Loki, Sylvie, and the End of the World in Loki Episode #3

Loki’s finally come face to face with himself – or has he? The Variant that the TVA has been hunting down calls herself Sylvie, and clearly wants nothing to do with the Loki name. A mad scramble and a ruined plan leaves the two on a moon on the verge of an apocalypse, and the only hope they have of getting out alive is learning to work together.

Clearly, they’re doomed.

Armaan Babu: I had one worry for this episode – that our newly revealed Variant would disappear and we wouldn’t get answers from her for another several episodes. I was half wrong about that – we get a delightful episode’s worth of getting to know Sylvie – but any answers she has, she’s keeping close to the chest.

As evasive as she was, we got some very engaging back-and-forth between her and the Loki we know, and I’m looking forward to some engaging back-and-forth myself. I’m happy to welcome CXF and WWAC writer Zoe Tunnell to this week’s column. Hi! How did you enjoy this episode?

Zoe Tunnell: I liked it! Loki has really surprised me so far, we’re now halfway through and it’s avoided falling into the MCU-ification trap that other seemingly distinct, exciting projects typically do. It’s still weird. It’s still charming. It’s still shockingly character-work heavy, and this episode especially given the spotlight on Loki and Sylvie with pretty much no one else around to draw focus. I’ve got some complaints and concerns (mostly with Sylvie) but overall it was a really great entry in a show that’s on its way to being one of the best parts of the MCU, for me.

Armaan: I’m happy you’re happy! Let’s plunge in, like an imaginary dagger being thrust into the heart of a bad metaphor!

A Killer First Impression

Armaan: We begin with a bit of a Sylvie showcase. There have been a lot of jokes made about this Variant being a superior version of the Loki we know and love, but it appears that there’s more to the joke than a play on Loki’s insecurity. Sylvie has magics – or, rather, enchantments – that Loki could only seem to accomplish with the help of a Tesseract-powered staff. But enchantment and memory-modified interrogations aren’t the only tricks Sylvie has up her sleeve, as we’re treated to some very impressive fight scenes showing her ruthlessly taking down TVA agents.

Zoe: The hallway fight where she is just rebounding off walls and murdering her way through the TVA was cool as hell! That girl can FIGHT. I appreciate her being distinct from Loki in not just the obvious ways- she’s a lady, enchantment, etc. – but also in that she’s just a better, more ruthless fighter. Loki will stab someone in the back to get out of a room, Sylvie won’t leave anyone left standing.

Armaan: As we’ll see through the episode, she’s very single minded, and has no time for a Loki who, by all appearances, is inept enough to be working with the TVA. As frustrating as it is that she doesn’t just spill her secrets out in an impressively scored monologue, it’s easy to see why she doesn’t just trust Loki – she’s got no respect for him whatsoever.

Our Loki, though, has been more or less in chains since 2012’s Avengers defeated him, and Sylvie is looking a lot like the key to his escape. Frustrating him, she shows no interest in being an ally, but Loki’s flexible – the device she’s been using to hop around apocalypses takes the two to a doomed moon. Lamentis-1 is where we spend the rest of our episode, a largely barren moon suffused with gorgeous purples from its skies, where hangs a planet that’s about to fall down onto it, crushing everything.

Zoe: What a RAD setting for an episode! While the TVA is this mind-bending 70s inspired sci-fi bureaucracy, Lamentis-1 is the first burst of full-bore space adventure antics and I loved it. The overwhelming purples, the western-tinged outfits and motifs, the constant barrage of increasingly large meteors plummeting from the planet that’s about to doom everyone. It’s just a hell of a set piece, visually and tonally, and I love it to bits.

It also helps maintain the character-heavy focus from the previous two episodes as the desolate badlands and frightened townsfolk of Lamentis-1 leave Loki and Sylvie with little else to do than talk to each other for most of the episode. While the bickering banter is delightful, Hiddleston and Di Martino have an immediate chemistry as frenemies, the quieter more introspective moments were what really won me over. God, the scene where Loki sang a sad Asgardian folk song nearly broke my damn heart.

What Is Love? (Baby Don’t Hurt Me)

Armaan: More than glorious purpose, Loki seems to desperately be on the hunt for someone he can open up to. It’s what made his scenes with Mobius work so well last episode, and here – despite the fact that Sylvie seemingly wants nothing to do with the Loki name – he finds someone he can talk to about himself, undoubtedly his favorite subject in the world.

What gets me, though, is the point where he really opens up, the point where the two really start to connect. It’s the moment Loki starts talking about his mother.

I thought it was interesting, last episode, that this Variant looked a lot more Like Freyja than anyone else. I thought there was a reason for that – and there still might be, but Sylvie quickly brushes aside any talk about her own fleeting memories of Freyja, instead focusing on Loki’s own memories of her.

What do you think, does Sylvie care more about her adopted mother than she lets on?

Zoe: I feel like there’s definitely more going on there than she’s letting on. But that’s also where my concerns start to mount. We know a handful of details at this point: Sylvie has been on the run from the TVA for most of her life. She knew she was adopted long before Loki did. She barely remembers her mother. And she was once referred to as Loki but doesn’t identify with that name anymore.

If this were any company other than the Walt Disney Corporation I would honestly say we’re on our way to a trans narrative. We’ve got all the pieces in place and it just makes perfect sense. But it’s Disney. The same Disney that scrapped an in-production Nimona film. The Disney that moved queer programming off of Disney+ as it was deemed “too adult”. The Disney that took until this very episode, a total of 13 years, for a major, named queer MCU character.

