⚠ NEXUS EVENT DETECTED — UNAUTHORIZED TIMELINE DEVIATION IN PROGRESS

TIME VARIANCE AUTHORITY · FOR ALL TIME. ALWAYS.

TIME VARIANCE

AUTHORITY

Marvel · MCU · Loki Series · Seasons 1 & 2

⟢ TVA ORIENTATION PACKET — WELCOME, VARIANT

You have been apprehended by the Time Variance Authority for crimes against the Sacred Timeline. Your reality has been reset. The timeline you originated from no longer exists. This is not a punishment. It is administrative procedure. Please do not attempt to use the Infinity Stones, they do not work here. They make decent paperweights. Someone on the TVA team has been using them as such for years and nobody has objected.

You will now be processed.

⟢ WHAT THE TVA IS

The Time Variance Authority operates outside of time and space entirely. Its headquarters exists at the end of time past every branching timeline, past every Nexus Event, in a location that the Sacred Timeline's flow cannot reach. The building looks like a 1970s government office complex. The carpet is orange. There are motivational posters about the timeline. Nobody inside it was born here, every TVA employee is a Variant whose timeline was pruned and whose memory was erased before being put to work. They were told they were created by the Time-Keepers to protect the Sacred Timeline. The Time-Keepers were android props. There was no committee. There was one man at the end of time who decided what was allowed to happen and what wasn't, and built an entire organization to enforce it without anyone inside knowing his name.

His name was He Who Remains. A variant of Kang the Conqueror who survived the first Multiversal War by weaponizing Alioth, a creature born from tears in reality itself, capable of consuming time and space against his other variants. He isolated the Sacred Timeline afterward. He built the TVA to maintain it. He wiped everyone's memory so nobody would look for him. He ran it for what may have been millennia from the Citadel at the End of Time, accessible only through the Void.

⟢ KEY TERMINOLOGY — READ BEFORE PROCESSING

SACRED TIMELINE
The single approved path of events designated by He Who Remains as the correct version of history. Earth-616 as the prime universe. Every deviation from it constitutes a Nexus Event. Following Sylvie Laufeydottir's assassination of He Who Remains at the Citadel at the End of Time, the Sacred Timeline ruptured into infinite branches simultaneously. It no longer exists as a singular path. What replaced it is the Multiverse — still being managed, now without a single controlling authority.

NEXUS EVENT
Any action that causes a timeline to branch significantly enough to threaten the Sacred Timeline. Can be as dramatic as a god escaping with the Tesseract or as absurd as two variants of the same person falling in love in front of an apocalyptic event. The TVA monitors the Temporal Aura of every moment on the Sacred Timeline for branching activity. When a branch reaches critical mass it is pruned.

PRUNING
The TVA's primary enforcement mechanism. A Time Stick makes contact with a Variant or timeline — the matter is not destroyed, because matter cannot simply be destroyed — it is transported to the Void at the end of time. Reset Charges can prune entire branching timelines back to their point of deviation. Both tools are standard-issue TVA equipment.

THE VOID
A barren wasteland at the end of time where everything the TVA prunes ends up. Erased timelines collect there as collapsed ruins and debris — recognizable MCU locations compressed into rubble. Alioth hunts through it constantly, devouring any organic matter. Surviving in the Void requires either hiding from Alioth indefinitely or finding a way to get his attention and redirect it. Classic Loki managed both simultaneously by creating an illusion of Asgard large enough to distract the creature while the others escaped. He did not survive the attempt. He considered it worthwhile.

TEMPADS AND TIMEDOORS
TemPads are handheld devices that create Timedoors — portals to specific points in time and location on any timeline. Standard-issue TVA equipment. In the field, a TemPad is the only reliable means of extraction. Losing it is the kind of problem that ends assignments. Sylvie spent decades surviving on stolen TemPads.

VARIANT
Any version of a person whose timeline deviated from what He Who Remains designated as correct. All TVA employees are Variants with erased memories. The Loki variants who were pruned and sent to the Void each diverged at different points in their respective timelines — some minor deviations, some fundamental ones. Being a Variant does not make someone a criminal by nature. The TVA's framing made it a criminal designation by design.

⚠ MISS MINUTES IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED. THIS NOTE WAS NOT WRITTEN BY MISS MINUTES.

⟢ SELECT YOUR ASSIGNMENT

TVA HUNTER OR ANALYST
You are a TVA employee. Your memories prior to the TVA have been erased — or you have recovered them, which is its own kind of problem. Your rank, your clearance level, your assignment: yours to define. The TVA you are working for may be the old one under He Who Remains' design, or the new one operating post-Sacred Timeline. The time period of your entry is yours to choose.

A VARIANT — APPREHENDED OR ESCAPED
Your timeline was pruned. You may have been taken to the TVA for processing, sent to the Void and survived, or escaped before capture entirely. Your Nexus Event, your original timeline, your reason for deviating from the Sacred Timeline: yours entirely. Whether you end up working for the TVA, against it, or simply trying to get back to a timeline that no longer exists is open.

SURVIVING THE VOID
You were pruned. You arrived in the Void. Alioth is present. Classic Loki's underground bunker may or may not still exist depending on your timeline. Other Variants are here — remnants of pruned realities, people who have survived by staying hidden or staying mobile. Getting out requires either a TemPad, someone on the other end willing to open a Timedoor, or finding a way through Alioth toward the Citadel at the End of Time.

STEP INTO A CANON ROLE
A canon character's circumstances and relationships, your name in place of theirs. Loki working alongside TVA analysts to track a Variant while quietly planning to understand what the TVA actually is. Sylvie running from the TVA through apocalyptic events across time, using the chaos of mass destruction to hide her Nexus Events from detection. A TVA Hunter who has started recovering memories of a life before the organization. You step in. The timeline adjusts.

FOR ALL TIME. ALWAYS. · TIME VARIANCE AUTHORITY · FOR ALL TIME. ALWAYS.

Loki · Time Variance Authority © Marvel Studios / Disney+ · All characters 18+