Marvel Comics: Time Variance Authority Explained | Comics Explained

make sure you guys hit the subscribe button if you guys are enjoying the content that we're throwing up and uh make sure you guys hit the like button if you enjoy the video and yeah let's begin what's going on guys this is rob and the loki trailer just dropped yesterday out of nowhere which is a really nice birthday gift i really enjoyed it uh but they also paid a little more or gave us a little more information about the time variance authority and so what i'm gonna do in this video is i'm gonna make you an expert on the time variance authority in under 30 minutes as i always do here on comics explained and i think what you guys are going to find is the multiverse is a lot more interesting than it originally seems right so a lot of you guys i imagine are probably coming here from like the marvel cinematic universe films right you're watching falcon in the winter soldier or you've seen one division or you've seen doctor strange and on the surface especially if you see doctor strange the multiverse looks simple right like if you're looking at avengers end game or something like that you have the ancient one talking to the incredible hulk and saying like you know if you don't put the stones back at the proper time everything could go awry and and it's it's easy to look at the multiverse and just say okay like it's a collection of universes that is not true that is not true by any standard of measurement there are all kinds of moving parts and all kinds of groups and organizations that exist out there to safeguard the multiverse so to kind of break these things down right let's start with like the living tribunal for example the living tribunal was created by the one above all as a means to essentially safeguard the multiverse right to make sure that mystical balance is maintained now when the living tribunal was originally introduced it was just magical energy right because he was originally a doctor strange character as time progressed in marvel comics and you saw the living tribunal becoming more and more involved it was really more to just maintain the natural order of the universe whatever that happened to be he kind of became a plot device more or less and that's what you'll find with a lot of these things but then you started seeing the introduction of like merlin and the captain britain core so merlin is like this wildly magical being who created the captain britain core for the purpose of safeguarding every universe against whatever threats may emerge the realities of the captain written core is is really really weak um they're not really that powerful you would need lots of them in order to safeguard a particular universe so one captain britain kind of sucks in comparison to pretty much almost any major threat out there you know for example captain britain could probably not defeat the incredible hulk and that's just a really strong guy on earth imagine like the molecule man owen reese who could alter reality on a multiversal scale you know so from there you go into what's called like the omni russell development court and that is a group that's led by a woman named saturnine or saturn 9 if you want to pronounce it that way she's what's called the omniversal matrix so she leads the group and their whole role is to make sure that like mutants across the multiverse that like in every on every earth in every universe mutants gain their powers at around the same time that every universe has its own version of the avengers that universes develop the way that they're supposed to and if a universe does not they initiate something called the push and that's what happened in earth 238 when they didn't realize that jim jasper had killed all the superheroes on earth and then when they initiated the push he took it as a threat and then altered reality and basically twisted the universe to such a degree that they had to destroy it then you go into groups like the exiles right the exiles are just kind of a collection of uh different characters from alternate realities who just sort of travel from one universe to the next facing off against various threats you have adam berscher's ultimate avengers so like a multiversal avengers team so that's like the blue marvel it's uh carol danvers it's black panther um monaco rambo america chavez people like that it's a really cool team but it's a really really cool concept and then you have the time variance authority so the time variance authority originally appeared back in thor issue number 372 in 1986 and was created by walt simonsen but the the idea of the time variance authority as it was originally given to us was not fully fleshed out instead what you had here was a guy by the name of justice peace and justice peace was a guy from an alternate reality where earth was basically a giant mega city called brooklynophilus and the whole idea behind this is that world war seven had essentially begun when the last holdouts which were a kind of a bridge between the panama canal and patagonia when that whole process was disrupted due to attack by a villain by the name of zaniac and so because the representative there had been killed it was considered an act of war and the missiles were flying and everything was popping off and so justice peace ended up getting permission from the time variants authority to travel back into the past into the main marvel universe and then to basically destroy zaniac which with the help of thor he was able to do of course there was a bit of a skirmish between the two at first because they didn't fully trust each other um but then following that you know we kind of got a little more involvement from the time variance authority in different stories for example if you go and you look at avengers annual you find out that the time variance authority had kind of created robots that were designed to sort of help them maintain the timelines and ultimately the robots just kind of went awry right and things just kind of popped off from there uh and then of course you had like power man and iron fist which is kind of a continuation to a degree not directly but kind of a loose continuation of avengers annual number 22 um and then you kind of go into the fantastic four era and the fantastic four era is really where you learn the most about the time variance authority in terms of their full form and function how they work all that kind of stuff we never really get an origin for them it's just kind of one of those things where they just popped up one day and they're just they just kind of exist