You start with a single timeline, with one copy of me in it. You travel back in time and prevent my parents from meeting, so I’m never born. There’s now two timelines, and only one me. But the total number of “mes” in the multiverse never changed - there was one “me” before you time travelled, and one me after you time travelled. Nobody has been killed.
However, there’s now two timelines, which means there’s two copies of pretty much everyone else in the universe. If someone steals your time machine, travels to the alternate reality where I was never born, and kills beloved character actor Christopher Lloyd, then he has committed murder - even though there’s still an effectively identical Christopher Lloyd back in the original timeline. Because before that second person travelled through time, there were two Christophers Lloyd. When he was done, there was only one.
That life and death are inextricably linked in definition. You can’t have one without the other. In a timeline at ends there is no life; nor any possibility for life. So there is no death or any possibility for death.
We (humans) seem to define the taking of a life as immoral because it prematurely ends the life. It takes away its potential. Natural death is not deemed immoral because the life ended when it was supposed to; there was no more life to be had. Ending the timeline is the same as natural death. The life ended when it was supposed to. There was no more life to be had.
The TVA, it is explained, exists extra-temporally. They are not ending life when they prune. They are doing what has already been done. And so it is written and so shall it be done. Do we say that cancer is immoral? No. The patient’s life was meant to end when it did (from a point of view from outside the timeline) cancer just did its job. So did that runaway bus. So did old age. So did the TVA.
But murdering beloved Christopher Lloyd creates a third timeline. The original timeline with both Miller and Lloyd, the second timeline without Miller, but with Lloyd, and a third timeline without either. However, someone like Amanda Gorman exists in all three timelines. In fact, the murder of Lloyd, created a new timeline with billions of people. So it’s a net good to cause timelines to bifurcate. That is, if timelines are realities and not hypotheticals.
Right, but if they reset the timeline, then the variant you never existed either.
But now there is a timeline where the friends and family of Mr. Lloyd now miss him. The TVA is wiping out those family and friends as well. Somehow, that makes it better?
The only ones that know that that timeline and those who existed in it are the ones who wiped it out.
I disagree with that point of view, but it being a moral question, rather than a factual one, I don’t know that it can be definitely be said to be wrong.
And this is assuming that this is all for the greater good. If the TVA is convinced that not doing so leads to far more beings being killed, reset, or other, then they can self justify their actions.
Let’s say that anything other than the “Sacred Timeline” results in great suffering for all who exist outside of it. Wouldn’t preventing their suffering be worth preventing them from having existed?
I think that it’s wrong to do, but I’m not sure I can base that on anything other than my opinion.
I think it’s a factual question* whether or not alternate timelines are real or hypothetical. If alternate timelines are not real, but only hypotheses, then there’s no moral harm in pruning them.
Consider Dr Strange using the Time Stone to search for the one way they could defeat Thanos. He was basically moving forward in time and returning back to the present in search of the Sacred Timeline. Effectively creating and destroying many hypothetical timelines. Is he guilty of mass murder?
I don’t want you deciding whether my suffering means you should stop me from existing; I want my opinion to carry the day on that question, while your opinion can carry the day for, well, your suffering-v-existence question.
I disagree with that. Natural death is deemed not immoral because there’s no person with agency responsible for it happening. It’s got nothing to do with when it was “supposed” to happen. We still treat people who are dying of natural causes, and try to prevent them from dying so they can live longer.
And the TVA is not a natural process. Timelines aren’t “supposed” to be pruned. They’re not being pruned because of some inviable law of temporal mathematics. They’re being pruned because someone decided that they should be pruned. It’s happening because some with agency - literally an agency, that’s what the A stands for in TVA - has made the choice to destroy these timelines, and everyone in them.
I don’t think that a pruned timeline is hypothetical, it actually had people in it that were living their lives, up until an outside agent chose to remove that timeline.
I don’t think that he was actually living out all those futures so much as looking into them. The Ancient One said that she had seen the moment of her death countless times, she did not say that she had actually lived through it. Those would be hypotheticals.
However, that brings up the interesting point of a multiverse, where all those possibilities came about. We the movie watchers only saw the one where they won. All of the others are “darker” timelines.
I don’t want that responsibility either. But I’m not an immortal near omnipotent being that has existed longer than the universe. That sort of perspective seems as though it would come with a certain amount of arrogance.
