The elevator pitch is a tried and true concept in both the entertainment and business worlds. The thinking goes that if you can’t explain your entire idea in the time it takes an elevator to take you to your floor, then it’s too complicated and doomed to fail. In the latest clip from Marvel’s next Disney+ series Loki, Owen Wilson’s character Agent Mobius takes on perhaps the most ambitious elevator pitch yet.
Give the clip, which premiered during the MTV Movie Awards, a look below to see what we mean.
“What does that mean?” Loki wants to know about Mobius’s statement that “time passes differently in the TVA.”
Thankfully, Loki asked the right man for an explanation because by the time the pair exit the elevator, the God of Mischief has a shockingly thorough understanding of just what the Time Variance Authority does.
“So you’re part of the TVA’s courageous and dedicated workforce. You were created by the Time-Keepers to protect the Sacred Timeline.”
Yeah, that’s about it as it turns out. Just like the TVA itself, the Time-Keepers and their Sacred Timeline are a part of the Marvel comic universe. First introduced in 1979’s Thor #282, the Time-Keepers were created by the last director of the Time Variance Authority to maintain temporal order. This series seems to have switched the roles around a bit but Loki’s estimation of the Time-Keepers as “three space lizards” does seem pretty fair, considering their comic depiction.
This is only a brief clip but if it’s any indication of how Loki plans to handle the complicated exposition of its time travel premise, we may be in for a real treat. Time travel stories can get fairly complicated so explaining things away as the machinations of three space lizards offscreen really creates some room for Loki to do what it should do: let Tom Hiddleston be his charming self….and travel through time.
We know that Loki will begin moments after the titular character’s final appearance in Avengers: Endgame. By running off with the Tesseract, Loki has created an alternate timeline separate from the one in which Steve Rogers returned all of the Infinity Stones to their proper places.
The concept of a Multiverse seems to be taking center stage in this next phase of Marvel storytelling, with Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness set to address alternate realities. Loki and his TVA adventures should be viewers first real indication of just how deep the Sacred Timeline rabbit hole goes.
Loki will premiere Wednesday, June 9 on Disney+.