As a child I often imagined myself a superhero. I would
eventually put away this fantasy, but as the years passed the idea of a solid
origin story and a mysterious super power continued to weigh heavy on my mind.
This did not pan out, however. Besides having the very dull ability to eat food
past its “due date,” I am, unfortunately, very normal.
My own lack of a mutant healing factor, however, never
stopped me from reading about the exploits of more gifted heroes such as
Captain America and Spider Man. Hundreds of hours (and dollars) were spent
collecting comic books during my adolescence. In fact, had the Marvel Cinematic
Universe dropped into the culture two decades earlier, it’s unlikely I would
have even found the time to get married.
This sounds stupid, perhaps, but the reality is I put in a
lot of hours throughout the 1990s honing the skills needed to make me a keepable husband. Had my attention
instead been focused on those dazzling big-screen adventures, my own life story
would have likely followed a much lonelier route. Fortunately, by the
time Disney+ came out a few years ago, saturated as it is with more MCU and
Lucasfilm content than even I can reasonably digest, I was already married with
children, and thus all I needed to do was grab the remote and start the cycle
all over again.
One particular series that the whole family looked forward
to last summer was “Loki.” Now, this show is so complicated and full of comic
lore and allusions to the larger MCU that it would take days to
truly unpack its relevance. For the sake of this column, then, let’s just say this
series is about the importance of becoming yourself.
In the series, Loki, who is technically a bad guy, disrupts
“the Sacred Timeline” by being, well, bad. This causes problems and produces
what is known as a variant of himself to exist outside the “official” flow of
cosmic history. The show then spends the next five episodes exploring that concept
as Loki meets and often battles his own variants hiding out in multiple
timelines.
Admittedly, it’s a lot.
It’s interesting, though, too, because it begs the
question, “Might there be variants of myself, for example, years down the
road, existing - or not - based on actions and decisions I make today?”
That heavy concept then forces us to ask other questions:
“If I keep doing what I’m doing, will I simply become an older variant of my
current self? Or, even worse, if I double down on some bad habits, might I
someday devolve into an ‘alligator man,’ grumpy and unhealthy and ready to snap?"
Once we have some miles on us, it’s easy to see how
past events do influence our present reality, and this reflection is not always
pleasant. Regrets are part of life, however, and anyone who claims to have none
is either a liar or dangerously unobservant. Fortunately, our understanding of
time flows both ways, and thus we can ask a third question, “If I step up now,
develop some good habits and behave like this particular Loki, of all pretend
people, might I become a version of myself unexpected - the redeemed hero?”
Spring is a good time for origin stories. Easter is a good
time to think about sacrificial heroes and retconning ourselves into something nobler.
Early in his ministry, for example, Jesus called Simon “Peter” not because
Peter was behaving solid at the time but because Jesus knew his potential.
Jesus understood what Simon would eventually become - the rock. Although
impulsive and a bit unreliable throughout much of the Gospels, Peter became one
of the founding fathers of the early church, the bedrock apostle, just as
Jesus had proclaimed years before.
It might seem a strange segue to move from a discussion of
a Marvel supervillain to a Biblical hero, but both stories emphasize an
important truth - if you’re alive, your story isn’t over. God has work for you.
Today is perfectly suited for a reboot, regardless of your timeline.
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