Marvel’s ‘Loki’: The TVA Resembles ‘The Umbrella Academy’s Commission; Who Did Time Travel First?
The Umbrella Academy fans who tune in to Loki on Disney+ might notice something familiar. Both Loki and the Netflix series The Umbrella Academy deal with time travel agencies. So who did the whole time travel agency thing first — Marvel or The Umbrella Academy universe?
[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for the Loki series premiere.]
‘Loki’ TVA explained
The Disney+ series begins with Loki (Tom Hiddleston) getting apprehended by the Time Variance Authority (TVA). Loki manages to escape the Avengers using the tesseract, all while violating the “Sacred Timeline.”
TVA guards bring him back to the main facility through a portal where Loki learns more about the TVA. Lead by the celestial Time Keepers, the TVA’s goal is to maintain the correct timelines.
As Loki learns in an informational video, there was once a battle of timelines that nearly destroyed existence. To bring order to the Multiverse and prevent the end of the world, the TVA carefully monitors variants and eliminates those that could disrupt the sacred timeline, such as Loki.
‘The Umbrella Academy’ Season 2 gives fans a look inside the Temps Commission
Like the TVA in Loki, The Umbrella Academy features a time control agency called The Temps Commission. The fictional organization’s purpose is to oversee and manage the space-time continuum. If this sounds familiar, it’s because The Umbrella Academy features a similar organization.
The Temps Commission ensures events that are supposed to happen do happen. Like the TVA’s employees, The Commission uses agents who travel through time to eliminate threats to the timeline. Number Five (Aidan Gallagher) works for The Commission for a brief time in the series, and their agents are some of the main antagonists in season 2.
New ‘Loki’ series TVA came before ‘The Umbrella Academy’s Temps Commission
Fans in the Umbrella Academy Reddit thread shared a meme of Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) copying the man next to him. In the meme, Mr. Bean symbolizes the MCU, while the person he’s copying represents The Umbrella Academy, whose paper reads: “50s era desk job bureaucratic police.”
While the TVA shares some similarities to The Umbrella Academy’s Commission in both appearance and purpose, there’s a history behind Marvel’s time police. “The comic TVA is pretty cool, honestly,” says another fan. “[The] Mobius character [pays] homage to the writer who worked at Marvel to maintain timeline cohesiveness in the comics.”
Some Umbrella Academy fans think the MCU copied the work, which was first released as a comic in 2007. In reality, Marvel did it first. According to one fan on Reddit, the MCU came up with the first iteration of “time police.” The first mention of the TVA is in the September 1986 issue of Thor (Vol 1, Issue: #371).
“TVA has been a thing since 1986,” another fan on Reddit clarifies. “I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about Marvel copying Umbrella Academy when that should be switched around.”
The Umbrella Academy Season 3 has yet to confirm a release date for the new season, but stay tuned to Showbiz Cheat Sheet for updates. Meanwhile, you can stream new episodes of Loki every Wednesday on Disney+.
