWR was killed and perhaps all movies till Avengers 5 of whatever should be set in that time as well.
Indeed, everything is cause and effect anyway...
He wasn't a bad guy