u/Distinct-Chemist-540

Hello lovely people,

Firstly, I will try to not spoil anything of interest to an unsuspecting eye, so the first paragraph will be just that - a spoiler disclaimer. Post contains massive spoilers for basically the entire season 2, so if necessary, please do proceed with caution or click away.

Secondly, yes I did search before I posted, and I found several iterations of "What was the purpose of Victory Timely?", but none were able to scratch the specific itch that I have about this topic. I will abbreviate his name to VT from here on because I am a lazy fork.

Generally, my overall sense of season 2 was that everything would basically play out exactly as it did if you cut out every second of screen time that VT has, and that bothers me. I had some key takeaways from the other posts I read, which I want to address briefly:

> VT is needed because only he could lift the lockdown and was needed to open the breach doors:

*and*

> VT had the device/gimmick that was necessary to upgrade the Loom:

Well, yes, but actually no. While VT did help lift the lockdown and also helped upgrading the Loom, in the end, both were inconsequential to the story because the upgrade ended up not making a difference. Also in the very end Loki just opens the outside door with his magic *and* is powerful enough to just rip the entire Loom apart from a distance, so it stands to argue that the door would not have given him any trouble even with the lockdown still active.

> VT helped Loki realize the magic of friendship

Well, no. As far as I am concerned, three factors were of importance for Loki gaining the insights and - through them - the power he needed to do what he did:

To (re)gain the ability of time slipping which he ultimately just gains seemingly at random when the Loom does explode, which would have happened without VT anyway;

to realize that saving his friends and being with his friends is his ultimate motivation (which he learned from author OB)

to learn how to control his time slipping and turning it into actual control over time, which Loki gains after reassembling the ~~avengers~~ original TVA variants and losing them too.

> VT is a necessary part in the paradox creation of the TVA handbook

This one stands true, but not in the way people think it does (at least imo). Yes OB created the TVA handbook based on the works of VT and VT created the TVA handbook based on the work of OB, which does make VT a critical part of the equation. But a) in order for that to be true, TV does not need a second of screentime, he just needs to exist as an abstract being and b) I stand to argue that VTs work did not enable OB to make the TVA handbook in the first place, but merely speed up the process - just as it speeded up OBs ability to create a time door basically from scratch in just about 1,5 years.

> VT is introduced that variants can be very different and just because some are evil, not all of them have to be:

Loki. Loki already serves this very purpose. It is kind of the point of the entire show. Well, one of the points, you get what Im saying.

> VT was only there to set up backstory for his Kang the Conqueror Timeline:

First of all, this would only back up my claim/ impression that he does not actually add anything to the Loki series. Second, while I am not familiar with this specific branch of Marvel lore and do not have knowledge about Kang, it seems an odd way to introduce him, given that in the end of Loki S2, there now exists an entire time traveling agency hellbent on preventing any TV/HWR variant from rising to power, making it quite hard for any Kang to arise.

----------------------------------------------
I have one point to add by myself that might add some credibility to TV being in the series, and that is that without him, Loki would have a much harder time figuring out that all the solutions they thought were possible were in fact not working and inconsequential. So to speak, in order to find out that VTs solution to the Loom did not actually work, the proposed solution had to be there in the first place. However, all in all, this still does not convince me. Here is an alternate timeline of Loki S2 how it would probably play out if VT did not exist (as an active character) or rather did not have any screen time:

* Without VT lifting the lockdown, the breach doors do not open, and OB does not even get to see that the situation with the Loom is much more dire than he thought it was.

* Because this goes unnoticed, the Loom just explodes and unravels reality, arguably sending Loki back into time slipping mode just as it did in the VT timeline.

* Loki slips around im time uncontrollably and meets the original variants of the cast. He learns what he has to learn from author OB, just like in the VT timeline.

* He gathers the crew and loses them, freaks out and gains control over his time slipping and therefore over time itself. He can now jump back in time to before the Loom exploded and inform OB about the situation with the Loom.

* While VTs loom upgrade does not exist in this made-up version of S2, I think it is fair to argue that OB too would come with several ideas on how to fix the situation and they would all inevitably fail. The idea to make the Look wider to accommodate for more timelines is also not exactly far fetched, so I do not see how OB would not think about attempting that. Loki spent hundreds of years time looping to learn what OB knows, so my argument is that the lack of VTs fix attempt is ultimately inconsequential to the overall story arc.

* Eventually Loki comes to realize that none of this is working, and does what he did in the VT timeline anyway.

This does not exactly belong in this thread but I will say it for completion: I have very very few grievances with the entire show, in fact, I love it so much that i just spent some 240 bucks to get my hands on the limited steel books. But one of the grievances I have is that the show does (imo) a poor job explaining why Loki can do what he can do in the end. It is shown that the (dying) time strands seem to react to him and that he is somehow able to sort of power them (arguably through is magic), but going from there to "I will hold the entire multiverse in my hands and also I somehow magically know that if I go up these stairs there will be a conveniently placed throne for me to sit on and watch over the multiverse" within what is basically one episode of the show seemed very, very rushed to me. Do not get me wrong, I love it, I love the catharsis of Loki finally getting what he always wanted after letting go off it and I love the world tree illustration, but this specific part was probably one of the weakest of the entire show and - in my eyes - was entirely fueled by "rule of cool".

Why did I say that in the first place? Because I stand to argue that if rule of cool works in the VT timeline, it would work quite the same in my imagined No-VT-timeline.

This leaves me with this odd feeling that VT being in season 2, while being a cool concept, was just executed in away that makes him entirely redundant, and I think that is quite sad. I would have much preferred a version where VT (especially VT sacrificing himself) would have had a meaningful and non negotiable impact on the story.

Now I stole enough of your time - if you made it through, thank you for your time. What did I miss? what do you make out of this?

Thanks for your thoughts in advance,

Sincerely

Sealside

Searching for a specific image of dancing with the princess

The purpose of Victor Timely - Volume X