Yes, this episode confirms Loki (and Sylvie!) is bisexual. Not through action, sadly, but by having Loki verbalize his romantic history as including men and women. It’s definitely something that caught me by surprise, but doesn’t do much to assuage my fears that Sylvie and Loki are going to be two distinct people, perhaps just sharing a name, and neither one are actually genderfluid or transgender.

Armaan: You’re right that Disney’s got a terrible track record with this kind of thing. I feel, though, that between Sylvie specifically saying, “That’s not who I am anymore” (emphasis mine) when the subject of being Loki comes up. Between that, and introducing her as the Variant, wearing very recognizable Loki clothes – if they’re making the case that they’re two different people, the show is really making it hard on itself for that reveal.

One of the other key points of their conversation – the one that confirms their bisexuality – is about love. This reads very much as a setup for a late season callback. Their views on love are deeply telling. Sylvie offers up the idea that love is hate, and there certainly seems to be a lot of hatred being held inside her. For her past, for the time-keepers, for Loki – hate as love is how you get obsession, and her single-mindedness seems to be her biggest defining feature.

Loki, on the other hand, has nothing for love but a clumsy metaphor. He delays his answer, he comes up with something that tries to be poetic and clever but fails. There’s been so much insecurity in his life, and so much self-inflicted pain – love leaves him stumped. The MCU keeps finding new ways to make my heart go out to this god, it’s too much.

Zoe: This poor, sad, backstabbing God of Mischief breaks my heart. I was honestly wary of this show starring a Loki circa The Avengers as I loved his character arc through Infinity War and didn’t want to lose who he eventually became.

Little did I know they were much smarter than I am and instead focused on what would happen to a Loki who got to see the man he would eventually become, and die as, but without any or the actual lived experiences. The result? An utterly broken mess of a man who knows he CAN be a better version of himself, and be loved, but no real idea of how he’s going to do it. The flailing cries for help to Sylvie, random passersby and even Mobius in the last episode, draped in layers of smarm and bravado are just painful in the best way. The entire scene where he willfully sabotages their escape attempt so he can be the center of attention, the only place he still feels at home, was *chef kiss* perfection.

Putting the Lament in Lamentis-1

Armaan: Of all the Loki variants we’ve seen, this Loki is the one who’s closest to the sacred timeline – and he’s a mess. He’s a very direct foil to all of Sylvie’s plans, over, and over, and over again, because while all Sylvie can see is the mission, all Loki can see is himself – even in a herself who wants nothing to do with him.

Their plan is ruined because, as you said, he needs to be the center of attention. This leads us to a much more desperate plan – hijacking the ark and making sure it leaves Lamentis-1, changing its original doomed fate. Time’s running out, though, and we’re treated to an absolutely thrilling closing action sequence, with Loki and Sylvie fighting through guards and crumbling neon infrastructure trying to get the ark in time – this was a blast.

Zoe: You could REALLY feel that absurd Disney+ budget in this final bit. While not the same exact one-shot directorial flex, I got major Children of Men vibes from the whole affair. Especially with all the little flashes of Lamentian citizens just cowering in fear as Loki and Sylvie try to navigate a world literally falling apart around them. And what a gutsy ending! That kind of grim, sudden cliffhanger ending isn’t something I was expecting from this specific largely comedy heavy show. We know Loki and Sylvie make it out of this somehow, but that doesn’t take away from the shot of Hiddleston with just every ounce of fight draining out of him as the ark bursts into flame. Good as hell.

Armaan: Or Hel, even.

So, since I don’t know if you’ll be coming back to this column – how are you feeling about Loki so far, and what are your hopes or worries for what’s yet to come?

Zoe: I’m loving it, really. I’m a huge fan of Loki, as a character. Loki: Agent of Asgard is one of my most dearly loved Marvel runs and as a perennial sucker for charismatic tricksters he is just a rogue after my own heart. Loki, the show, has won me over not just because it has a fascinating take on its lead, but because it approaches every aspect of its bizarre premise and nuances with a sense of genuine fun and inventiveness that a lot of MCU properties never really shoot for.

That said, I’m still not holding my breath for them to handle anything with Loki’s genderfluidity, or Sylvie potentially being trans, period, let alone with tact. I know they have all the pieces on the table to do it at this point, but I just have zero confidence they’ll do anything with them. If it took 13 years to get a dang bisexual man in the MCU, I don’t see a trans or genderfluid character being something Disney would sign off on anytime soon. Even as we gain more acceptance, trans and non-binary/genderfluid folks are near the bottom of the Mass Media acceptability ladder. There are more drag queens on TV than actual trans folks. And if there’s one thing Disney won’t do, it’s rock the Mass Marketability of anything they do.

Still loving the show! Just not getting my hopes up.

Armaan: Hope seems to be in short supply on this show, but it remains a highly enjoyable watch. Thank you for joining me this week!

Next week, we find out how Loki and Sylvie make a seemingly impossible escape – but there’s no telling what happens after that!

Timely Variant Afterthoughts

Somewhere, out there, there’s a Sacred Timeline Mobious living his Fate-ordained life. Hopefully, he gets to jet-ski.
So wait, Loki has telekinesis if he needs it? That seems new!
That bit has me wondering if it was all an illusion! That was a BIG building he casually threw.
I wondered about the illusion thing as well, but Sylvie’s limitations are that she can only work with people’s memories, and Loki’s never been to Lamentis-1. Then again…she could have been lying about her limits, too.