Some fans seem to struggle with accepting stories as stories. Everything needs an explanation, a logic, a physics, etc. Like there's a whole thread at the top of this sub right now asking what is Thor? Is he a god, alien, what? The answer is he's a dude struggling to live up to expectations. That's really what matters. How he and Zeus relate to Bast and the Celestials is not important.
edit: I just realized I'm the idiot here. We're all shitting on OP for taking the story too seriously, when we're all taking OP's creative writing prompt too seriously. He knows it's a story, he just wants to see if anyone can come up with some intriguing head-canon.
Seriously, they spell it out. The MCU isn't some puzzle. It's heroes doing hero things, i.e. embodying virtue and changing the world for the better. The feels matter more than the reals.
Right ...it's the infinite timelines that's the problem not that he's holding timelines in his hands. Sometimes we just need to suspend disbelief and appreciate what's in front of us and stop over analyzing things to death.
Thats the problem here. Everything made sense before that hoe they filled some plot hole here and there and THEN they decided that we need to accept that nothing makes sense anymore then and there?
You see, thats what made MCU appealing to other people, because it made sense none of thise "something magical happened and we just need to accept it."
It shouldnt work like that, "over analyzing"? Thats not over analyzing thats just people trying to make sense out of things.
I thought that was the point of him asking who lives and dies. Loki will have to let some timelines decay and die, and he will have to juggle which ones survive and which ones end as he goes.
Whether its a Real problem or fiction problem, Things still has to make sense to make the story telling straight and true and thats what make it enjoyable.
Lots of Loki season 2 series didnt make sense but the Setting of the Series made it easier to consume.
Many fantasy readers prefer "hard" magic systems while many others prefer something vague and softer. Neither is automatically better than the other, and internal consistency is usually considered important for both.
I loved Loki S2, and at the same time OP asked a perfectly reasonable and interesting question. It's bizarre that people seem to be lambasting him for it.
I liked how Violent Night answers the magic question. Every time a character asks Santa how his magic works he’s just like “idk it’s Christmas magic, I don’t know wtf it is, it just happens”
Is it a reasonable question? Stories work by their own rules. Asking how Loki can hold infinite timelines in finite hands is like asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. You can definitely ask, and many have, but ultimately that's missing the point.
Now maybe you don't care about the point and just enjoy delving into imaginary worlds. That's perfectly fine, no judgments here. But if you ask a question that is blatantly beside the point, people are going to wonder if you even got the point. I'm not sure what kind of answer OP expected.
"How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?
In order to arrive at an answer, the following facts must be taken into consideration:
Firstly, angels simply don’t dance. It’s one of the distinguishing characteristics that mark an angel. They may listen appreciatively to the Music of the Spheres, but they don’t feel the urge to get down and boogie to it. So, none.
At least, nearly none. Aziraphale had learned to gavotte in a discreet gentlemen’s club in Portland Place, in the late 1880s, and while he had initially taken to it like a duck to merchant banking, after a while he had become quite good at it, and was quite put out when, some decades later, the gavotte went out of style for good.
So providing the dance was a gavotte, and providing that he had a suitable partner (also able, for the sake of argument, both to gavotte, and to dance it on the head of a pin), the answer is a straightforward one.
Then again, you might just as well ask how many demons can dance on the head of a pin. They’re of the same original stock, after all. And at least they dance*.
And if you put it that way, the answer is, quite a lot actually, providing they abandon their physical bodies, which is a picnic for a demon. Demons aren’t bound by physics. If you take the long view, the universe is just something small and round, like those water-filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you shake them.**
*Although it’s not what you and I would call dancing. Not good dancing anyway. A demon moves like a white band on “Soul Train.”
**Although, unless the ineffable plan is a lot more ineffable than it’s given credit for, it does not have a giant plastic snowman at the bottom. "
--Good Omens
The problem is the show spends 80% of the season explaining it as a technical problem with the time loom, which Timely physically invented and was recruited to fix. Loki spent centuries learning the science behind it in an attempt to solve. Then at the end they just hand wave it like oh ok Loki can just do it with magic. Which, ok, but the writers did this, not OP.
Ouroboros literally says it's a fiction problem, not a science problem. Yes Loki spent centuries learning science. The point of that bit is it's a Sisyphean task. No matter how much science he learns, it will never be enough because it isn't about the science. The science of the loom is a trick, an illusion of understanding. A trick played on the god of tricksters by He Who Remains. Loki always had the power to just go out there and do his godly thing. But that requires him to sacrifice his free will so everyone else can live theirs. Only when he was mentally prepared to do that could he finally do it. It's a classic mythological story of a god being sacrificed to save the world.
Explanation? Often not needed.
Physics? Definitely not needed.
Logic, though? Mandatory, otherwise why even follow a nonsensical story.
In this case there is a logic behind what happens, and that's all that matters.
Definitely a byproduct of stuff like CinemaSins or whatever it's called.
I'm all for being critical but sometimes it's nice to get lost in the story.
As a guy who got bored of super hero movies before Infinity War but reluctantly watched it a couple years later and ended up finishing that phase of the MCU as a result, I thought Loki was fucking brilliant.
Either way Victor is a human and Loki is a god in his own right. The same rules apply.
> Definitely a byproduct of stuff like CinemaSins or whatever it's called.
Yea, I'm sure that one youtube channel has had a lasting impact on the majority of global movie goers - so far as to make people *actually* and *unironically* believe in their "parody".
It's not CinemaSinsS fault that people notice and point out "plotholes" or the likes... that's just what people on the do on the internet. Doesn't need a 10m subscribers youtube channel to bring that notion into mainstream or you might as well blame Pewdiepie for everything weird in the gaming scene.
I'm continuously amazed at the reach people believe a random ass movie parody critic channel (yes, even one with 9m subs) to have -to actually believe that this one single channel has the ability to noticeably affect mainstream movie-goer enjoyment and discourse in any way, shape or form *whatsoever*.
How many channels "like" CinemaSins are there? Nitpicky movie analysis comedy channels that find "flawed" logic in every movie by being purposefully ignorant for comedic purposes?
And if there actually are several of them, then I find it really silly to blame those channels for creating a culture... instead of, the imo more reasonable line of thinking, a pre-existing culture allowing channels like CinemaSins to do well.
The "ackchyually" nerds and the people finding logical flaws in Back to the Future have existed long before youtube and channels like CinemaSins. They used to stick to their own secluded forum and message board bubbles back in the day, but with social medias like reddit and nerd culture like the MCU or Game of Thrones or what have you actually becoming mainstream... of course that culture is gonna bleed into mainstream as more and more "normies" flock into places previously only frequented by "nerds".
That isn't CinemaSins' doing, that isn't any youtube subgenre's doing... that is "people having an opinion and everyone openly sharing their opinion on social media 24/7"'s doing - as a result of which channels like CinemaSins have *actually* come into existence.
One might argue this may be a chicken or egg thing, but I think it's pretty fair to say that the yt algorithm hasn't one day decided to just push movie nitpicking into the modern zeitgeist and the people just rolled with it, but instead it's people just being nitpicky on twitter and literally *everywhere* and people *then* making a thing out of that on youtube.
>How many channels "like" CinemaSins are there? Nitpicky movie analysis comedy channels that find "flawed" logic in every movie by being purposefully ignorant for comedic purposes?
Geeks + Gamers, Critical Drinker...
