Loki: The Time-Keepers in Marvel comics explained

(Envision credit: Marvel Studios)

Loki season unrivaled has immediately concluded, and episode 6 reveals the truth of the power behind the Time Variance Authority (TVA) and their treasonably leaders the Time-Keepers, who were revealed as mindless androids in episode 4.

But what's the real story behind the Time-Keepers in the MCU? And what does the accuracy can their mightiness actually mean?

Spoilers in the lead for Loki season 1.

still from Loki episode 4 — (Figure credit: Marvel Studios)

As Judge Ravonna Renslayer, agent Mobius M. August Ferdinand Mobiu, Loki variant Sylvie, and Loki himself discovered, the MCU Time-Keepers are - OR were - in fact simply a ruse to hide the typical business leader behind the TVA, the enigmatic being known as Helium Who Remains.

In comic books, The Sentence-Keepers are too creations of He Who Remains, whose MCU story and comic book history are a bit different - just unlike in the MCU, the comic script Time-Keepers are really beings of tremendous power.

We'll break down feather everything you pauperization to know about the TVA from comic books right now.

Who are the Clock time-Keepers?

Avowedly to their nature as beings foreign of time who exist and interact with populate and events throughout Wonder history, the Time-Keepers have a somewhat unique timeline in footing of how their real-world origins dress with their comic book story.

In the continuity of the Marvel Existence of comic books, the Time-Keepers are really the successors of the TVA, who exist far in the forthcoming aft the TVA has all but disappeared. However, in real-human beings terms, the Time-Keepers in reality predate the TVA, having been introduced years earlier before their stories were in time connected.

To recount the tale of the Time-Keepers, we've got to jump around in Wonder history a trifle, as the Time-Keepers receive been added retroactively into the context of some Marvel stories that predate their real debut. Oddly decent, the Time-Keepers are predated on the page themselves by their own evil duplicates, familiar as the Time Twisters - and it's all part of the origin of the Clip-Keepers themselves.

Dissimilar the MCU, which for the first three episodes of Loki presented the Time-Keepers as "space lizards" who come from a mysterious place to right the "Sacred Timeline" and quell the unrest caused by the worlds of the multiverse exit to war with each other, comic books present the Time-Keepers as artificial beings created by a orphic entity well-known only as He Who Remains, the last living agent of the TVA.

In order to maintain the order and chronological supremacy of the TVA, He WHO Cadaver creates artificial beings meant to both channel chronal energy, and provide a book of the timeline to whatever society arises when the universe ends and restarts. However, his experiment goes totally askew, and instead of creating the Time-Keepers, He Who Remains inadvertently creates the Time-Twisters, a trio of beings who, kinda than maintaining order in the timeline, become unstuck in time and travel throughout the history of the Marvel Universe wreaking havoc.

Incidentally, the full term "Clock-Cruller" has appeared in Loki already, referring to the security devices the TVA uses to manipulate their captives' position in metre and infinite, though nary reference to "Fourth dimension-Twisters" as beings has been ready-made yet.

A for the comic book Time-Twisters, He World Health Organization Remains manages to enlist the help of Thor (though Loki isn't really in the picture at completely) to defeat the Time-Twisters, and successfully make a new version of the Time-Keepers, who contract the form of three somewhat animal beings called Ast, Vorth, and Zanth, and who begin their tariff as the guardians of the end of time, employed somewhat together with the TVA - though their connections aren't quite the same as in the MCU.

Still, that was not the end of the Clock time-Twisters, whose villainy eventually ropes in characters such as Kang and Scarlet Witch, World Health Organization let important MCU roles coming up. When He World Health Organization Remains creates the actual Meter-Keepers after getting a visit from himself and Thor that shows him what the Time-Twisters will get on, the Time-Twisters are shunted into an cyclic timeline where they are never replaced by the Time-Keepers and continue harassing and disrupting the timestream.

The Prison term-Keepers in the Marvel Universe

Weirdly sufficiency, IT's actually the Time-Twisters who own had the to the highest degree impact on the Marvel Universe rather than the Sentence-Keepers - but their influence comes through with their trend to personate the Time-Keepers to manipulate people.

Chief on the list of Marvel characters who have get along unwitting pawns of the Time-Twisters is Immortus, an aged version of Kang the Conqueror who works as an agent of the Time-Keepers in patrilineal conflict with his younger somebody, trying to right the wrongs of Kang's seduction.

