Thor's brother, Loki, is returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a series on Disney+. The series will be a time-travel adventure that will introduce MCU fans to the organization known as the Time Variance Authority.
To put it simply, the Time Variance Authority is a bureaucracy that ensures that time travelers don't change reality. However, they are not always the best at keeping changes from happening. The organization initially appeared in 1986's Thor #372 by Walter Simonson, Sal Buscema, Bret Blevins, Al Williamson, Max Scheele and John Workman. In that story, an agent named Justice Peace tried to stop a time crime from happening.
However, in some cases, the Time Variance Authority, or TVA for short, is not always as prompt as time travelers should be. A perfect example of this came in the 2011 miniseries Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine by Jason Aaron, Adam Kubert, Mark Roslan, Justin Ponsor and Rob Steen. In this series, Wolverine and Spider-Man went on a time travel adventure that had no rhyme or reason which nearly caused the end of the world.
The series started with Peter Parker appearing to be one of the last people left alive on Earth. He had been having dreams of a beautiful woman who he doesn't even know the name of. The twist is that he wasn't the last person alive. Wolverine was there too, and he had a tribe of warriors he was teaching. Instead of being the last people alive, they were actually some of the first. The heroes had traveled back in time, abut now, Wolverine was doing something that could change the world's future by teaching the ancient beings how to fight before the asteroid hit her Earth that wiped out the dinosaurs.
While trying to stop a bank robbery, Spider-Man and Wolverine got sent through time by a mysterious figure. Things got even more bizarre in the six-issue series. It turned out that none other than Mojo set this nonsense into motion. He found a two-bit thief named Czar and supplied him with diamonds that allowed him to transport people through time. Mojo threw Spider-Man and Wolverine into one of his shows and sent them, along with Doctor Doom as an Ego-stlyed living planet, on time-traveling adventures.
The girl that Spider-Man was dreaming about was a bank teller named Sara Bailey. When Wolverine and Spider-Man ended up in the Wild West toward the end of their adventure, Peter Parker and Sara Bailey fell in love. Peter even planned to propose to her. For a change, Peter was finally getting lucky in life with a woman who loved him and one that he loved in return. There was just one problem. This is Peter Parker, and nothing ever goes right in his love life. In this case, it was because they were not supposed to be in that time period.
Just as he showed Wolverine the diamond ring he was going to give to Sara, the Time Variance Authority finally caught up with them. There had been moments throughout the series where warnings came, but they had no idea it was the TVA. Finally, the TVA caught them and sent everyone back to where they were supposed to be at the time of the bank robbery. However, this ended on a sad note for Peter. Spider-Man remembered falling in love with Sara, but she had no memories of him. As Peter said, the TVA took Sara's memories but left the memories with him, another perfect example of that old Parker luck.