The Marvel Cinematic Universe had spent eleven years establishing the Infinity Stones as the most powerful and potentially dangerous artifacts in the mythology, with Thanos spending six of them lurking in the shadows gathering them one by one until he eradicated half of all life in the universe with a single snap of his fingers.
Even after that, it took five years, a time heist and the loss of many lives to restore things to the way they used to be, so you can understand why some fans were pissed when Loki revealed that the Time Variance Authority had a bountiful supply of Infinity Stones in their offices, to the extent that they were literally being used as paperweights.
It may have ruffled more than a few online feathers, but it further hammered home the notion that the TVA are almost omnipotently powerful, if a selection of shiny trinkets with the power to destroy entire galaxies finding themselves stuffed into a drawer and forgotten about. In a new interview, Loki director Kate Herron admitted that she was just as shocked as the rest of us when she first read Michael Waldron’s script.
“That was in Michael’s script when I first got it to pitch for the directing job. I remember being like, ‘What?! You put me through so much!’. But then I thought, ‘Oh, it’s kind of genius, because it shows how powerful the TVA are. Who are these people? What is this place?’. I was quite excited by it. It really shows you that there’s a new power in the MCU, and it’s not what we we spent the last decade dedicating our lives to.”
Based on what we know now, it’s obvious that the Infinity Stones were of little relevance to He Who Remains. Someone with the power to maintain order across a limitless number of realities is hardly going to be concerned with some shiny gems, even if Thanos’ snap was clearly destined to happen on the Sacred Timeline, and Kang the Conqueror would have known fine well that the Avengers were going to save the day eventually. Still, it’s interesting to find out the creative minds behind Loki were in the exact same boat as the audience.