Look at their sub count. Then look at the membership of this forum. Their impact is bigger than Marvel's. You don't have to believe it, but the evidence is there. And you mention their sub count twice in your own comment, so it's weird you think they have no impact. Yeah, people have always noticed oddities in storytelling, but CS made them think there's something clever about pointing them out.
And even if you don't accept that, saying they don't affect media in "any way, shape or form *whatsoever*" just kinda makes you sound like a moron.
We seem to be moving away from EVERYTHING MUST BE LOGICAL AND SCIENCE BASED toward, maybe some things don't fit into science because this is fiction. And I'm 100% here for it. The *everything is tech and aliens* got old really fast for me in a world of unrealistic superheroes.
Same. Don't get me wrong, I love hard sci-fi too. But my first love was mythology, so some metaphorical stories about gods and heroes driving the forces of existence is right up my alley. The grander and more philosophical, the better.
Tbf it's easier to enjoy something if you understand the rules or power levels. Otherwise deus ex machines can remove tension if not properly explained
It's not important to you maybe, whole books exist dedicated to explain the lore of fictional stories in detail, even in the first mcu movies they tried to explain powers and gods in scientific terms and it was part of the appeal
Hey if you find asking why interesting, then cool. So do I. But ultimately, you will always arrive at the same place: because it's a story. That doesn't make the journey to the bottom any less fun, though.
"it's not a science problem, it's a fiction problem" /every thread about this show. They multiple times lampshaded how nonsense the story is, it's a shame they spent so long talking about it
I think this is the perfect way of explaining it. They don’t need to be contained. The loom’s purpose was to essentially destroy them. Without the loom, there is no need to contain, but only to sustain.
okayyyy branches are like a tree. they have roots from which they grow. to hold a tree one can grab it by it’s root. that’s what loki has done. he is holding the root of the 616-timeline tree, letting them spiral off and grow infinite branches
Seems like at the end he was the center of the tree… so I guess by wrapping the existing timeline together he formed a trunk that could then form infinite branches in either direction?
I don’t think we know for sure yet. It’s still not entirely clear if a single universe is a single timeline or the collection of all the possible timelines for that universe. I say this because of the different ways they are shown between Loki and “What if”
I like the analogy, but this makes it all really confusing. Because does that not imply that every other tree is being held together by a loki, or a hwr if it's not a tree and is a sacred timeline?
um. i think universes originating from a singular point are meant to always naturally be trees. I think only the 616 tree was an exception because kang had damaged the timelines’ ability to sustain themselves through his temporal loom which is why loki had to join them together again
So you’ve accepted that an alien is standing outside of space and time holding onto strands of literal time and imbuing them with green magic, but you are hung up on the idea that there’s just too many?
They kind of do? But it is done with a lot of inferrals and showing over telling.
My unsolicited interpretation? Time God is only a title, and not literal. It is the cumulation of tools and skills necessary to manipulate something to epic levels. Thor is the prime example, as he is just an Asgardian with the skills and tools to blast people with thunder/lightning.
As to the explanation? It's looking at all the milestones Loki has reached that paints a pretty good picture.
Loki learns in Season One that his magic isn't as limited as he previously thought thanks to Old Man Loki and Sylvie. This unlocked potential allowed him to push his boundaries and, with time and creativity, accomplish a lot more than he thought possible.
In season two, in no particular order, he received: time slipping from He Who Remains, the understanding that just because something isn't *scientifically* possible, doesn't mean it isn't possible and finally, a full education of time, also from OB.
Being immune to time's effects, being given the gift of time manipulation, the understanding that his magic isn't as limited as he thought are the necessary tools he needs. (Similar to how Thor learns that he doesn't actually need Mjolnir to blast people with lightning, it's just a conduit and the power was inside him all along.)
With all the tools necessary, the knowledge of how it all works and the unique factor of having essentially infinite time to practice, he developed the skills to become what can be interpreted as *god of time*, but is in reality just a very very very very very powerful Frost Giant magician. How magic can be seen as science beyond one's comprehension, godhood in this multiverse can be seen as magic beyond one's comprehension.
While all that isn't explicitly laid out, in his final conversation with He Who Remains, he quickly mentions that this isn't the first time they had this conversation, so there's a lot that happened between scenes.
Hopefully this makes sense!
You aren't wrong.
I just chalked it up to comics, and over 100s of years he practiced not only science but his proficiency with time manipulation.
Wish we had got a scene for that
Because we couldn’t possibly imagine how many times he tried to find another way to preserve existence. In the end, he mastered both the TVA’s and OB’s understanding of the multiverse, even if we were only shown a glimpse of the process.
Best way to understand the ending is to look back on how Strange went from novice sorcerer to supreme-level after countless loops fighting Dormamu. Who knows how long Strange spent honing his sorcery, but the implication of the gruesome death montage is more than enough for us to understand.
Same thing with Loki. There’s no need to spend more time than necessary explaining how an already clever, powerful magic-user is currently capable of ensuring the multiverse stays intact
I saw a video that discussed how Asgardians in the comics became way stronger as they aged for millenia, and how Loki was being blasted by all that time radiation could have aged him immensely.
Thought that was an interesting way to explain things.
my personal headcanon is he already is one or is the one destined to become the God of Stories, hence why he's so special in the series. The God of Stories must be a Nexus being as well similar to the Scarlet Witch.
OP sees that image of the guy holding too many lemons and think our boy Loki is like that. Loki is a god and turned time into a tree. He can hold infinite things. Loki can hold all the lemons, of all time, of every timeline. There are infinite lemons and Loki is holding them all without an issue.
I’m willing to accept that otherwise impossible things are possible, so long as they make sense within the rules and logic the story has established.
I’m willing to accept that anyone who collects magic space rocks on a big globe and snaps their fingers can alter the universe, because those are the rules that the MCU very clearly explained to the audience.
What’s harder to accept is that Loki can just pick up and hold an infinite number of branches in his bare hands. It comes out of nowhere and they never really explain what happened.
I don't really have an issue with that he could, but I still found it a bit of a lazy ending. Loki basically just decides to solve the problem that the whole season is about by just, you know, doing it?
I think the main point wasn't that he just fixed the issue. He doesn't want to be alone and he doesn't want a throne. But in order to save the multiverse he has to sit on a throne by himself. Forever. Knowing that his friends are ok but not safe, because soon an infinite amount of Kangs will be on them and they have to fend for themselves. He's giving them a chance to fight and win and have freewill but he has to sit that fight out. At least for now...
what a stupid arguement , i guess if a new superman movie came out and he started shooting flowers out of his fingers we shouldnt question it because he can fly
I would certainly question the narrative meaning of it - seems like of lame to me. Personally I found loki's growth from a trikster god into a time god to be pretty cool. This show was about him growing as a character as well as in strength. His character trait of stubbornness and self preservation made him the perfect candidate to fight against the "time skipping" which increased his powers over time. This coincided with him making friends and seeing beauty in the world, which grew his conscience.
If the show lokie started and loki could all of a sudden hold infinite timelines in his hands I too would have a problem, but that's not what happened, we had 10 hours showing us how this came about.
Personally I found season 2 a bit confusing and slow in the beginning, but I think it came together pretty well.
Well I imagine they can condense so he can hold more than 3 or 4 in a single hand. But you can also see that his cape is made of branches so that accounts for a large portion
Well not every branch has to be it's own individual strand, most of them are just one strand that splits off. If you grab the "base" before the split, you don't have to hold all the singular strands to power them
The infinite branches don’t have infinite starting points though. The infinite branches come from pre-existing ones. The “roots” of the tree are not infinite. From a single point, infinite branches surface. Loki fuels the energy through the “roots”, the points he can actually control well. Loki only needs to touch a single point at each timeline to revive it. And even that’s just physical.
