WARNING: The following contains minor spoilers for Loki Episode 1, "Glorious Purpose," streaming now on Disney+.
Loki is finally here, and its first episode has introduced the Time Variance Authority to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The TVA is a cosmic organization that protects the timeline and eliminates variants, individuals who operate outside of their prescribed timeline. Loki becomes a variant by escaping with the Tesseract during the time heist in Avengers: Endgame and is promptly located and captured by the TVA. Interestingly, Loki confirmed that the Avengers' time heist was supposed to happen and didn’t violate the TVA’s rules or affect the timeline, but it also may have revealed that the TVA is looking for Captain America, aka Steve Rogers.
Loki raises some questions about Steve Rogers' Endgame gambit. Some fans have noticed a woman in the background of the TVA offices who looks suspiciously like Peggy Carter being taken in by TVA agents. Avengers: Endgame concludes with Steve returning the Infinity Stones that were taken from different points in time back to their original places in the timeline. After this, Captain America doesn’t return to the present, opting instead to return to Peggy and live his life with her in the past. This potential reveal has raised some questions, mainly these: did Steve Rogers violate the Sacred Timeline by going back in time for Peggy Carter, and is the TVA going to punish him for his crimes?
The Sacred Timeline is what the TVA protects as the correct flow of time, meaning certain events are supposed to happen while events that fall outside of the parameters of the timeline create variances. The theory is that Steve violated the laws of the Sacred Timeline, and the TVA will track him down and punish him in the same way as Loki. If that was really Peggy in the background of Loki, then it raises even more questions about the end of Endgame and what is allowed in the context of the Sacred Timeline.
Loki establishes that the time heist in Endgame and Steve returning the Infinity Stones to their correct places in the timeline was supposed to happen in the grand scheme of the Sacred Timeline. Conversely, Steve returning to live his life with Peggy Carter presumably violates the TVA’s prime directive, resulting in Steve becoming a variant. If the decision to return to Peggy didn’t violate the Sacred Timeline, then the timeline could have been altered in some other way, triggering the TVA’s intervention.
It all comes down to whether Peggy and Steve altered the timeline because of Steve's knowledge of the future, either purposely or accidentally. One possibility is that Steve meddled with important events because he couldn’t help himself, came into contact with the TVA and somehow escaped their capture, leading them to take Peggy in as a way to find Steve. Loki did get the upper hand on the TVA even though he couldn’t escape their offices, so maybe Steve escaped their clutches to try and find a solution to the problem he created and preserve his newfound life with Peggy.
Steve Rogers has repeatedly shown that he can’t just sit on the sidelines when he sees trouble. Simply living his life with Peggy means ignoring things like Hydra controlling his best friend Bucky Barnes for decades, which seems unlikely given Steve’s history. On the other hand, maybe Steve was truly retired and content with saving the world from Thanos, letting things play out the way they were supposed to in the future.
When elderly Steve Rogers appears at the end of Avengers: Endgame, it signals that he did indeed get to live his life with Peggy. However, that doesn’t mean there weren’t any problems along the way. It’s possible that Steve may have been in violation of the laws of time but could have worked out a deal with the TVA, maybe working for them in some capacity in exchange for getting to live his life with Peggy. With Loki now working with the TVA, it’s more than possible that they could work with Captain America if they came into contact, given his heroic history.
Loki is positioning itself to make sense of the time travel that took place in Endgame, already verifying that the heist for the Infinity Stones that took place was within the rules and setting the stage for future MCU stories. Exactly what happened to Steve after he met back up with Peggy is still a mystery, and it is ripe for theories and speculation. Moreover, the introduction of the TVA and the Sacred Timeline adds a major wrinkle in Cap’s story and what it might mean for the MCU.
Loki stars Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Owen Wilson as Mobius M. Mobius, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravonna Lexus Renslayer, Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15, Tara Strong as Miss Minutes and Eugene Cordero as Casey, with Sophia Di Martino, Richard E. Grant and Sasha Lane in undisclosed roles. New episodes premiere Wednesdays on Disney+.