But if the beings deciding which should be pruned are more or less the same ones who brought the universe into existence in the first place, then pruning is no less natural than existence itself.
How do we know that? Maybe there is some law of the Universe that says otherwise.
Put it this way. . .when particles are created in an accelerator some survive for very short periods of time, while others longer. But, all seem to end at some time or another. Why? because the laws of physics (as we understand them) dictate under what conditions these particles can survive and for how long? And what is the process by which they are destroyed? Radioactive decay, annihilation, or something else? Again dictated by law. Well, what if timelines in the Universe are also proscribed by some law of the universe. And only timelines that meet certain criteria are able to exist for any length of time? And if a certain timeline doesn’t meet the criteria; then it must be destroyed. By what process? By the TVA.
If we believe that the inhabitants of the TVA are sentient beings then maybe. But, I dont get the impression that the inhabitants of the TVA have any agency of their own. They’re doing what they’re supposed to. Mobius is the only one, so far, that has exhibited and independent thinking.
According to the show, as we understand so far, it is not a law of physics that prevents alternate timelines, but a law set down by the Time Keepers. They being what they are, it works out to “natural law” to little ants like you and I. But anyone in the meta-timeline of the TVA sees it for what it is.
I can’t try to fight a god in order to change the laws of physics. I can try to fight a god to change the way that their will is manifested upon the universe.
That logic leads to some pretty horrifying conclusions. If the problems with killing Lloyd is his grieving family, then does that mean its okay to kill someone with no friends or family? If the problem with grieving families can be fixed by killing the grieving families, does that mean that genocide is okay so long as its really thorough?
I’m pretty sure the Timekeepers didn’t invent time. If they did, why did they invent it in such a way that they need to constantly prune it? The cartoon from the first episode explained that there used to be tons of different timelines, and they kept getting into conflict, until the Timekeepers declared one timeline “sacred” and wiped out all the others. That doesn’t sound like, “Creators of the Universe,” that sounds like, “Victors in the War.”
Do armed people in uniform show up and whisk the decaying particles away to Particle Court where they’re sentenced to non-existence?
I’m not sure that we understand how the Time Stone works well enough to say that.
When Dr. Strange reversed time at the end up his movie to prevent the destruction of the sanctuary, did he destroy an entire timeline where Dormammu won?
I agree, that’s why I ended with a “?”, because I question that premise myself. Just saying that that is how they probably justify it to themselves.
I mean, it leads to the conclusions that are the bedrock behind the TVA itself, so those who created and implement these protocols probably do feel that way.
I don’t think that these ones did either, but they are of the same “race” as those who did. The Infinity Stones are the most powerful objects within the universe, a part of its creation and continuation, and they nullify their power and make them into paperweights.
If you are running a computer simulation, it may not always go the way you wanted it to, even though you own the computer it runs on, and are of the same species that wrote the software and built the hardware it runs on.
Ever play Sim-City and reload from a save point? Do you feel bad for the sims whose existence was wiped out? They probably feel the same way.
It didn’t say that they fought in those wars. It said that there were time wars until the Time Keepers pruned everything else and established the Sacred Timeline. Note that I see this as more propaganda than fact, but also note that those who believe it, agents of the TVA, would be operating as though it was fact.
ETA: to come back to that. They are the ones who decide the timeline, so all the genocides that we have ever had, including Thanos wiping out half the universe, they were okay with.
Like I said, I don’t agree with their morality, but an ant may not agree with my morality when I kill its entire family in order to put a shed in my back yard.
I don’t know. Maybe it seems that way to the gluons.
Look. We are obviously spending way more time debating the ins and outs of time travel than the writers of the comics and then the MCU ever did. But, I can distill my point down to this: These discussions often turn to the “horrors” and ethics nightmares of time travel and alternate time lines. But, I say “why”?
If we can believe in a universe where time travel is not only possible but ubiquitous; then why can’t we also believe that the laws of said universe are fair and just and take into consideration the ethics of the situation?
I’m not sure either. I don’t think we can definitively say it doesn’t work that way.
Maybe? Dr Strange pushed the rewind button on the timeline and then when he pushed play, the timeline evolved differently. So it’s a “VCR” model of time instead of a “fork in the road” model. The TVA is definitely using the fork in the road model.
Because these laws are being done by sentient beings, not by the laws of physics. And they operate under a morality that we may not appreciate being subject to.