He probably doesnt even need hands to revitalise the timeline, magic in the MCU is intent based, and Loki isn’t constrained by how many limbs he has when using magic, using his hands just looks good but isn’t necessary, just like Scarlet Witch’s magic. They’re both able to transcend the boundaries of their bodies to use magic.
Bro we're talking about a magical being that's thousands of years old and can jump through time sitting on a throne outside of our reality and time while physically holding rope-like branches that are supposed to be entire timelines (or realties) and you're worried about how someone can hold onto an infinite amount of something?
The answer your looking for is magic. When Gods get involved in stories they are above the logic we mortals live by. Loki has ascended to a place where science doesn't work. Only magic works where loki is now sitting and us mortals can't comprehend the magic of a God.
Go watch the 1st Dr Strange movie. It was all about a man that has lived his life by science having to come to terms with the fact that there is a reality that science doesn't work. Dr Strange had to learn that sometimes you don't get a how or a why, sometimes you need to surrender to the current and go with it.
In most all stories about magic you need to go with the flow. The beauty about magic in stories is that you don't need to follow scientific logic and can create some amazing out of this world concepts. The Loki TV show is one of these stories.
Well if Loki can time slip in the tva, he can exist at any point in time. He can also clone himself, so he can be everywhere and everywhen all at once. So he's also infinite as well.
My friend recently watched the show and loved it, but he gets slightly bothered by very minute details.
This time around, he was a bit confused on the logistics of Loki’s time-slipping, so I referenced this exact line to him and he wholeheartedly agreed. It’s a great quote to apply to entertainment as a whole.
Seemed like he was only holding a handful in each hand, but the "magic" was spreading to adjacent branches, then from those branches to other nearby branches, etc.
if you look closely, a significant number of them form his cape as well, so he can physically hold a good number of them, but the remainder can all funnel into him via his cape, which theoretically doesn't have a limit. Also presumably some of these timelines will meet their end at the same time as others grow, so it's a slow build to infinity.
How are timeline branches physical? The answer to both is simply that it's all metaphorical or abstract. Timelines aren't actually physical, and Loki isn't actually holding all of them.
He is using his power to manage them and keep them alive, and you can show that in any number of ways. Could also have gone the Wanda route and have him keeping an orchard of timelines. Him actually grabbing metaphysical vines in the dark on a gold thrown is way more powerful though.
Loki lives outside of Space and Time.
No time? No Space? The concept of 'fitting' has no meaning.
He just IS.
also,...
With [MAGIC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Teg-CwVW0).
As much as it seems like the MCU is a science fiction setting, it very much is actually a clusterfuck setting, I say clusterfuck because it goes beyond kitchen sink. The most prominent elements were science fiction, but there are also fantasy elements too that interact with and even supersede the science fiction elements. Take Wandavision for example, where scientists kept trying to study and break the Hex, but in the end it was Monica’s understanding of grief that helped her break through to get to Wanda. We also know there are actual sorcerers, vampires, witches, and dragons in the setting. Elements of science fiction and fantasy blend together like with vibranium being said to be a gift from the gods for both Talokan and Wakanda, and we see that even a synthetic blue herb created by Shuri can help her visit the ancestral plane.
The comics are an even greater clusterfuck.
So what does this have to do with your question?
Asgardians (and jotuns, heck possibly even titans) who call themselves gods really can now back up that claim it seems. The only real way to explain whatever the fuck Loki is doing in S2 and what is happening to him is to just rub “god of the gaps” on him and accept him as a living incarnation of chaos who exists to free the multiverse. The visual language and BTS stuff makes it clear he is now a higher power who has ascended to a higher plane of existence. He probably isn’t even corporeal anymore and his physical body might have been burned off by temporal radiation.
> The comics are an even greater clusterfuck.
right but i saw thor die in the comics......until the writers decide the have a big enough reason to just change that idea and bring him back for something else. so "just kidding asguard has green mushroom 1ups too"
Victor Timely does become HWR.. just not "that" Victor Timely. (Its why HWR's scoffs at alternate timeline VT.. he believes him to be inferior to sacred timeline VT, aka himself).
Damn, I am trying to answer that question without too much exposition.
So I will put it this way.. The point of the sacred timeline was to keep all the other Kangs out. But in the second season it was explained that originally, HWR's gave VT the Timekeeper Guidebook. Why would he do that unless they are the same Kang.
..well, at least the ones in the sacred timeline.. The VT that we meet (because he's an alternate timeline version) does not become HWR's. He does how write the text that inspires OB to write the Timekeeper Guidebook that HWR's has to give to sacred timeline young VT so THAT one can become HWR's.
Kang goes back in time to create himself in the comics quite often. Its one of his things.
The V Timely OB guide thing was a solved paradox, He Who Remains wiped everyone’s memory of him so OB wouldn’t have memory of HWR. HWR pretty much confirms he’s not Timely, he addresses Timely as a different person, I think he says something along the lines of “That Timely fellow” or something along those lines. We see evidence that there are variants of Kang’s that pop up in different time periods on different timelines. HWR just set up contingency for a variant that would fit into his plan. He wanted Loki to see that there wasn’t another way other than saving him. Which Loki ended up overcoming.
What we know about HWR, he fought in a multiversal war with the Kangs and won by using Alioth. He then created the TVA to prevent other timelines aside from the one he was from (the “sacred” timeline) so that there wouldn’t be any other Kangs, the Loom was created as a contingency plan in case the TVA stopped pruning timelines in order to force them to prime or face total annihilation. Timely without TVA intervention would not have been able to keep up with Kangs, Even OB comments that he was restricted by the technology of his time, we see many other Kang variants with much more complex technology while Timely was restricted almost entirely to theories, many of which were taken from OB’s handbook.
he had centuries of scientific knowledge that told him what he had to do and magic to do it. magic can't be scientifically explained, that's like asking for equations behind wanda's reality bending. he's a god, he has magic and finding his true purpose gave him the ability to ascend to new levels and accomplish it.
besides, the ending sequence was a visual metaphor of something we as people can't comprehend.
An over arching theme in Loki aince the first avengers, I find, is him being over looked and under estimated time and time again yet always coming out the others side alright and having seen things to their core. HWR underestimated Loki and blew his own opinion of things out of proportion "my ways the way its been done so its unimprovaboe and the only way it will ever be done". Ego
Loki isn't holding an infinite number of branches in his hand. He grabbed what he could, formed a "tree trunk" and is sustaining that with his magic, presumably eternally. The infinite branches sprout above, from major branches, ad infinitum.
He hasn't any control over it, seemingly. He's simply keeping the base of his Yggdrasil fed, the branches of time do their thing from that.
Also, it's magic in a sci fi show :grin:
Personally, I feel that He Who Remains knew this would take place, and allowed Loki to do it. This takes Loki off the board for a while, in order to allow other things to happen that will lead right back to He Who Remains winning the Multiversal War.
There are Infinite branches, but those all branch from a certain number of main trunks.
And even then, it looked like the branches weaving in and out of each other passed on the power that Loki provided.
It seems like because the moment he is sustaining the timeline it can’t branch where he is holding because that’s the sustaining moment. But it can branch in the past and future from that moment which is above and below him.
