An Iconic Thanos Moment Takes on New Meaning After 'Loki'
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We knew that Marvel Phase 4 would see the movies and TV shows interconnect more than ever before in the MCU, leading us to search for every clue that the multiverse was coming in the future.
What we didn't expect is that the events of the TV shows would make us re-evaluate what we'd already seen in the MCU, and question what they actually meant.
Loki has introduced us to the Time Variance Authority, whose job it is to maintain the sacred timeline. When Loki picked up the Tesseract in Avengers: Endgame, he stepped off his predetermined path, so the TVA had to step in.
Had Loki known about the TVA and the perils of stepping off your timeline, maybe he wouldn't have done it (although he probably would have, the cheeky scamp). Nobody seems to have known about the TVA and its work, but there might just be someone who did: Thanos.
And if Thanos did know about the TVA, then it could give a secret meaning to one particular Endgame line.
Watch Avengers: Endgame on Disney+
When we see Thanos again in Endgame, it's after he's used the Infinity Stones to reduce them to atoms, seemingly ruining any chance of the Avengers reversing his universe-altering Snap.
"It nearly killed me. But the work is done. It always will be. I am... inevitable," he tells them. He repeats the line "I am inevitable" later on in the movie when the 2012 version of Thanos thinks he's about to repeat the Snap and win again. It could be seen as a cocky declaration of victory–an underlining that he's so powerful, he can't be defeated.
According to a new theory on Reddit though, what if the "I am inevitable" line is actually because Thanos knows that his actions literally are inevitable?
The theory argues that when past Thanos sees his future self be killed by the Avengers, he doesn't seem to have any issue wrapping his head around alternate timelines or the idea that he can time travel. Even for someone like Thanos, it must be a bit of a trip to learn of such things... unless he already knew about them.
Perhaps at some point in his past, Thanos crossed paths with the TVA or heard about them in some way. However he found out about them, he would have discovered the sacred timeline and could well have seen the Snap in his future.
Since Thanos would know the TVA protects events as they happen, then he would know his actions were "inevitable," whatever the Avengers tried to do to stop them.
Of course, after Thanos first talks of being "inevitable" in Endgame, we know that he ends up proven wrong as the Avengers reverse his actions. What's more, they aren't punished by the TVA for their time-traveling antics, as it all happened exactly as it should have.
"What they did was supposed to happen. You escaping was not," Loki is told in the first episode when he pleads his case that the Avengers are actually the "time criminals", not him.
So if Thanos truly did know about the sacred timeline, then surely he'd have known that while, yes, his first Snap was "inevitable", the Avengers reversing it with a Snap of their own and ultimately defeating the past version of him was "inevitable" too.
If you believed the theory, you could argue that maybe the 2012 version of Thanos is different to the 'main' Thanos. In timey-wimey terms, you could say that this 'main' Thanos saw to the end of his life on the sacred timeline and so, at this point, he did actually succeed.
Or maybe the TVA isn't as honest as it's pretending to be and just decided to lie to Thanos to ensure that events played out on the sacred timeline as they were meant to. After all, if Thanos knew the Avengers would reverse his life's work, he would surely work to change the course of events.
That would inevitably lead to a Nexus event and that's something the TVA can't afford, so what's a little white lie when it comes to protecting the sacred timeline?
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