". . . stepping off your path created a Nexus event, which, if left unchecked, could branch off into madness, leading to another multiversal war."
--Miss Minutes, Loki (season one, episode one)
The Time Variance Authority, or TVA, makes it first appearance in the MCU in Loki, with the titular character finding himself brought to a special set of offices in a detached part of reality where humanoid beings keep track of "variants," or different versions of people who disrupt a timeline by making an event the TVA opposes occur. Loki himself drew their attention by taking the Tesseract as seen in Endgame. Because his actions could lead to events the TVA has not "ordained," he must be removed. His conversations with Agent Mobius lead him to talk of people outside the TVA as if they have mo free will because it is the TVA that intervenes to ensure a specific set of events happen in a given timeline. However, it does not matter whether foreknowledge is possessed by God or some other being like the enigmatic Timekeepers (if they exist) or their TVA agents. In either case, merely seeing the future does not causally impact anything in the future at all. Loki has so far sidestepped this logical fact.
Ironically, WandaVision made it as clear as it could through dialogue and in certain scenes that Wanda was forcing people to act against their wills, something the people of Westview were very aware of, and yet characters in Loki talk as if everyone the TVA observes in other timelines (the idea that the TVA is outside of time is blatantly untrue, as moments elapse and events occur inside the offices) has no freedom to make uncoerced decisions. The TVA would never have to correct any timeline in the first place if they were truly in direct control of people's wills, as opposed to just having the ability to intervene and reset certain events. Manipulating or hindering people after they have already done something is not a nullification of free will. This is instead an indirect admission that the TVA is either not able to override people's individual wills or they choose not to--the only other option is extremely unlikely, that being that the TVA overrides free will in beings outside of the organization and makes them distort timelines just so they have something to do.
There is no evidence for this and much evidence to the contrary. Either way, for anyone to say or think that oversight of a timeline means the beings in that timeline have no free will is highly irrational. Observation is not causation (except in some hypothetical idealist metaphysics where perception literally causes matter to exist, but even that has nothing at all to do with free will). Whether a certain outcome is dictated by beings with greater power than humans and the other human-like beings of the MCU has no bearing on whether the inhabitants of a timeline are making their own choices without being knowingly or unknowingly forced to think, believe, and act exactly as they have.
An apocalyptic event like those discussed in Loki might happen with or without the free choices of many people. For example, if a volcano is going to erupt and destroy ancient Pompeii, as is depicted in the second episode, free choices by humans will not change that. Free will does not mean one's thoughts and will can freely direct actions that can in turn prevent every unwanted catastrophe in the external world. This is an asinine misrepresentation that has somehow become popular both in entertainment and in the arbitrary beliefs of non-rationalists. Will and action do not mean one can do anything that is logically possible (anything that does not contradict reason or itself, which includes many possibilities beyond human control) or stop nature or God or some other thing from making an event happen whether you like it or not.
Loki dances all around the true nature of free will by making it seem as if will depends on physical circumstances rather than will being a mental/phenomenological part of a being's mind and outside events being potentially uncontrollable circumstances. A person's will is thus not free or determined by outside forces based on whether certain natural or supernatural events occur. It is free if a person is capable of making choices without being forced to--not in the sense of a situation or person narrowing a person's range of possible actions. Since the ability to grasp reason and use it would be an illusion if free will of some kind did not exist, as knowledge would be impossible because no thoughts would be voluntary, proving that one has free will is as sime as proving that logical axioms and one's own consciousness are absolutely certain.
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