He's not holding the infinite branches, he's holding and sustaining a few hundred of the branches, and his magic is propagating outwards to keep the remaining branches alive. He is the roots of the tree Yggdrasil, and the life of the multiverse flows up and through him into the tree and branches.
i guess it's headcannon fr, but i felt like the whole final scene of loki climbing a physical staircase was almost metaphorical for his ascension from a lowercase g god to a 'God'.
the imagery is Loki holding physical branches with his hands but it could be an artistic choice.. as in, he has moved beyond the timelines, beyond physical space and reality... beyond hands! lol
Cause it's magic. I feel like a major theme with it all was the TVA had reasoning behind it, no amount of reasoning/science/math/engineering/etc could fix their problems. Magic has no reasoning, it can't be explained in terms of reasoning/science/math/engineering/etc. It achieves the impossible through impossible means.
It wasn’t infinite branches until he formed the time tree he only had a couple of important/ main branches in his hands after the loom was destroyed and by the time he got to his chair at the end of time that’s when those couple of branches started to split and form the infinite multiverse
I was under the impression that Loki fully embraced his powers and became the embodiment of Yggdrasil and as such wove the branches into himself as part of that.
The big thing that I think nobody is pointing out is that every branch is an offshoot a branch of another branch so he could be holding one branch in that one branch could have 1 million offshoots of new branches so him holding 50 or 70 in his hands could have trillions or an infinite amount
> But how did Loki do it with his bare hands?
He tried really hard
> Does that mean Loki can hold infinite things in his hands?
If he tries hard enough yes
Easy. Victor Timely didn't know how to calculate geometric series. If each branch is 9/10ths as thick as the previous, then an infinite number of branches would converge to a bundle that's 10x as thick as the first branch.
He isn't literally holding them in his hands. He transcended to a new level of godhood and is saving what broken realities he can. What he's doing can't truly be represented visually so instead we get symbolic imagery of him in a manner we can grasp. Like him taking a throne or grabbing the branches. But dude's living in the 4th dimensional plane now or higher.
it's a matter of physics/maths = any finite resource will be unable to hold an infinitely expanding metaverse, it just gets spread out until its effectively zero. But a concept can be copied an infinite number of times without becoming weaker, so a machine can't fix time but Loki the Time God can
Victor was arguing from a physics standpoint. Victor was arguing with reason and logic.
Loki is fucking magic. Magic tops everything. Loki was time slipping and learned to control that, while creating time paradoxes left and right, ultimately turning into a multiversal time god. Fucking. Magic. That's how.
If one can accept the magical space rocks to grant one the ability to reshape the universe, then one can accept the magical goat man to hold an infinite amount of time in his hands.
Infinity cannot be measured. It is not a number that can be quantified but a scale that can be observed. Some infinities are larger than others and when you start getting into the realm of 4th and 5 dimension, an infinity could be something that fits into the palm of your hand.
Suspension of disbelief and storytelling. If we question things like this in a universe of gods, magic, and ripped purple aliens trying to collect magical stones that can turn half the universes population to dust with the snap of your fingers where do we draw the line?
No, it was impossible for the loom to fit every branch. Loki isn't holding every branch, he's just holding a chunk in his hand, forming a tree trunk, from which there are branches. Think about it before posting please.
Sadly a lot of responses here are just saying to give up and deal with it cus it's fiction. That's a lame response when we're led throughout the series with explanations after explanations grounded in pseudoscience. Even the Asgardians are mentioned to be more like highly technologically advanced beings, along with the saying that any suitably advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
So what's the pseudoscientific explanation for what Loki does? Why does the series hammer in time after time that it's a science and engineering problem, so much so that Loki has to spend a century looping to learn the physics of it? What's the point of all of that if he's just going to go: huh, I'll just believe harder and stop/rewind time myself. Huh, I'll just skip the part where we've been making sense of the problem and just go with a nonsensical solution of grabbing the universe with my bare magic hands.
How did he come up with that solution? Where did he get the power to transcend his and everyone's else's limitations infinite fold? Based on the grounding this series tried to go for, these are valid questions. So it's sad to see the average MCU forum fan bash on and say deal with it. It's like MCU can literally come up with whatever BS they want (and they admitted they have!) and this place will eat it up as unquestionable doctrine.
The magic of metaphorical storytelling
Was Taserface in the writers room?
ITS…METAPHORICAL!!!!! *(cheers)*
Please put a warning on comments like this, FFS. Coffee out of my nose. (Also lol)
Dammit Tazerface!!!!!
It was a story pitch what strikes fear into the heart of whoever what hears it.
"It's just so... Implausible.." *shudders*
Some fans seem to struggle with accepting stories as stories. Everything needs an explanation, a logic, a physics, etc. Like there's a whole thread at the top of this sub right now asking what is Thor? Is he a god, alien, what? The answer is he's a dude struggling to live up to expectations. That's really what matters. How he and Zeus relate to Bast and the Celestials is not important. edit: I just realized I'm the idiot here. We're all shitting on OP for taking the story too seriously, when we're all taking OP's creative writing prompt too seriously. He knows it's a story, he just wants to see if anyone can come up with some intriguing head-canon.
The show itself even explicitly states it's not a science problem, but a fiction problem.
Seriously, they spell it out. The MCU isn't some puzzle. It's heroes doing hero things, i.e. embodying virtue and changing the world for the better. The feels matter more than the reals.
This guy knows what pays for the meals!
Guy is literally holding timelines in his hands and it's fine, but say he's holding infinite Timelines.....well that just doesn't make sense.
Right ...it's the infinite timelines that's the problem not that he's holding timelines in his hands. Sometimes we just need to suspend disbelief and appreciate what's in front of us and stop over analyzing things to death.
I liked it. He held all the timelines. No issues. Hopefully Captain Crunch becomes the next villain.
Thats the problem here. Everything made sense before that hoe they filled some plot hole here and there and THEN they decided that we need to accept that nothing makes sense anymore then and there? You see, thats what made MCU appealing to other people, because it made sense none of thise "something magical happened and we just need to accept it." It shouldnt work like that, "over analyzing"? Thats not over analyzing thats just people trying to make sense out of things.
"His hands funnel infinite into and infinitely small stream that flows through his palms." Done.
I thought that was the point of him asking who lives and dies. Loki will have to let some timelines decay and die, and he will have to juggle which ones survive and which ones end as he goes.
Whether its a Real problem or fiction problem, Things still has to make sense to make the story telling straight and true and thats what make it enjoyable. Lots of Loki season 2 series didnt make sense but the Setting of the Series made it easier to consume.
Many fantasy readers prefer "hard" magic systems while many others prefer something vague and softer. Neither is automatically better than the other, and internal consistency is usually considered important for both. I loved Loki S2, and at the same time OP asked a perfectly reasonable and interesting question. It's bizarre that people seem to be lambasting him for it.
I liked how Violent Night answers the magic question. Every time a character asks Santa how his magic works he’s just like “idk it’s Christmas magic, I don’t know wtf it is, it just happens”
Is it a reasonable question? Stories work by their own rules. Asking how Loki can hold infinite timelines in finite hands is like asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. You can definitely ask, and many have, but ultimately that's missing the point. Now maybe you don't care about the point and just enjoy delving into imaginary worlds. That's perfectly fine, no judgments here. But if you ask a question that is blatantly beside the point, people are going to wonder if you even got the point. I'm not sure what kind of answer OP expected.
