New Loki Theory Says The TVA Helped The Avengers Beat Thanos

The Time Variance Authority only made their Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Disney Plus exclusive series Loki earlier this week, but the mysterious outfit has already generated plenty of talking points among fans.

As well as the general adulation being aimed in the direction of Owen Wilson’s Mobius M. Mobius, some of the more enthusiastic MCU supporters were up in arms that the TVA’s headquarters have literal drawers full of Infinity Stones, especially when several beloved heroes were forced to sacrifice themselves to defeat Thanos across Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, including Tom Hiddleston’s trickster himself.

Loki established that the TVA have the ability to reset any reality that isn’t going the way it’s supposed to, so there’s really no logical reason why the Timekeepers couldn’t have got involved in the conclusion to the Infinity Saga, especially when Doctor Strange predicted over fourteen million outcomes and only found one where Earth’s Mightiest Heroes came out on top.

The single branch that resulted in the Avengers winning was clearly the Sacred Timeline seeing as it was allowed to continue, so it may yet transpire that the TVA have had a much bigger presence in the history of the MCU now that their mere existence is enough to recontextualize everything that’s ever happened dating right back to Iron Man.

As The Direct explains:

If Strange truly did only see one victory (and it’d be too much of a stretch to assume he was lying), then we have to entertain the possibility that alternate timelines with Avengers victories were either pruned out of existence by the TVA to prevent Strange from seeing them or were sabotaged to result in defeat. Perhaps the TVA prune (a flowery way to say kill) Strange in any timeline where the Avengers win that isn’t the Sacred Timeline, which would prevent him from seeing that path to victory.

So yes, the TVA might have helped the Avengers find a path to victory against Thanos, but they potentially did so via the eradication of countless better futures, all for the pursuit of the one they deem acceptable. They tricked Strange into seeing only one way to victory, and even if the Avengers had managed to achieve it by other means, the timeline would’ve been erased.

Presumably, all of the dominoes had to fall in a very specific order for Avengers: Endgame to turn out the way it did, but similar to how the Eternals are set to redefine the entire history of the franchise when they finally arrive in November, the TVA will no doubt have a similar effect over the next five weeks as we find out more about Loki‘s new bedfellows.