The real reason: The TVA aren’t the same thing they were in Loki anymore.

The TVA agents weren’t aware of it, but the “Sacred Timeline” was really just any timeline that doesn’t produce a Kang variant. This episode’s universe ceases to exist a thousand years before Nathaniel Richards would even be born, so it doesn’t concern He Who Remains, because it wouldn’t lead to another Kang.

I also think it’s a thing where once not-Kang (he wasn’t Kang, per se) was killed and the multiverse regrew, in those universes they were always there, if that makes sense.  

You asked about other meta-cameos, and I thought immediately that the dragon Bad Strange ate that looked exactly like a certain other role he’d voiced had to have been one.

Yeah. It seems this Strange wasn’t an asshole like “our” Strange.

I think all these alternate universes sprung into existence ‘after’ the death of Kang. (After is a bit of a rubbery concept here - I think of it that there was just the one timeline but then after Kang was killed, previously ‘suppressed’ branchpoints ‘upstream’ can start growing again. Kind of like chemotherapy when…

One of my favorite themes of time travel stories is that trauma isn’t absolutely bad/awful/evil, if you wind up doing something productive with it. Weirdly, I watched this week’s Legends of Tomorrow shortly before this, and that dealt with the same thing (if Spooner didn’t have a fucked-up childhood she wouldn’t have…

There’s so many things in Ragnarok that get me every time.

i’m gonna throw in a dark horse ‘best line’ and say it’s in iron man 3:

Yes, finally! What If…? goes total downer ending, like it’s supposed to. Easily my favourite episode so far.

In this What If…? reality, though, Strange decides to invite Rachel McAdams’ Dr. Christine Palmer to the event...

I’m quite partial to

The best joke in the MCU is the part in The Avengers when Cap shows up and starts barking orders at the cops, and the surly lead cop says, “Why the hell should I take orders from you?!” Then a group of Chitauri attacks, and Cap takes them all out in seconds, and the lead cop, without missing a beat, gets on the radio…

Haha I’m now imagining all the various stupid ways Strange loses the uses of his hands.

It does make sense, and I spent most of the episode being annoyed at how the concept of What-If universes and the concept of the timelines here (which are probably not even the same kind of timelines as in Loki...probably?) do not work well together.

It was more that it was the inciting incident for Strange to become the Sorcerer Supreme, save their reality from Dormammu and learn time magic in the first place.

It stopped me for a second too, but I finally decided that this universe had Christine dying as an Absolute Point.

The “main” universe probably had Strange losing the use of his hands at that point. Imagine Main Strange doing the same thing, only signaling, taking different route, paying attention to road instead of…

The only thing that confused me about this episode, was the premise that Christine was supposed to die. Yes I know this is a What If universe, but in our (sacred?) timeline Christine doesn’t die, so it’s not like she HAS to die.

“He uses his turn signal while driving? They still crash. He takes a different route? Still crash. He lets her drive? They crash. They skip the event and get pizza? She gets shot by a mugger. He decides to not pick her up at all? Her house explodes.”

I’m so excited that Supergirl cast a real life superhero along with its fictional ones. Tom Jackson has been my definition of a superhero for decades and he’s far more impressive than anyone DC ever cooked up. He’s an actor, singer, university president, and mostly a philanthropist. At 16 he was living on the streets…