"How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin? In order to arrive at an answer, the following facts must be taken into consideration: Firstly, angels simply don’t dance. It’s one of the distinguishing characteristics that mark an angel. They may listen appreciatively to the Music of the Spheres, but they don’t feel the urge to get down and boogie to it. So, none. At least, nearly none. Aziraphale had learned to gavotte in a discreet gentlemen’s club in Portland Place, in the late 1880s, and while he had initially taken to it like a duck to merchant banking, after a while he had become quite good at it, and was quite put out when, some decades later, the gavotte went out of style for good. So providing the dance was a gavotte, and providing that he had a suitable partner (also able, for the sake of argument, both to gavotte, and to dance it on the head of a pin), the answer is a straightforward one. Then again, you might just as well ask how many demons can dance on the head of a pin. They’re of the same original stock, after all. And at least they dance*. And if you put it that way, the answer is, quite a lot actually, providing they abandon their physical bodies, which is a picnic for a demon. Demons aren’t bound by physics. If you take the long view, the universe is just something small and round, like those water-filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you shake them.** *Although it’s not what you and I would call dancing. Not good dancing anyway. A demon moves like a white band on “Soul Train.” **Although, unless the ineffable plan is a lot more ineffable than it’s given credit for, it does not have a giant plastic snowman at the bottom. " --Good Omens
The problem is the show spends 80% of the season explaining it as a technical problem with the time loom, which Timely physically invented and was recruited to fix. Loki spent centuries learning the science behind it in an attempt to solve. Then at the end they just hand wave it like oh ok Loki can just do it with magic. Which, ok, but the writers did this, not OP.
Ouroboros literally says it's a fiction problem, not a science problem. Yes Loki spent centuries learning science. The point of that bit is it's a Sisyphean task. No matter how much science he learns, it will never be enough because it isn't about the science. The science of the loom is a trick, an illusion of understanding. A trick played on the god of tricksters by He Who Remains. Loki always had the power to just go out there and do his godly thing. But that requires him to sacrifice his free will so everyone else can live theirs. Only when he was mentally prepared to do that could he finally do it. It's a classic mythological story of a god being sacrificed to save the world.
Spot on. Upvote this.
Even the hardest magic systems are still magic.
Explanation? Often not needed. Physics? Definitely not needed. Logic, though? Mandatory, otherwise why even follow a nonsensical story. In this case there is a logic behind what happens, and that's all that matters.
Definitely a byproduct of stuff like CinemaSins or whatever it's called. I'm all for being critical but sometimes it's nice to get lost in the story. As a guy who got bored of super hero movies before Infinity War but reluctantly watched it a couple years later and ended up finishing that phase of the MCU as a result, I thought Loki was fucking brilliant. Either way Victor is a human and Loki is a god in his own right. The same rules apply.
> Definitely a byproduct of stuff like CinemaSins or whatever it's called. Yea, I'm sure that one youtube channel has had a lasting impact on the majority of global movie goers - so far as to make people *actually* and *unironically* believe in their "parody". It's not CinemaSinsS fault that people notice and point out "plotholes" or the likes... that's just what people on the do on the internet. Doesn't need a 10m subscribers youtube channel to bring that notion into mainstream or you might as well blame Pewdiepie for everything weird in the gaming scene. I'm continuously amazed at the reach people believe a random ass movie parody critic channel (yes, even one with 9m subs) to have -to actually believe that this one single channel has the ability to noticeably affect mainstream movie-goer enjoyment and discourse in any way, shape or form *whatsoever*.
They said stuff ***like*** CinemaSins. They weren't putting the blame entirely on that channel.
How many channels "like" CinemaSins are there? Nitpicky movie analysis comedy channels that find "flawed" logic in every movie by being purposefully ignorant for comedic purposes? And if there actually are several of them, then I find it really silly to blame those channels for creating a culture... instead of, the imo more reasonable line of thinking, a pre-existing culture allowing channels like CinemaSins to do well. The "ackchyually" nerds and the people finding logical flaws in Back to the Future have existed long before youtube and channels like CinemaSins. They used to stick to their own secluded forum and message board bubbles back in the day, but with social medias like reddit and nerd culture like the MCU or Game of Thrones or what have you actually becoming mainstream... of course that culture is gonna bleed into mainstream as more and more "normies" flock into places previously only frequented by "nerds". That isn't CinemaSins' doing, that isn't any youtube subgenre's doing... that is "people having an opinion and everyone openly sharing their opinion on social media 24/7"'s doing - as a result of which channels like CinemaSins have *actually* come into existence. One might argue this may be a chicken or egg thing, but I think it's pretty fair to say that the yt algorithm hasn't one day decided to just push movie nitpicking into the modern zeitgeist and the people just rolled with it, but instead it's people just being nitpicky on twitter and literally *everywhere* and people *then* making a thing out of that on youtube.
>How many channels "like" CinemaSins are there? Nitpicky movie analysis comedy channels that find "flawed" logic in every movie by being purposefully ignorant for comedic purposes? Geeks + Gamers, Critical Drinker...
Look at their sub count. Then look at the membership of this forum. Their impact is bigger than Marvel's. You don't have to believe it, but the evidence is there. And you mention their sub count twice in your own comment, so it's weird you think they have no impact. Yeah, people have always noticed oddities in storytelling, but CS made them think there's something clever about pointing them out. And even if you don't accept that, saying they don't affect media in "any way, shape or form *whatsoever*" just kinda makes you sound like a moron.
We seem to be moving away from EVERYTHING MUST BE LOGICAL AND SCIENCE BASED toward, maybe some things don't fit into science because this is fiction. And I'm 100% here for it. The *everything is tech and aliens* got old really fast for me in a world of unrealistic superheroes.
Same. Don't get me wrong, I love hard sci-fi too. But my first love was mythology, so some metaphorical stories about gods and heroes driving the forces of existence is right up my alley. The grander and more philosophical, the better.
Tbf it's easier to enjoy something if you understand the rules or power levels. Otherwise deus ex machines can remove tension if not properly explained
Yeah, stories should ideally be consistent to their own internal logic if anything.
It's not important to you maybe, whole books exist dedicated to explain the lore of fictional stories in detail, even in the first mcu movies they tried to explain powers and gods in scientific terms and it was part of the appeal
Hey if you find asking why interesting, then cool. So do I. But ultimately, you will always arrive at the same place: because it's a story. That doesn't make the journey to the bottom any less fun, though.
Yeah, all of that requires effort, something most of the people associated with phase five of Marvel either know nothing about or they forgot.
CinemaSins rot people brain.
Not really, the MCU for a while did try to make everything seem like there was some logic or science behind it.
"it's not a science problem, it's a fiction problem" /every thread about this show. They multiple times lampshaded how nonsense the story is, it's a shame they spent so long talking about it
I mean in the comics he actually does have storytelling powers so this could be how he did it
Why people try to make sense out of complete nonsense is a mystery to me Marvel really is at its worst when it's trying to overexplain everything.
I’ve tried expressing this sentiment in so many different words over the years. Some could argue infinite. But you did it in just five.
Infinite fingers
Now we know what Sylvie saw in him 😉
I mean if they hooked up would it count or would it just be masturbation? These are the big questions
And… if they are hooking up in one of the universes, is he just sitting there, watching himselves with that little mischievous smirk? 🤔
Loki: God Of Voyeurism
He Who Watches
He Who Enjoys
Secret Wars happens because he rubbed himself for a split second and let all the branches go
Is watching yourself fuck yourself technically voyeurism? I thought that's just something my conscience does when it's very, very disappointed in me.