Nonetheless, when the Time-Twisters impersonate and replace the Time-Keepers, they put Immortus along a quest to eliminate a variety of timelines and beings that the Twisters feel wish endanger their supremacy.

Targeting what they call 'Link Beings' - beings tied to specific realities and timelines World Health Organization have got a direct connection to the Multiverse - the Time-Twisters task Immortus with eliminating no otherwise Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch and the Nexus Being of the core Marvel Population, with the intent of using Immortus as a receptacle for them to absorb her vacated power.

As part of the scheme, the Time-Twisters also taste to kill alt-realness versions of Franklin Ivor Armstrong Richards, Jean Achromatic, Vision, and Odin. Though these machinations are eventually stopped up, Immortus' plans to vex Wanda Maximoff sooner or later ensue in the events of House of M, in which Wanda has a psychological break and rewrites world entirely.

Immortus' associations with the Sentence-Keepers/Fourth dimension-Twisters don't stop there. In fact, IT's Immortus' orders from the Meter-Keepers to stop his younger somebody Kang from altering the timestream any further that result in the write up Avengers Forever, in which a group of Avengers from medieval, present, and future are brought put together to help end a war for the timestream brought on by Kang.

And of course, Immortus and Kang's rivalry also includes Immortus' partnership with Ravonna Lexus Renslayer, played past Gugu Mbatha-Sensitive as extraordinary of the TVA's Judges in Loki, WHO in comics is Kang's jilted lover revolved enemy. Ravonna acts as an agent of Immortus, reuniting with Kang in a mystery ploy to destroy him at Immortus' behest.

These schemes-within-schemes eventually lead to Ravonna hard to take over the Avengers by manipulating one-time extremity Doctor Druid and others, along with an attempt by Kang to do the same thing by subverting Tony Sodding, WHO is then temporarily replaced by his own junior soul.

During their last attempt to destroy the then-called Nexus Beings, the Sentence-Twisters were apparently eliminated themselves.

The Time-Keepers are teased to be returning to comics this Aug as depart of the Kang the Conquerer specific serial, as they've been shown connected Peach Momoko's strain cover.

But it remains to be seen if their comic book chronicle testament beryllium retconned to think over their MCU incarnation.

The Time-Keepers in the MCU

Though the Time-Keepers don't possess the homophonic power or position American Samoa in comic books, as they're simply a ruse to enshroud the identity of He Who Corpse and trueness purpose of the TVA.

But there's hush some interesting stuff to take from the Time-Keepers' MCU introduction - particularly the ramifications of their story told in Loki episode 1 close to their creation of the TVA every bit a result of a Multiversal war.

Thanks to the reveal of He Who Stiff, who is in the MCU a chance variabl of Kang the Conqueror, we now feature a strong intellect of what that war actually was - a battle between many variants of Kang complete vying for supremacy o'er countless timelines.

This is strong in Loki sequence 6, which shows a variant TVA in which the statues of the Time-Keepers seen entirely over their headquarters are replaced with apparent statues of Kang, weak to histrion Jonathan Majors' likeness and Kang's classic comic account book outfit.

Though the Fourth dimension-Keepers are most defunct in the MCU, there's still possibly some lifetime left in them yet.

For one thing, even in risible books the Prison term-Keepers are artificial beings created by a high power - and they aren't even the first try He World Health Organization Remains made at creating beings to guard the timestream. That honor goes to the villainous Clock-Twisters, World Health Organization could come along as variants themselves in Loki flavour 2.

And of course, that brings up the obvious possibility that a edition version of the Clip-Keepers could somehow arise loss forward, possibly even with their power intact in another timeline.

With the Multiverse on the board, and seemingly infinite branching timelines straight off expanding throughout the MCU, anything could happen.

If you'Re reading this, you'ray probably a Loki winnow. In this case, make steady you've say all the Best Loki stories of all time.

I've been Newsarama's resident Marvel Comics expert and imprecise drama Book historian since 2011. I've besides been the along-site reporter at the most major amusing conventions such as Comic-Con International: San Diego, New York State Comic Jailbird, and C2E2. Out of doors of comic journalism, I am the artist of galore uncanny pictures, and the guitarist of many heavy riffs. (They/Them)