Owen Wilson plays the role of TVA agent Mr. Mobius M. Mobius, faithful to the source by keeping that telltale mustache. But Mobius is more than just a comic character.
The Time Variance Authority was introduced by Walt Simonson in Thor #372 in 1986, but wasnt fully figured out as a concept until afterwards. Most notably, the group antagonized the Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom in Fantastic Four#352-354. Theyre meant to keep time travel under control and prevent paradoxes, but instead of being a rad setup of jacked, soldiers in colorful spandex begging for their own comic series, the TVA is essentially a bunch of boring, cosmic bureaucrats.
While the lowest level employees of the TVA are faceless goons, the middle-management folks are human-looking. In fact, they all look like the same human. More specifically, theyre made to look like Mark Gruenwald, a beloved Marvel writer/artist/editor known for his passion and endless knowledge of detailed Marvel history.
You want to make sense out of the multiverse and timeline malarky? Make a bunch of clones of the guy who can tell you what issue Luke Cage fought Mr. Fish without having to look it up. He was the guy writing The Official Marvel Handbook of the Universe and he was celebrated for being that guy.
Gruenwald was a major asset to Marvel back in the ’80s and ’90s. His lengthy run on Captain America gave us US Agent, Crossbones, Diamondback, and that amazing sequence where Magneto captured Red Skull and left him to die in a bunker. He also wrote Squadron Supreme, where he put together a deconstructing take on Marvels Justice League knockoff team, acting as Marvels contribution to the Dark Knight Returns and Watchmenvibes growing in ’80s comics.
He also did a 5-year run on Quasar, notably doing a weird issue where taking place sometime after the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths a blonde speedster in tattered, red tights showed up in Marvel and could only remember that his name sounded something like Buried Alien.