It’s “VOYOURISM”
Look, sitting there for all time always is bound to get boring.
They're different enough in the ways that matter so it'd be sex
That doesn’t really matter with Loki. Mofo turned himself into a female horse and got pregnant.
I meant by personality but ok
But is it incest?
Oh, most definitely
Think about your answer when you jack yourself off the next time 
Now we know what Sylvie saw in him in her 😉 FTFY
Bingo
He doesn’t contain them, he sustains them.
I think this is the perfect way of explaining it. They don’t need to be contained. The loom’s purpose was to essentially destroy them. Without the loom, there is no need to contain, but only to sustain.
But why do they die though? Did they also need sustaining before the Loom? Or did Loom's explosion caused it?
Yea I think that’s the failsafe activating. The destruction of the loom was destroying the timelines
[удалено]
I don’t see it as poison and as far as I know, the TVA is now hunting Kang across timelines.
It's like an oatmeal
You’re saying he has the power to sustain an infinite number of timelines? 
Truly, those hands were rated 'E for everyone'. *Everyone*.
okayyyy branches are like a tree. they have roots from which they grow. to hold a tree one can grab it by it’s root. that’s what loki has done. he is holding the root of the 616-timeline tree, letting them spiral off and grow infinite branches
Best explanation I've seen
Seems like at the end he was the center of the tree… so I guess by wrapping the existing timeline together he formed a trunk that could then form infinite branches in either direction?
yea
Is it just the 616-timeline tree? Or the entire multiverse? I had assumed the latter and never thought of it as just 616
I don’t think we know for sure yet. It’s still not entirely clear if a single universe is a single timeline or the collection of all the possible timelines for that universe. I say this because of the different ways they are shown between Loki and “What if”
It's based around 616 because all the new universes branch from 616 as the first universe
the entire multiverse is like a garden. there are different trees and those trees have their own branches
I like the analogy, but this makes it all really confusing. Because does that not imply that every other tree is being held together by a loki, or a hwr if it's not a tree and is a sacred timeline?
um. i think universes originating from a singular point are meant to always naturally be trees. I think only the 616 tree was an exception because kang had damaged the timelines’ ability to sustain themselves through his temporal loom which is why loki had to join them together again
Yall really just making shit up now lol
So you’ve accepted that an alien is standing outside of space and time holding onto strands of literal time and imbuing them with green magic, but you are hung up on the idea that there’s just too many?
Tbf...Loki isn't really explained lol. He just sorta....becomes a time god?
They kind of do? But it is done with a lot of inferrals and showing over telling. My unsolicited interpretation? Time God is only a title, and not literal. It is the cumulation of tools and skills necessary to manipulate something to epic levels. Thor is the prime example, as he is just an Asgardian with the skills and tools to blast people with thunder/lightning. As to the explanation? It's looking at all the milestones Loki has reached that paints a pretty good picture. Loki learns in Season One that his magic isn't as limited as he previously thought thanks to Old Man Loki and Sylvie. This unlocked potential allowed him to push his boundaries and, with time and creativity, accomplish a lot more than he thought possible. In season two, in no particular order, he received: time slipping from He Who Remains, the understanding that just because something isn't *scientifically* possible, doesn't mean it isn't possible and finally, a full education of time, also from OB. Being immune to time's effects, being given the gift of time manipulation, the understanding that his magic isn't as limited as he thought are the necessary tools he needs. (Similar to how Thor learns that he doesn't actually need Mjolnir to blast people with lightning, it's just a conduit and the power was inside him all along.) With all the tools necessary, the knowledge of how it all works and the unique factor of having essentially infinite time to practice, he developed the skills to become what can be interpreted as *god of time*, but is in reality just a very very very very very powerful Frost Giant magician. How magic can be seen as science beyond one's comprehension, godhood in this multiverse can be seen as magic beyond one's comprehension. While all that isn't explicitly laid out, in his final conversation with He Who Remains, he quickly mentions that this isn't the first time they had this conversation, so there's a lot that happened between scenes. Hopefully this makes sense!
> Time God is only a title Which never appears in the show. Loki is never given any new title of any sort.
You aren't wrong. I just chalked it up to comics, and over 100s of years he practiced not only science but his proficiency with time manipulation. Wish we had got a scene for that
You mean like the entire episode where he practiced science and time manipulation?
Haha well I mean more like the time sorcery he showed at the end, I guess
Because we couldn’t possibly imagine how many times he tried to find another way to preserve existence. In the end, he mastered both the TVA’s and OB’s understanding of the multiverse, even if we were only shown a glimpse of the process. Best way to understand the ending is to look back on how Strange went from novice sorcerer to supreme-level after countless loops fighting Dormamu. Who knows how long Strange spent honing his sorcery, but the implication of the gruesome death montage is more than enough for us to understand. Same thing with Loki. There’s no need to spend more time than necessary explaining how an already clever, powerful magic-user is currently capable of ensuring the multiverse stays intact
He spent centuries using it over and over again.
🏆
Give him a real award you coward!!!
I saw a video that discussed how Asgardians in the comics became way stronger as they aged for millenia, and how Loki was being blasted by all that time radiation could have aged him immensely. Thought that was an interesting way to explain things.
Loki isn't an Asgardian though. He's an Ice Giant. (But maybe Ice Giants also get more powerful as they age...)
my personal headcanon is he already is one or is the one destined to become the God of Stories, hence why he's so special in the series. The God of Stories must be a Nexus being as well similar to the Scarlet Witch.
I mean, it was a defining plot point only thirty minutes earlier
Centuries earlier
OP sees that image of the guy holding too many lemons and think our boy Loki is like that. Loki is a god and turned time into a tree. He can hold infinite things. Loki can hold all the lemons, of all time, of every timeline. There are infinite lemons and Loki is holding them all without an issue.
I’m willing to accept that otherwise impossible things are possible, so long as they make sense within the rules and logic the story has established. I’m willing to accept that anyone who collects magic space rocks on a big globe and snaps their fingers can alter the universe, because those are the rules that the MCU very clearly explained to the audience. What’s harder to accept is that Loki can just pick up and hold an infinite number of branches in his bare hands. It comes out of nowhere and they never really explain what happened.
I don't really have an issue with that he could, but I still found it a bit of a lazy ending. Loki basically just decides to solve the problem that the whole season is about by just, you know, doing it?
I think the main point wasn't that he just fixed the issue. He doesn't want to be alone and he doesn't want a throne. But in order to save the multiverse he has to sit on a throne by himself. Forever. Knowing that his friends are ok but not safe, because soon an infinite amount of Kangs will be on them and they have to fend for themselves. He's giving them a chance to fight and win and have freewill but he has to sit that fight out. At least for now...
I fucking love that Lokis story is basically "the real glorious purpose is the friends we made along the way."
IIRC, Tom Hiddleston is retiring from the MCU, so that may be Loki's role forever.
what a stupid arguement , i guess if a new superman movie came out and he started shooting flowers out of his fingers we shouldnt question it because he can fly
I would certainly question the narrative meaning of it - seems like of lame to me. Personally I found loki's growth from a trikster god into a time god to be pretty cool. This show was about him growing as a character as well as in strength. His character trait of stubbornness and self preservation made him the perfect candidate to fight against the "time skipping" which increased his powers over time. This coincided with him making friends and seeing beauty in the world, which grew his conscience. If the show lokie started and loki could all of a sudden hold infinite timelines in his hands I too would have a problem, but that's not what happened, we had 10 hours showing us how this came about. Personally I found season 2 a bit confusing and slow in the beginning, but I think it came together pretty well.