to protect the timelines and that's essentially it now the funny thing about this is that with walt simonsen being the one to create the tva and thor it made perfect sense that as the person who was writing fantastic four at the time he would continue that theme going and so with fantastic four issues 338 through 345 going into fantastic four annual number 24 that what you got was this story involving something called a time bubble and the time bubble had been referenced in thor 372 but this is when we actually saw the the full totality of what was going on alongside the idea that the time variance authority would actually contract out in this instance it was a guy by the name of death's head now the the time bubble as it was given to us in thor 372 was simply just kind of established as a mistake that was made by the tva but we didn't really know the details of it instead what we get in fantastic four over the course of these stories is this idea that somewhere along the line galactus had basically been defeated right galactus was believed to have been killed and what you got was what was called the black celestial which resurrected galactus and then exacerbated his hunger and so what ended up happening is galactus kind of took off to a point in the universe and then created a black hole in order to kind of pull all matter towards him and then consume that matter so he was just basically super lazy is really all it was instead of traveling around from world to world like he normally does he just pulled everything to him by creating this black hole now the tva investigated it and actually ended up exacerbating it and so what ended up happening is they kind of quarantined this area off and the 15-year time bubble basically meant that within this sphere time was basically stopped right i mean i guess it kind of continued on in its own way and so if you decided to time travel and you ended up back or kind of running into that bubble you could potentially get trapped but according to the tva once they kind of walled it off you would just sort of run into a roadblock right and it'd be super hard to get past it and so the fantastic four alongside iron man 2020 and a couple other characters from different realities ended up investigating the time bubble and when they did they realized this alternate reality version of galactus was inside of it and so what reid richards did is he brought in something called the ultimate nullifier now for those of you guys who aren't familiar with this the ultimate nola fire is a very old artifact in marvel comics and in fact it originally showed up in the old galactus trilogy by stanley and jack kirby but this is a device that it's its power is relative to the person who wields it if you have the ultimate nullifier in your possession but you're not super intelligent and you don't have a very very strong constitution then you might be able to do something like destroy a car but if you're somebody like reed richards who's highly intelligent and has a very high amount of constitution you can use the ultimate nullifier to its full potential which is to basically erase something from existence and when i say erase it from existence it's basically as if it never existed in the first place right so if i use the ultimate nullifier on you then not only would you cease to exist nobody would remember you none of the teachers would have ever encountered you right this is if you just never existed in the first place and so the ultimate nullifier is a pretty serious weapon that's only used in the most extreme situations but because the time bubble was one of these things where it would eventually become a threat to the multiverse itself reed richards used the ultimate nullifier on that reality's version of galactus and wiped him from existence this goes directly into fantastic four issues 352 running all the way up to 354 which basically had the fantastic four brought before the time variance authority to kind of explain themselves and this is when you end up kind of finding out the nature of the tva right the the more detailed uh role that the tva plays and exactly how it is that they function so i think we'll find this to be a lot easier to digest if we kind of compare it to what's going on in the loki's show at least what we've seen right so at the very top of the company because the time variance authority treats itself more like a corporation than anything else you have a guy named mr alternity and you don't really see a whole lot of this guy in fact i think the only real time you've ever seen him was in fantastic four annual number 27 and marvel knights vol 4 issue number 18. right so this guy's kind of the top of the chain right he's like the boss the ceo the whole nine yards under him you have mobius m mobius this is the guy owen wilson plays in the loki tv show but this guy is the second in command and kind of a funny thing the way it played out in fantastic four uh 352 and 353 is that you actually had this explanation that was given to them by mobius and mobius in terms of how the tva works that was actually well really the only reason it was given was because of sharon ventura sharon ventura was a woman who got her powers from the power broker right she went by the name miss marvel for a little while so kind of a fun little way to tie into falcon in the winter soldier i don't think you'll see sharon ventura in uh in loki it'd be kind of cool if you did but she was more or less a character that kind of was rolled into the fantastic four and then eventually became a spy for doctor doom against the fantastic four so uh there's there's a little too much history there to really invoke her but you might see her there she's kind of interesting but the way this whole explanation is given by mobius and mobius is that the time variance authority exists for the purpose of monitoring and safeguarding timelines now i mean the reality is because stories like age of ultron days of future past you know the michael korvac saga because stuff like that exists they suck at their jobs but the the time variance authority exists in a realm outside of the multiverse right kind of like their own little dimensional space that's there and one of the things is first established one of the first things that we're told is they do have their own time cops now one thing to understand is that the the tva having its own police force is not a catch-all right it's not an end-all i mean the the various forces that exist out there with enough power to influence or even create new timelines are wide and varying right the exile