Loki: What Happens When You Get Pruned By The TVA

Caution: spoilers ahead for Loki episode 4

In the weird world of Loki, pruning has nothing to do with a quiet Sunday afternoon in the yard, but what does happen when the TVA decides to get serious? The introduction of the Time Variance Authority has completely upended the MCU as we know it, revealing the inner workings of multiple timelines and alternate realities that fans could only guess at until now. As first explained to the God of Mischief (and us, the audience), the TVA was founded by three all-powerful Time-Keepers long, long ago, when an ancient war between competing timelines threatened to destroy all existence.

The Time-Keepers made one single continuity, which they modestly dubbed the “Sacred Timeline,” and the TVA was supposedly created to protect this balance. The TVA’s Minute Men and analysts have full access to all of time and space and their laws are simple… more or less. Everyone travels on a determined path, and any unapproved deviation from that requires fixing. The splinter timelines created by these Nexus events will be pruned, and the Variant in question will be judged, though TVA trials don’t seem overly interested in due process.

Since that version of events was first put forward by Miss Minutes, Loki has thrown the TVA into disrepute, revealing at least some of the organization’s backstory was a complete falsehood. With these new revelations in mind, what really happens when someone is deemed worthy of a pruning?

What Happens When The TVA Prunes Variants (The Lie?)

The TVA has two different ways to prune you in Loki. The most common is when a Nexus event occurs and the resulting splinter timeline requires dealing with. In this instance, the Minutemen will leave behind a grenade-like reset charge which, based on what has been shown thus far, completely obliterates that deviating timeline. The process is comparable to cutting a small, errant branch from a larger tree, which is where the term “pruning” comes from. The TVA leads us to believe that when a reset charge is set, an entire reality crumbles.

As well as the wholesale destruction offered by reset charges, the TVA’s pruning can be up close and personal too. Each member of the Minutemen carries a baton – fantastic for hitting people with, but also boasting an array of handy temporal features. As seen in Loki‘s premiere, the weapon can slow a target’s movement (who can forget Tom Hiddleston’s rippling, slow-motion face?), and also carries a disintegration setting, which Ravonna Renslayer recently used on Loki himself. Just like the reset charge, it’s suggested that anyone pruned with a TVA baton is entirely erased from existence, and the resulting visual effect is consistent with that of the reality-destroying bombs. So, if the TVA is to be believed, getting pruned is tantamount to being wholly and utterly destroyed.

What Loki Just Changed About Pruning From The Timeline (The Truth?)

The TVA’s tapestry of lies has slowly unraveled since Loki and Sylvie finally joined forces. First, it was revealed that TVA employees were not actually created by the Time-Keepers – they were guilty Variants, just like Loki, who had been caught, memory-wiped, and brainwashed into compliance. More recently, Loki and Sylvie were afforded an audience with the Time-Keepers themselves, and a well-aimed sword revealed that the fabled trio of space lizards were nothing more than robotic androids. These deceptions give viewers ample reason to question every claim the TVA has made so far. Is there such thing as a Sacred Timeline? Are Variants doing anything wrong? Does pruning really mean instantaneous death?

While the first two questions remain as yet unanswered, the post-credits sequence of Loki episode 4 provides a major clue that pruning isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. After Ravonna Renslayer catches Loki from behind and prunes him right in front of a stunned Sylvie, the God of Mischief wakes up in an apocalyptic New York, where he’s greeted by a host of other Lokis in all shapes and sizes (and species). This would seem to suggest that when someone is pruned, they’re sent somewhere rather than killed.

What Happened To Loki After He Was Pruned – Every Theory

Though their track record with the truth is woefully poor, the possibility that the TVA has been honest about the effects of pruning must be considered. In other words, the reset charges really do destroy alternate timelines, and when a Minuteman pokes someone with the glowing end of their stick, the recipient really is disintegrated on the spot. Loki might’ve escaped this fate purely because Richard E. Grant and his companions somehow saved him. That the horned quartet are there waiting and expecting Loki’s arrival suggests they were somehow involved in sparing his life, and if anyone can escape certain death in the MCU, it’s Tom Hiddleston’s trickster. Unfortunately, this would mean every other victim of the TVA’s pruning is genuinely dead – Mobius included.

A more likely alternative would be that the TVA are lying again, and pruning merely whisks someone to a different world or timeline. Mobius already revealed that many Loki Variants have passed through the TVA’s halls, and the four post-credits newcomers might be past victims of a Minutemen baton who, just like Loki, expected to die but awoke to find themselves in a strange, unfamiliar world. This would mean all past pruning victims, from Goldman Sachs guy to Mobius, are out there somewhere lost in time. And if those batons aren’t destroying people, it follows that the TVA’s reset charges aren’t destroying timelines either. Maybe the “deleted” alternate realities are merely being dumped into a dark corner of the multiverse and forgotten about. This theory is supported by the setting of episode 4’s post-credits sequence. The decimated New York could’ve been a Nexus event timeline that the TVA pruned, but rather than erasing the reality, it just became a dumping ground for Variants – an entire abandoned world full of so-called time criminals.

It’s rapidly becoming apparent that the Time-Keepers aren’t as powerful as they purport to be, since the omniscient trio didn’t create their agents from thin air, and aren’t ancient immortal beings from the beginning of time. It’s logical to assume, therefore, that the TVA isn’t actually powerful enough to erase whole realities, and can only displace Nexus timelines from the multiverse.

Along the same lines, another possibility is that everything and anyone the TVA prunes is being stored in a pocket universe. Whoever is masterminding the TVA’s operation behind the curtain of the Time-Keepers most likely has sinister intentions – this is the MCU, after all. Whether Kang the Conqueror or someone else entirely, this mystery villain could be capturing and collecting entire worlds alongside an army of powerful Variants like Loki to later use in a full-scale multiverse invasion.

New episodes of Loki stream Wednesdays on Disney+.

About The Author

Craig Elvy
(3623 Articles Published)

Craig first began contributing to Screen Rant in 2016, several years after graduating college, and has been ranting ever since, mostly to himself in a darkened room. Having previously written for various sports and music outlets, Craig’s interest soon turned to TV and film, where a steady upbringing of science fiction and comic books finally came into its own.
Craig has previously been published on sites such as Den of Geek, and after many coffee-drenched hours hunched over a laptop, part-time evening work eventually turned into a full-time career covering everything from the zombie apocalypse to the Starship Enterprise via the TARDIS.

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Since joining the Screen Rant fold, Craig has been involved in breaking news stories and mildly controversial ranking lists, but now works predominantly as a features writer.
Jim Carrey is Craig’s top acting pick and favorite topics include superheroes, anime and the unrecognized genius of the High School Musical trilogy.

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