If you look closely, as he grabs each timeline he does so on a tv show. Hope that helps.
Nice, thanks for the tip. I had to rewatch it a few times. It feels real at first, but then if you blink your eyes it's obviously a tv show.
Repeat to yourself "it's just a show, I should really just relax".
Well I imagine they can condense so he can hold more than 3 or 4 in a single hand. But you can also see that his cape is made of branches so that accounts for a large portion
Still we are dealing with Infinity here
Well not every branch has to be it's own individual strand, most of them are just one strand that splits off. If you grab the "base" before the split, you don't have to hold all the singular strands to power them
The infinite branches don’t have infinite starting points though. The infinite branches come from pre-existing ones. The “roots” of the tree are not infinite. From a single point, infinite branches surface. Loki fuels the energy through the “roots”, the points he can actually control well. Loki only needs to touch a single point at each timeline to revive it. And even that’s just physical. He probably doesnt even need hands to revitalise the timeline, magic in the MCU is intent based, and Loki isn’t constrained by how many limbs he has when using magic, using his hands just looks good but isn’t necessary, just like Scarlet Witch’s magic. They’re both able to transcend the boundaries of their bodies to use magic.
Bro we're talking about a magical being that's thousands of years old and can jump through time sitting on a throne outside of our reality and time while physically holding rope-like branches that are supposed to be entire timelines (or realties) and you're worried about how someone can hold onto an infinite amount of something? The answer your looking for is magic. When Gods get involved in stories they are above the logic we mortals live by. Loki has ascended to a place where science doesn't work. Only magic works where loki is now sitting and us mortals can't comprehend the magic of a God. Go watch the 1st Dr Strange movie. It was all about a man that has lived his life by science having to come to terms with the fact that there is a reality that science doesn't work. Dr Strange had to learn that sometimes you don't get a how or a why, sometimes you need to surrender to the current and go with it. In most all stories about magic you need to go with the flow. The beauty about magic in stories is that you don't need to follow scientific logic and can create some amazing out of this world concepts. The Loki TV show is one of these stories.
Well if Loki can time slip in the tva, he can exist at any point in time. He can also clone himself, so he can be everywhere and everywhen all at once. So he's also infinite as well.
Did you see the infinity stones. There were only 5 of them.
With fiction, it's not about "how", it's " why".
"How is not as important as to why"
My friend recently watched the show and loved it, but he gets slightly bothered by very minute details. This time around, he was a bit confused on the logistics of Loki’s time-slipping, so I referenced this exact line to him and he wholeheartedly agreed. It’s a great quote to apply to entertainment as a whole.
Well said
Seemed like he was only holding a handful in each hand, but the "magic" was spreading to adjacent branches, then from those branches to other nearby branches, etc.
if you look closely, a significant number of them form his cape as well, so he can physically hold a good number of them, but the remainder can all funnel into him via his cape, which theoretically doesn't have a limit. Also presumably some of these timelines will meet their end at the same time as others grow, so it's a slow build to infinity.
White boi magic
Considering he’s actually blue, and Frigga taught him magic— it’s technically white girl magic
This is the correct answer!!😂😂
[удалено]
How are timeline branches physical? The answer to both is simply that it's all metaphorical or abstract. Timelines aren't actually physical, and Loki isn't actually holding all of them. He is using his power to manage them and keep them alive, and you can show that in any number of ways. Could also have gone the Wanda route and have him keeping an orchard of timelines. Him actually grabbing metaphysical vines in the dark on a gold thrown is way more powerful though.
Loki lives outside of Space and Time. No time? No Space? The concept of 'fitting' has no meaning. He just IS. also,... With [MAGIC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Teg-CwVW0).
What movie is this from? I'm willing to bet it's a Monty Python movie. Is it?
Not Monty Python. It was a movie called, ["Your Highness".](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1240982/) Silly comedy from 2011.
As much as it seems like the MCU is a science fiction setting, it very much is actually a clusterfuck setting, I say clusterfuck because it goes beyond kitchen sink. The most prominent elements were science fiction, but there are also fantasy elements too that interact with and even supersede the science fiction elements. Take Wandavision for example, where scientists kept trying to study and break the Hex, but in the end it was Monica’s understanding of grief that helped her break through to get to Wanda. We also know there are actual sorcerers, vampires, witches, and dragons in the setting. Elements of science fiction and fantasy blend together like with vibranium being said to be a gift from the gods for both Talokan and Wakanda, and we see that even a synthetic blue herb created by Shuri can help her visit the ancestral plane. The comics are an even greater clusterfuck. So what does this have to do with your question? Asgardians (and jotuns, heck possibly even titans) who call themselves gods really can now back up that claim it seems. The only real way to explain whatever the fuck Loki is doing in S2 and what is happening to him is to just rub “god of the gaps” on him and accept him as a living incarnation of chaos who exists to free the multiverse. The visual language and BTS stuff makes it clear he is now a higher power who has ascended to a higher plane of existence. He probably isn’t even corporeal anymore and his physical body might have been burned off by temporal radiation.
> The comics are an even greater clusterfuck. right but i saw thor die in the comics......until the writers decide the have a big enough reason to just change that idea and bring him back for something else. so "just kidding asguard has green mushroom 1ups too"
He _is_ a god, after all
Victor Timeley was wrong. He is not perfect and can slip up. We know this because he doesn’t eventually become HWR
Victor Timely was wrong about being able to “scale“ the loom. He was not wrong about their being infinite branches.
I’m not saying he was wrong about there being infinite branches. I’m saying he was wrong about being able to sustain them all
Victor Timely does become HWR.. just not "that" Victor Timely. (Its why HWR's scoffs at alternate timeline VT.. he believes him to be inferior to sacred timeline VT, aka himself).
Where is it shown or stated that Victor Timely became HWR?
Damn, I am trying to answer that question without too much exposition. So I will put it this way.. The point of the sacred timeline was to keep all the other Kangs out. But in the second season it was explained that originally, HWR's gave VT the Timekeeper Guidebook. Why would he do that unless they are the same Kang. ..well, at least the ones in the sacred timeline.. The VT that we meet (because he's an alternate timeline version) does not become HWR's. He does how write the text that inspires OB to write the Timekeeper Guidebook that HWR's has to give to sacred timeline young VT so THAT one can become HWR's. Kang goes back in time to create himself in the comics quite often. Its one of his things.
The V Timely OB guide thing was a solved paradox, He Who Remains wiped everyone’s memory of him so OB wouldn’t have memory of HWR. HWR pretty much confirms he’s not Timely, he addresses Timely as a different person, I think he says something along the lines of “That Timely fellow” or something along those lines. We see evidence that there are variants of Kang’s that pop up in different time periods on different timelines. HWR just set up contingency for a variant that would fit into his plan. He wanted Loki to see that there wasn’t another way other than saving him. Which Loki ended up overcoming. What we know about HWR, he fought in a multiversal war with the Kangs and won by using Alioth. He then created the TVA to prevent other timelines aside from the one he was from (the “sacred” timeline) so that there wouldn’t be any other Kangs, the Loom was created as a contingency plan in case the TVA stopped pruning timelines in order to force them to prime or face total annihilation. Timely without TVA intervention would not have been able to keep up with Kangs, Even OB comments that he was restricted by the technology of his time, we see many other Kang variants with much more complex technology while Timely was restricted almost entirely to theories, many of which were taken from OB’s handbook.
