Loki: 10 Things About The Time Keepers Only Comic Fans Know

The Time Keepers are new to the MCU, but what are some facts that only the most devoted comic fans would know about them?

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WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Loki episode 1.

The first episode of the new Loki series introduced the concept of the Time Keepers, an all-powerful trio who oversee the so-called ‘Sacred Timeline.’ While these beings are brand new to the MCU, comic fans know they’ve been a critical part of Marvel Comics mythology for nearly forty years now.

The Time Keepers appear to be in a position of absolute power in the universe, at least as they maintain so far in the series. That’s not exactly the case in the comics, but the comic book storylines they’ve appeared in may hold some clues to where the story of the Time Keepers and Loki is going.

10 Temporal Powers

The Time Keepers have vast temporal powers at their disposal, making them among the most powerful Marvel cosmic characters. Not only can they travel through time in any direction, they essentially control it. They can speed up or slow down time, sometimes within an individual – though Asgardians appear to be immune in the comics, at least – and also within entire universes. Unlike their MCU counterparts, the Time Keepers hold no disdain for alternate timelines and can travel through them freely.

9 He Who Remains

The Time Keepers first appear in Thor #282 in 1979. They’re actually the creation of another powerful cosmic character, He Who Remains. This being debuted in Thor #245 back in 1976. He Who Remains is an ancient being of unknown origin who served as the last director of the original Time Variance Authority at the Citadel at the End of Time. This was at one point the only remaining universe in the entire Multiverse. He created the Time Keepers after an earlier experiment, The Time Twisters, ended in near disaster.

8 The Time Twisters

He Who Remains initially creates the Time Twisters to serve as educators for the new universe that will spawn from the final one. This doesn’t go according to plan, however. The Time Twisters instead go back in time and begin destroying not only the past but numerous other alternate realities in the old multiverse. Among these were many versions of Earth, and they destroyed each one. With the intervention of Thor, they were eventually stopped. It will be interesting to see if this alternate timeline is one that Loki visits in the Disney+ series.

7 Split Reality

The threat of the Time Twisters is seemingly averted when Thor travels back in time to confront He Who Remains about their future destructive power. This inadvertently split reality into two divergent timelines. One where the Time Twisters survived and one where they didn’t. In the second reality. He Who Remains formed the Time Keepers instead.

That didn’t settle matters as a cold war broke out between the two realities. The Time Twisters tried numerous times to destroy the reality of the Time Keepers, which is possibly the root of the multiversal war that is referenced in the great Miss Minutes animation from the first episode of Loki.

6 The Space Phantom

While the Time Keepers are certainly heroic in comparison to the Time Twisters, they’re not exactly benign. A great retcon is established when it’s revealed that the Space Phantom, the alien villain of Avengers #2 in 1963, was actually sent by the Time Keepers to destroy the team. It was ill-advised given the early squad was one of the best Avengers rosters ever, but it was proof of their indifference to normal concepts of right and wrong. The Time Keepers wanted to prevent the Avengers, and Thor, from ever preventing their own existence.

5 The Time Variance Authority

The Time Variance Authority debuts in the comics a bit later, first appearing in Thor #371 in 1986, though they were retconned to be part of the backstory of He Who Remains. Co-created by Walt Simonson and Sal Buscema, the bureaucratic organization functions much as it does in the show. The major difference is that it oversees the entire multiverse, or omniverse, and isn’t governed by the Time Keepers. They also aren’t the only game in town. They frequently clash with the Kang Dynasty, the temporal empire of time-traveling villain Kang The Conqueror.

4 Recruiting Immortus

In the comics, he becomes involved as Immortus, one of his many identities. They recruit him to watch over the period of history between 4000 and 3000 B.C. They do this because they had confused time so much due to their constant time traveling. Immortus is Nathaniel Richards, a descendant of Reed and Sue Richards of the Fantastic Four born in the 30th century A.D. One of the key Easter eggs in episode one of Loki is the Evil Loki variant possessing technology from the third millennium when Immortus hails from.

3 Kang The Conqueror

One of the reasons the reference to the third millennium is so intriguing in Loki is because Immortus is one of the many identities of Kang The Conqueror. Kang plays a major role in the affairs of the Time Keepers in the comics, and could potentially in the MCU as well.

Posing as the Time Keepers, the Time Twisters employ him to destroy many alternate timelines. The real Time Keepers discover the plot and ultimately defeat the Time Twisters, sending them back in time to their origin point. They’re placed back in their original cocoons and kept there to be watched for all time.

2 Nexus Beings

Kang The Conqueror accomplishes the Time Twisters’ ambitions by harnessing the power of the Nexus Being of Earth-616, the Scarlet Witch. Given the direction of the MCU and the emphasis on Nexus Beings and the Nexus of All Realities in WandaVision, this could potentially play out on screen. Nexus Beings have the power to affect probability, and thus the future. They are so powerful that only one exists within every individual universe. Kang himself is a Nexus Being from his native reality.

1 The Scarlet Witch

Comic fans know the extreme power of the Scarlet Witch, and it seems as though the MCU is about to depict her potential as well. Given her inherent nature as a Nexus Being, she was targeted by the Time Twisters for destruction. Only after witnessing the deaths of other Nexus Beings did Kang, in his role as Immortus, abstain from harming Wanda Maximoff any further. It’s very possible that Wanda could be the Nexus Being referred to in the first episode of Loki, and of extreme interest to the Time Keepers, who refuse to permit a multiverse from existing.

Loki releases new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/loki-time-keepers-facts-marvel-comics/