How Loki Fixes Avengers Endgame’s Biggest Plot Hole

Loki's Explanation

All of this brings us onto Loki, and the MCU now having a show that dives head-first into all-things timeline related, alongside the psychological and philosophical ramifications of whether you could trust an infinite number of yourself to do the right thing.

Though the show is very much about Loki, Loki variants and eventually He Who Remains/Kang the Conqueror, it does retroactively solidify one of the theories I mentioned before:

The solution was a "one timeline" explanation all along.

Why? Because following Loki's finale, Kang spells out that the ONE thing the TVA was created to stop, is multiple realities.

He explains there was an all-out multi-versal war that spawned the creature Oliath. Establishing the TVA stopped the butchery between realms and tamed the beast, with the Time Variance Authority's purpose coming down to eliminating any "variant" that would emerge from a different or fractured timeline.

Judge Renslayer notes in Episode 1 that everything The Avengers did "was supposed to happen", and we can only conclude that the TVA would've actively kidnapped and "Pruned" a variant Steve Rogers.

Conversely, they can let a SINGLE Captain America go back through one timeline - the "Sacred Timeline" - replace the stones, and live out his life with Peggy before eventually emerging as an old man on that park bench, with Bucky and Falcon.

I'll get back to the why in a second, but the first key takeaway is noting when the Time Variance Authority take action.

Now, obviously in the real world, many of Marvel's creators have had plenty time to get their heads together and clarify what was "really going on" when crafting six episodes of Loki, but this TVA explanation retroactively makes all of Endgame make much more sense.