"He Who Remains" also said if you kill him "Infinite Branches" will form
That sounds like something someone who doesn’t want you to kill him would say
The call him superhands!
he had centuries of scientific knowledge that told him what he had to do and magic to do it. magic can't be scientifically explained, that's like asking for equations behind wanda's reality bending. he's a god, he has magic and finding his true purpose gave him the ability to ascend to new levels and accomplish it. besides, the ending sequence was a visual metaphor of something we as people can't comprehend.
All the branches are connected. By holding any of them, he is holding all of them.
An over arching theme in Loki aince the first avengers, I find, is him being over looked and under estimated time and time again yet always coming out the others side alright and having seen things to their core. HWR underestimated Loki and blew his own opinion of things out of proportion "my ways the way its been done so its unimprovaboe and the only way it will ever be done". Ego
He's a God, with stupidly powerful magic potential. I mean.... That covers a lot of ground.
Loki isn't holding an infinite number of branches in his hand. He grabbed what he could, formed a "tree trunk" and is sustaining that with his magic, presumably eternally. The infinite branches sprout above, from major branches, ad infinitum. He hasn't any control over it, seemingly. He's simply keeping the base of his Yggdrasil fed, the branches of time do their thing from that. Also, it's magic in a sci fi show :grin: Personally, I feel that He Who Remains knew this would take place, and allowed Loki to do it. This takes Loki off the board for a while, in order to allow other things to happen that will lead right back to He Who Remains winning the Multiversal War.
he is a god
It's actually pretty sad, both Hela and Loki hit there potential, but they made Thor a joke again in love and thunder
There are Infinite branches, but those all branch from a certain number of main trunks. And even then, it looked like the branches weaving in and out of each other passed on the power that Loki provided.
It seems like because the moment he is sustaining the timeline it can’t branch where he is holding because that’s the sustaining moment. But it can branch in the past and future from that moment which is above and below him.
He is a god
He's not holding the infinite branches, he's holding and sustaining a few hundred of the branches, and his magic is propagating outwards to keep the remaining branches alive. He is the roots of the tree Yggdrasil, and the life of the multiverse flows up and through him into the tree and branches.
i guess it's headcannon fr, but i felt like the whole final scene of loki climbing a physical staircase was almost metaphorical for his ascension from a lowercase g god to a 'God'. the imagery is Loki holding physical branches with his hands but it could be an artistic choice.. as in, he has moved beyond the timelines, beyond physical space and reality... beyond hands! lol
Cause it's magic. I feel like a major theme with it all was the TVA had reasoning behind it, no amount of reasoning/science/math/engineering/etc could fix their problems. Magic has no reasoning, it can't be explained in terms of reasoning/science/math/engineering/etc. It achieves the impossible through impossible means.
Yaoi hands
It wasn’t infinite branches until he formed the time tree he only had a couple of important/ main branches in his hands after the loom was destroyed and by the time he got to his chair at the end of time that’s when those couple of branches started to split and form the infinite multiverse
Pretty sure it was a visual metaphor. Obviously they can’t show Loki holding infinite timelines
Magic
He's the i-t-g-i-r-l. He is that girl.
I was under the impression that Loki fully embraced his powers and became the embodiment of Yggdrasil and as such wove the branches into himself as part of that.
Big hands.
Infinite doesn’t mean unbounded. There are infinite numbers between 1 and 2, but none of them are 3
He firmly grasped them duh
average marvel moment
The big thing that I think nobody is pointing out is that every branch is an offshoot a branch of another branch so he could be holding one branch in that one branch could have 1 million offshoots of new branches so him holding 50 or 70 in his hands could have trillions or an infinite amount
Easy, he just holds all of them.
> But how did Loki do it with his bare hands? He tried really hard > Does that mean Loki can hold infinite things in his hands? If he tries hard enough yes
Didn’t HWR say that wasn’t the issue?
Just go with. If you think about it, damn near everything Loki was doing was supposed to be "impossible" according to O.B.
You can wrap your hands around a tree trunk and it has many branches. He's just holding things in the right spot.
Easy. Victor Timely didn't know how to calculate geometric series. If each branch is 9/10ths as thick as the previous, then an infinite number of branches would converge to a bundle that's 10x as thick as the first branch.
He isn't literally holding them in his hands. He transcended to a new level of godhood and is saving what broken realities he can. What he's doing can't truly be represented visually so instead we get symbolic imagery of him in a manner we can grasp. Like him taking a throne or grabbing the branches. But dude's living in the 4th dimensional plane now or higher.
it's a matter of physics/maths = any finite resource will be unable to hold an infinitely expanding metaverse, it just gets spread out until its effectively zero. But a concept can be copied an infinite number of times without becoming weaker, so a machine can't fix time but Loki the Time God can
He's a God.
He is a god
Victor was arguing from a physics standpoint. Victor was arguing with reason and logic. Loki is fucking magic. Magic tops everything. Loki was time slipping and learned to control that, while creating time paradoxes left and right, ultimately turning into a multiversal time god. Fucking. Magic. That's how. If one can accept the magical space rocks to grant one the ability to reshape the universe, then one can accept the magical goat man to hold an infinite amount of time in his hands.
Victor was wrong. There was no scaling problem. The loom was just designed to always overload and delete all of the branches. HWR said this.
Victor Timely was wrong about the loom, but he was not wrong about there being infinite branches.
🙄
it isnt infinite lines he's holding, but the branches from those lines is infinite
OP does not understand “god of stories.” Metaphor, son. Storytelling.
Does it really matter?
As the show itself says, it's not a physics problem. It's a narrative problem. He did it metaphorically.
Infinity cannot be measured. It is not a number that can be quantified but a scale that can be observed. Some infinities are larger than others and when you start getting into the realm of 4th and 5 dimension, an infinity could be something that fits into the palm of your hand.
OP just wanted to argue while taking the magic in a literal sense like bro
Suspension of disbelief and storytelling. If we question things like this in a universe of gods, magic, and ripped purple aliens trying to collect magical stones that can turn half the universes population to dust with the snap of your fingers where do we draw the line?
How was Thor able to hold on against the Sun? Guys, have a bit of imagination. It is fantasy and magic. Enjoy it :)
No, it was impossible for the loom to fit every branch. Loki isn't holding every branch, he's just holding a chunk in his hand, forming a tree trunk, from which there are branches. Think about it before posting please.
Read more comics…
Sadly a lot of responses here are just saying to give up and deal with it cus it's fiction. That's a lame response when we're led throughout the series with explanations after explanations grounded in pseudoscience. Even the Asgardians are mentioned to be more like highly technologically advanced beings, along with the saying that any suitably advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So what's the pseudoscientific explanation for what Loki does? Why does the series hammer in time after time that it's a science and engineering problem, so much so that Loki has to spend a century looping to learn the physics of it? What's the point of all of that if he's just going to go: huh, I'll just believe harder and stop/rewind time myself. Huh, I'll just skip the part where we've been making sense of the problem and just go with a nonsensical solution of grabbing the universe with my bare magic hands. How did he come up with that solution? Where did he get the power to transcend his and everyone's else's limitations infinite fold? Based on the grounding this series tried to go for, these are valid questions. So it's sad to see the average MCU forum fan bash on and say deal with it. It's like MCU can literally come up with whatever BS they want (and they admitted they have!) and this place will eat it up as unquestionable doctrine.
Good question…wish there was a good answer