superhero team the beyonder the molecule man owen reese the beyonders themselves the marquee of death matthew malloy you've got various people out there even the scarlet witch right you've got various people out there that are capable of altering realities in that way uh and so because the amount of power they possess almost none of these cops would be able to stand against them these cops that exist here are really they really exist more for the purpose of tracking down individuals who are manipulating time through things like technological means right so they they invented some kind of a time travel device and they're bouncing back and forth through time which kind of brings us into the next aspect of the time variance authority which is to say the nature of the multiverse is such that new timelines are created in only really a couple different ways as a time variance authority is concerned the first is through natural means which is to say if you have a circumstance whereby you have frank castle and most of you guys know the punisher's family was killed in central park in a mob shooting that went wrong a natural alteration to that timeline would be that the shooting never happened nobody intervened nobody stepped in it's not like frank castle came from the future into the past and stopped the mobsters it's simply that one of them said okay like we're not going to do it here because there's too many people we'll do this hit somewhere else right that's a natural occurrence there is an alternate reality where that actually happened so that's a natural formation of an alternate timeline then there is an artificial adjustment to the timeline so if we use for example the days of future past right that in the main marvel universe the way that timeline was supposed to unfold is that mystique and her brotherhood of evil mutants assassinated senator robert kelly moore mctaggart and professor x of the x-men that led to the human population and the government jump-starting the sentinel program and the sentinels becoming autonomous and then conquering north america and then you had rachel summers who was the daughter of jean grey and cyclops in that reality that sent the mind of kitty pride into the past to stop days of future past from happening which he successfully did that's an artificial alteration of the timeline and so because those different alterations exist especially those that exist artificially the time variance authority doesn't really care about the natural adjustments to the timeline because there really isn't a whole lot they can do about that i mean i guess they could but because it falls in the natural process of things there isn't really a reason for them to act in terms of artificial adjustments to the timeline somebody going back in time and keeping something from happening that's when the time variance authority gets involved and what they'll do is they'll look at that alteration and they'll look at not just what happened but the effects of what will happen right so if you ended up sending some marvel character into the past to stop an event from happening then the time variance authority would look at the immediate aftermath of that event as well as the effect it'll have on the entire timeline and if it looks like it'll have a negative effect or if they choose to act because the story requires them to then they'll step in now it doesn't necessarily mean they'll send in their time cops they will depending on the nature of the threat but if it's too extreme they'll just they'll just get rid of the timeline right they'll just go back and go at some point in time and stop that event from happening or wipe that person from existence they'll snatch them up they'll bring them to the time variance authority headquarters they'll put them on trial and they'll say this is what you've done this is the alteration it'll have to the timeline uh so there's only a couple things that you can do right either you can go back and you can just keep yourself from doing this you can stop yourself from committing that act but if that person proves to be incorrigible and they're just like no i'm gonna i'm gonna do this as many times as i possibly can then the time variance authority will destroy them and they'll destroy their universe now when a universe is destroyed by the time variance authority and explicitly when it's destroyed by the time variance authority it goes to their headquarters and then any refuge that's left over will basically be dropped into what's called the nothingness beyond which is essentially just kind of this infinite expand of emptiness right so think of like a trash can that goes on forever now the reason why i say when the tva destroys the universe explicitly is because there are places out there that when universes naturally end they just kind of gravitate there they just sort of go to that place marvel depicts this in different ways depending on different circumstances so again not an absolute thing but whenever the tv8 wipes out a universe they bring it here they kind of drop it off and and dump it into this you know infinitely expanding trash can now the the next aspect of the time variance authority is what's called the chrono monitors and these are the guys who figure out that something's going on that shouldn't be happening and so if you look at like the loki tv series for excel for example right the idea that when everything popped off during avengers in game and loki snatched up the tesseract and disappeared that immediately changes the timeline and because it changes the timeline the chrono monitor for the marvel cinematic universe because there's only one for each universe the chrono monitor would see that and then immediately report it to his superiors and his superiors would analyze the timeline and say okay what impact is this going to have and then if the impact is is just minor and it's not going to have any real influence at all they might let it slide but if it's gonna have a big impact they'll snatch up loki like what you saw in the or what you're seeing in the loki tv show they'll bring them to the time variance authority they'll put them on trial and then they'll do whatever they need to do whether it's wiping out the universe simply just wiping loki from existence or having him make amends in some form or fashion the exact same thing happens in the comics right so um the crazy thing about this is that when it comes to the alteration or the creation of new timelines the chrono monitors can actually do that as well right so if the chrono monitors are watching an event unfold