Not every Marvel Cinematic Universe project is going to revolve around the fallout from Loki‘s Season 1 finale and what it means for the multiverse, as we’ve seen via the Hawkeye trailer that teased some good old-fashioned festive fun, but it’s always going to be looming in the background.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is set to bring the fallout crashing around our heroes, before Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness takes things to an entirely new level, and it can all be traced back to Sylvie stabbing He Who Remains through the heart at the Citadel at the End of Time, allowing her thirst for revenge to get the better of her.
The lengthy exchanges between Jonathan Majors’ variant, Tom Hiddleston’s trickster and Sophia Di Martino’s Sylvie would have you believe the Sacred Timeline was unique, and He Who Remains’ death is the first crack in the facade before the multiverse shatters. However, a new fan theory being circulated on Reddit claims that it might not be so simple.
As per the theory, He Who Remains actually separated the Sacred Timeline from the rest of the multiverse to keep it safe from his rogue variants during the first war, allowing it to operate independently. In that case, Sylvie wouldn’t have blown a hole in reality, but rather opened a door that connects the MCU’s established mythology to multiple alternate timelines.
That would mean MCU canon up until the Loki finale remains unaffected, and anything that happens next is more of an offshoot than a complete rewriting of the franchise’s history as we know it.
