Most things in history are kinda dumb, but in the early 1990s, for a brief, shining moment, there was a beautiful union of form and function which we call… Timecop. Not only did it make an entire generation of young men think doing the splits was somehow badass, it managed to forever link that brief, shining moment with one of the most enduring conundrums of human existence.
With that quintessentially 90s characterization, the age old metaphysical tug of war between fate and free will, destiny and choice, seems anchored somehow to that intriguing, yet laughable premise: the temporal guardian, the protector of history, the Time Variance Authority. Timecops all.
It’s only fitting, then, that the climax of Loki would deliver a villain befitting so dichotomous a concept. He Who Remains, the master of the stunningly cinematic Citadel at the End of Time, turned out to be less ominous, unstoppable threat and more eccentric goofball. Every bit the underwhelming man behind the curtain, he assaulted Sylvie and Loki, not with cosmic power, but with all the gumption of an inspirational new teacher with just the right energy to capture the imaginations of these reluctant, jaded kids.
Like any unorthodox lecturer trying to save our students, he’s there to make them think, posing a real humdinger of a thought experiment. The two Lokis (Loci?) can either accept the evil they’ve been fighting to end, taking his place protecting the sacred timeline, or they can kill him as planned, unleashing untold evil across all existence as the single universe he’s curated fractures into a multiverse of…guano.
A villain need not lob superheated plasma or manipulate arcane forces to be immensely powerful, though. Cliches aside, knowledge is power. Temporally downstream from his adversaries, HWR evaded their skillful attacks with ease. His knowledge produced machinery virtually indistinguishable from magic and a bureaucracy that treats the most cataclysmic MacGuffins as mere paperweights.
Our society, too, has knowledge that approaches magic. We routinely float tons of metal on thin air and transmit information through the ether, yet we cannot seem to get along to literally save our lives. Free will, the choice every individual makes every moment of every day, eventually brings some of us into conflict. Attempts to mitigate conflict, whether by kings, parliaments, presidents, or even well meaning Timecops will inevitably run afoul of free will.
Try as they might, such authorities cannot suppress free will. Attempts to sideline it, to minimize potential for bad decisions, only necessitate even worse ones. Instead of the eventuality of bad actors and the grief they cause, we have actions every bit as bad but with the added injury of sanctimony and forfeiture of protection for those who don’t fall in line. Instead of potential wasted in addiction, lives scarred by prostitution, families ruined by both, we have the same lost to prison and the violence that accompanies illicit trades.
Instead of Kang the Conqueror wreaking havoc across an otherwise functional multiverse, we have He Who Remains aborting entire universes to spare them the pain of living. Instead of the brutal regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban we have drone strikes and insurgencies, Isis and… the Taliban.
So what are a couple of narcissists to do? Depose the dictator and brave the fallout? Take his place and become dictators themselves? Is either course ethical?
Mundane as their big bad turned out to be, he was all the more daunting for it. Few bat an eye when the good guys assemble to take down a Hitler or a Thanos, but when taking out the villain comes with so much potential baggage, maybe just sitting it out is the way to go. After all, when national populists and libertarians agree on policy, maybe there’s something to it.
This option is no less fraught with suffering and danger, however. The standard critique of non interventionalism may be well worn, but its overused for a reason. Technology being what it is, the Kangs, Hitlers, Maos, & Stalins of the world have a bigger sandbox to play in, a larger footprint across which to spread their influence. A super power vacuum exists that tyrants are just itching to fill, and allowing them to do so, to consolidate strength while we rest on our laurels is as much a recipe for eventual conflict as CIA tinkering.
Surely the lessons learned from the last century of global politics can inform our decisions now, though, right? Surely the answer to today’s dilemma with Ukraine and Russia is somewhere in there. Stop Hitler. Avoid a quagmire. Tolerate the devil you know. Contain communism. Odin, god of the heavens. Asgard, mystical realm beyond the stars. Frost giants…If you think too hard about any of it, it sounds kinda ridiculous. Existence is chaos. Nothing makes any sense, so we try to make some sense of it.
History has plenty to teach us from what has happened but we have no way of knowing if other paths would’ve turned out any better. Ultimately none of us know what will happen no matter what lesson we implement. We’re all just like Mobius, clinging to what we want to believe and plowing forward with blind faith.
Mobius found his glorious purpose as a pencil pushing Timecop. Loki looked for his on a throne only to hesitate when the greatest throne this side of heaven was offered. He found new purpose in seeing himself in another, in his case quite literally. He realized that ascending to the throne is just the beginning, and it only gets harder from there; that even kings and conquerors are just people trying, and often failing, to make the best decision; that when authorities rationalize away an action’s blatant immorality by claiming some transcendent knowledge of a greater good, the collateral damage has a way of coming back to prove just how mundane and mortal those authorities are.
However things play out in Ukraine, some will claim it had to be that way, that they knew it would happen, that whatever fallout comes from America’s action or inaction could’ve been avoided if we had just listened to them. They’ll claim that a tyrant was destined to invade his neighbor or intervention was destined to end in disaster. They’ll throw free will under the bus just as surely as the TVA did, just to say I told you so, and their disregard for that unstoppable force will be just as be just as ineffective at diminishing its ubiquitous effects.
Invasions or retaliations are predictable, not because it’s who tyrants or terrorists are. They’re tyrants and terrorists because they choose to invade and retaliate. The choices we make to protect our sacred timeline from these threats likewise go a long way to making us who we are. Plodding along with one size foreign policy fits all blinders on, pursuing the glorious purpose of this political stripe or that, we might as well be on a rail.
America’s glorious purpose isn’t to be a tolerable evil to stave off greater threats. We should stamp out evil wherever we encounter it, especially in ourselves. Our glorious purpose isn’t to hunker down, let the world tear itself apart, and hope our defenses hold when the front eventually gets to us. We need not go looking for trouble, but we shouldn’t shrink from it when it finds us, and if we make a mess of things, we shouldn’t walk away unless we can reliably leave things better than we found them. We needn’t be of the world, but we can’t pretend we don’t live in it. Our glorious purpose is to be that shining city on a hill, not just in the prosperity of a free people, but in the fortitude to pursue the moral course especially when it’s not easy. Not to have a static policy to always or never intervene, but to judge each situation on its own, to withhold from sins and sins of omission alike.