and they say okay like this event is of significance that we're going to create or allow a new timeline to be created so an example where peter parker chooses not to give up the venom symbiote and he basically goes forward as venom then they would look at that and they would say okay this is not supposed to happen in the main timeline but it is a significant enough event that we're going to allow it to play out and then from there it would just go forward in a lot of ways the chrono monitors are designed to represent writers in marvel comics right the the writing or the editing team in marvel comics now again because of the fact that the time variance authority is a plot device you usually just kind of see them bouncing around marvel comics in a couple different ways right they just kind of appear in a story here or they appear in a story there and there's not a whole lot doing you know for example like they've appeared in the death block solo series they appeared in some what if stories they appeared in avengers forever so when you had a whole bunch of avengers showing up in just different timelines all in the same place uh when you go and you look at something like unlimited access right access basically being a character that came out of the marvel vs dc crossover way back in the 1990s you just kind of see them showing up at different points in time but probably one of the more significant moments with regards to the time variance authority came with she-hulk volume 2 issue number three back in 2005. now i don't mean to say that it's a significant moment in so far as i guess a universal reboot or anything like that again the time variance authority was never meant to be taken seriously they're constantly tied up in bureaucracy and then they're exceedingly ineffective at their jobs but the reason why this was kind of significant here is because what had happened is that in the aftermath of house of m and really avengers disassembled when hawkeye had basically died sacrificing his life to try to stop the scarlet witch that uh she hulk had tried to slip him a note and then tell him about what his future was right when she had met him in the past she tried to tell him like you're gonna die or you're gonna end up sacrificing your life basically perishing during the events of avengers disassembled here's a way to try to get around that and it violated the timeline the natural order of the timeline is that he was supposed to die and avengers disassembled and so she was snatched up by the time variance authority and then brought to their headquarters and put on trial but you end up seeing them holding all different kinds of characters here right iron man 2020 the two gun kid it's pretty cool it's a it's a pretty cool and an interesting little thing and that's kind of the nature of the prison that when there's a person who violates the time stream and then they're in turn found guilty by the time variance authority they're usually just held in some kind of a a temporal self and kept there sometimes for all time until the end of the universe uh sometimes for a period of uh you know for a number of years and then they're re-educated as to why they should not manipulate the time stream and then they're repatriated back to their own universe but one of the funny things is while you did have justice peace you also had justice love and like she-hulk gets read the riot act by justice love [Laughter] you know she's like sure you have villains like kane to conquer that like jump back and forth through time but you guys are way worse than them because you guys have inducted members from the future you've inducted members from the past you've gone into the past you've killed people in the past like you started the destiny wars which was basically a team of avengers from across like from across the entire timeline that were traveling through time and you had multiple avengers from different timelines all operating at the same time like you guys have done nothing but just manipulate and screw up time over and over and over again so there's a lot of hatred for the avengers on behalf of the time variants authority but again you know ultimately she hopes she will kind of argues her case and then is essentially allowed to go but uh but again you know the the reality and how you're going to see the time variance authority depicted in the marvel cinematic universe is pretty much exactly the way they are in the comics that they're ineffective right they're tied up in bureaucracy they don't really do their jobs very well and uh they they you know they suck you know they're more of like comedic relief like you're not going to walk away taking them seriously but they are a cool concept to involve my question is how are they going to invoke and probably wrap in the time variance authority with things like the omniversal development court potentially the exiles the cool thing about dealing with a team like that in the marvel cinematic universe is that you may just kind of see an appearance a cameo by somebody who exists out there right so like if you see blink who appears in the loki tv series that means a few different things one it means mutants now exist in the marvel cinematic universe because she's a mutant that can teleport and two the exiles exist which basically means a superhero like a multiversal superhero team largely composed of mutants that exist to protect the multiverse so you might see all kinds of stuff if ever there were a time to give us a cameo of mutants or the x-men or or the the fantastic four that would be it right that would be it at the very least to like reference them or something along those lines whether the marvel cinematic universe will or not i have no idea but with that being said guys we're gonna bring this video to an end if you are new here to comments explain make sure you guys hit the sub button to become part of the rob core if you guys enjoyed this video make sure you drop a like and i will catch you all later peace [Music] you

Channel: Comics Explained

Views: 212,399

Rating: 4.9389758 out of 5

Keywords: comics explained, comicsexplained, marvel explained, fluidic beats, comics, comic books, marvel, dc, infinity gauntlet, world breaker hulk, crisis on infinite earths, comic explained, infinity war, the batman who laughs, doomsday clock, Time Variance Authority, Multiversal Organizations, Omniversal Development Court, Fantastic Four, Thor, Marvel Comics, She-Hulk, Galactus, The Ultimate Nullifier

Id: 38GGZblfS-Y

Length: 21min 11sec (1271 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021