all-powerful Time-Keepers who supposedly created the Time Variance Authority are actually just crude automatons built by someone else. The reveal brings into question everything that Loki has been told about the TVA, including whether or not there's even such a thing as a "sacred timeline."
From the start, Loki has been skeptical about the TVA and their story about a trio of omniscient space lizards keeping the correct flow of time under control and creating an entire city of analysts, hunters, judges and istrative staff to police it. As it turns out, he was right to be suspicious. When Loki and Sylvie are brought before the Time-Keepers and manage to break free, Sylvie beheads one of them and discovers that the head is full of machine parts. As if that wasn't creepy enough, the other two Time-Keeper robots cackle with laughter when the ruse is discovered.
The Time-Keeper twist isn't a total surprise, as Loki has dropped plenty of clues in previous episodes suggesting that all is not right with the TVA. Here are the biggest hints that the Time-Keepers were fake, and that someone else has been pulling their strings all along.
The Time-Keepers' Off-Limits Chamber
Despite ostensibly being the TVA's ultimate overseers, the Time-Keepers are kept hidden away in a private chamber where very few staff are granted an audience. Not even Mobius, a senior analyst who has a close relationship with Judge Ravonna Renslayer, is allowed to see the Time-Keepers. Like the rest of the TVA, he is expected to carry out his job on pure faith that everything that he has been told is true, including the circumstances of how he came to exist. At first Mobius seems content to trust in the Time-Keepers, but his partnership with Loki leads him to start questioning his reality.
The Robot Test
When Loki first arrives at the TVA, he is put through a rather undignified processing conveyer belt that includes g a brick of paper listing every single thing he's ever said, being stripped naked and dropped into a TVA inmate uniform, and finally stepping through a machine designed to detect if he's a robot - and destroy him if he is. This step makes Loki particularly nervous, as he wonders if he could be a robot without realizing it. Not only does the mention of robots disguised as people foreshadow the Time-Keepers being revealed as just that, the scene also demonstrates Loki's willingness to question the nature of his own existence - something that the TVA staff normally never do.
The Ominous Propaganda Posters
As a rule, it's usually a bad sign if an organization in a movie or TV show is covered with agitprop posters that have slogans like "We're Always Watching." Despite (or perhaps because) of the TVA's cheery mascot Miss Minutes, all of the posters have a slightly sinister edge to them. One such poster highlighted in Loki episode 4 features an illustration of a stern-looking man that is strikingly similar to posters of Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984, and which asks, "Did you get them all? through deletion." Hunter B-15, who recently experienced flashes of her former life while enchanted by Sylvie, looks at the poster as if seeing it for the first time before going to find out the truth about where she really came from.
Mobius' Love Of Jet-Skis
Though the official doctrine states that all of the TVA were created by the Time-Keepers, there are hints from the very first episode that Mobius is yearning for a life he's forgotten. He's delighted by the fact that Loki was the mysterious plane-hijacker D.B. Cooper, he expresses a paternal attitude towards the French boy he finds at one of the nexus events, and he has an odd fascination with jet skis. Even Ravonna's collection of souvenirs from variants, suggesting that she also has nostalgia for life on the "sacred timeline."
The Truth About TVA Agents
After being captured and enchanted for information by Sylvie, C-20 is left in a shaken state while saying nonsensically, "It's real." This is the first clue to what Sylvie tells Loki in the following episode: that the cocktail bar illusion she played Hunter C-20 in wasn't a fabrication, but a memory from her past life. All of the TVA staff are actually variants who have had their minds wiped and been brainwashed to believe that the Time-Keepers are an absolute authority, and that the maintenance of the sacred timeline is their eternal life's work. This was the first fully exposed lie of the TVA - and where one lie is found, there are usually many more. Fortunately, Loki is experienced enough in the field to recognize a lie when he sees one.
Ravonna Renslayer's Cover-Up
If the truth about TVA agents wasn't suspicious enough, the fact that Ravonna Renslayer is clearly aware of the truth - and murders Hunter C-20 to stop her from talking about it - proves that something is rotten. Coupled with the fact that Ravonna refuses to let Mobius talk directly to the Time-Keepers, it seems that her role as a judge is to safeguard the truth about the TVA, the fakery of the Time-Keepers, and the truth about whoever is really responsible for creating the organization.
The Throne Room
From the moment that the Time-Keepers are first seen in the flesh (or not, as the case may be) by Ravonna Renslayer, their chamber is strongly reminiscent of the Great and Powerful Oz's throne room in The Wizard of Oz. The Time-Keepers are elevated above the ground in fixed positions from which they do not seem to move, and they speak in booming voices. The entire set-up has the feel of a magic trick designed to distract visitors, when really they should be paying attention to the man behind the curtain. The identity of that man (or woman, or malevolent cosmic entity) has yet to be revealed, but with just two episodes of Loki left, the truth is sure to come out soon.
