Well, Marvel’s Loki certainly tried to say... something. If it hadn’t been so busy trying to set up the plot for Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe then perhaps we could have gotten a story that was more about — well, Loki. However, there is still material in there that is worth analyzing through some Foucauldian theory, because who doesn’t love a bit of Foucault? Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French philosopher, thinker, and overall smart person. The theory he developed helped many academics across multiple disciplines understand the nature of power. Foucault identifies different types of power, among them knowledge. According to Wikipedia, “Knowledge/power... compares individuals, measures differences, establishes a norm and then forces this norm onto subjects.” Basically, knowledge or power is used to figure out individuals and their behavior, and their differences and similarities from other people. Then this set of characteristics and behaviors are projected onto the rest of the population as what constitutes ‘normal.’ The gathering of knowledge and intelligence (through disciplinary mechanisms such as surveillance, prisons, and, in the case of Loki, the TVA), is a significant part of the formation of what is ‘normal’. We can find an elaboration of this idea in Panopticism, a theory through which Foucault explains the origin of disciplinary mechanisms and how they work.
Panopticism refers to the panopticon. Invented by Jeremy Bentham, it is a round architectural structure with a tower in the middle that allows for constant surveillance of the people within. Foucault spoke of the panopticon as a prison, although theoretically it could have also been used to control “schoolchildren, medical patients or workers.” In Loki, the MCU introduces the existence of the Time Variance Authority (TVA), which is tasked with maintaining order in a prescribed timeline known as the ‘Sacred Timeline,’ throughout the universe. They have access to every moment in every part of the universe and can ‘reset timelines’ if something or someone branches out of the Sacred Timeline. It is probably not a coincidence that the TVA headquarters was filmed in the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, a building which resembles the panopticon. Nexus events are events that break away from the Sacred Timeline and are therefore purged by the TVA. Those who cause nexus events are labeled ‘Variants,’ and are ‘pruned’ (banished to a place at the end of time to be devoured by a time and space-eating creature).
The TVA was nominally created to protect ‘our’ universe from other universes that want to conquer and destroy it. However, this protection essentially turns into oppression, as everyone in the universe is stripped of free will. Foucault writes, “Behind the disciplinary mechanisms can be read the haunting memory of ‘contagions’, of the plague, of rebellions, crimes, vagabondage, desertions, people who appear and disappear, live and die in disorder”. In Loki, this chaos is clearly characterized by nexus events — which is what the TVA is constantly on the lookout for. For Foucault, chaos is understood to be what brought society to develop disciplinary mechanisms; he saw plagues (in their many deadly incarnations throughout history) as the birth of disciplinary mechanisms such as differentiation, individualization, and organization of surveillance and control within communities, the way nexus events led to the creation of the TVA. But what Foucault is getting at is the power these disciplinary methods have after they are established and taken for granted. He says that, due to these disciplinary methods people now live and function “according to a double mode; that of binary division and branding ([for example] mad/sane; dangerous/harmless; normal/abnormal).” In Loki, as a disciplinary mechanism the TVA is guilty of perpetrating this binary division, organizing people into non-variants/variants and existence into variant timelines/the ‘Sacred Timeline.’ Supposedly established as a means to end chaos and violence, the violence the TVA enacts on ‘Variants’ and on people’s free will is equally dangerous.
Whether intentionally or not, Loki takes this little bit of Foucauldian theory and plays with it. He Who Remains, the man revealed to be behind the TVA and the organizing of the Sacred Timeline, can see everything and knows everything that has happened, (almost everything) that will happen, and can rearrange events if he wishes. This is what Foucault calls panopticism. Panopticism is a model of disciplinary mechanism that “lays down for each individual his place, his body, his disease and his death, his well-being, by means of an omnipresent and omniscient power that subdivides itself in a regular, uninterrupted way even to the ultimate determination of the individual, of what characterizes him, of what belongs to him, of what happens to him.” We can see this exact mechanism take place in the show. He Who Remains is that omnipresent and omniscient power that subdivides itself into the TVA, carrying out disciplinary projects in an uninterrupted way (exemplified by the retro-bureaucratic style of the TVA timekeeping operations). And all the employees of the TVA, who themselves are also unknowingly Variants, are ultimately determined and characterized as individuals by their duty to the TVA. For instance, for the better part of the show, Mobius, played by Owen Wilson, is utterly convinced of who he is (an agent of the TVA created by the mythical Time Keepers) and where he belongs (with the TVA, doing the bidding of the Time Keepers for the greater good), etc.. And of course, the TVA headquarters itself resembles a panopticon, with its round architectural structure. Where Loki and all his variant selves represent those who our disciplinary mechanisms can’t contain (and therefore, those who the disciplinary mechanisms criminalize), the TVA and its agents represent Foucault’s metaphorical panopticon -- the prison through which everyone is subjected to the power and control of a supreme authority.
Even though the Loki series was used mostly as a springboard for the future of the MCU, it does deal with the question of disciplinary power and the potential consequences of that power. Loki might have originally been a villain, but the show asks us to consider if the hero/villain binary is also a product of panoptical discipline and a consequence of its violence, and if we are willing to subject ourselves to the panoptical power that characterizes mass surveillance.