Spoilers for Loki (2021) and all works set prior to it are unmarked.
Sylvie Laufeydottir
"I want a life. I want to live. What's wrong with wanting something?"
Known Aliases: Loki, The Variant, L0852, L1190, "Randy"
Species: Asgardian
Citizenship: Asgardian (Variant)
Affiliation(s): Asgard (formerly)
Portrayed By: Sophia Di Martino, Cailey Fleming (young)
Voiced By: Mireya Mendoza (Latin American Spanish dub), Elisa Beuter (European Spanish dub), Mayumi Sako (Japanese dub), Jennifer Gouveia (Brazilian Portuguese dub)
Appearances: Loki
"I grew up in apocalypses, Loki. I've lived through enough of them to know that sometimes it's okay to destroy something."
A female variant of Loki, hell-bent on a crusade against the TVA to avenge the life that was taken from her, evading and slaughtering their Minutemen as she plots to discover the way to the chamber of the Time-Keepers within the TVA headquarters and kill them.
For her Sacred Timeline counterpart, see here.
For her L1130 variant, see here.
For her other variants, see here.
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A-H
- Action Girl: Gets into a lot of melees and almost always wins, as she physically overpowers her opponents one on one (it always takes at least 2 people to be able to hold Sylvie down, and even then it's a struggle).
- Adaptation Amalgamation: A fairly complicated mix. The concept of a female version of Loki primarily comes from when evil-616 Loki hijacked Lady Sif's body, and also the female form of his genderfluid God of Stories incarnation
(in 616, Loki has and is aware of multiple incarnations of himself that replace each other every time Ragnarok kills him and he must be reborn). Her name 'Sylvie' comes from Sylvie Lushton, a mortal girl who looked and had the power of Amora the Enchantress, who turned out to be an artificial creation by Loki primarily to amuse himself and annoy Amora. MCU Sylvie's powerset, moniker, and role as both a romantic love interest and someone being of similar personality to Loki come from Amora the Enchantress, who was presented in the 60s as being Loki's female equal in treachery and sometimes cohort in schemes. Their mutual attraction and pursuit of a romantic relationship were brought up even then◊, but both realized they were too similar and untrustworthy to make it work as they would just backstab each other. 50 real-world years later, they briefly became a couple when both became heroic due to magical morality inversion during the AXIS comic event, though the relationship did not last after the inversion ended. - Adaptational Dye-Job: Lady Loki in the comics kept her original incarnation's black hair. Since she's combined with Sylvie Lushton in this continuity, as a grown-up she is portrayed as a blonde. However, as a child, she is shown to have dark brown hair, so she must have dyed it.
- Adaptational Modesty: Played with. Her namesake the Enchantress and the form of Sif that evil Loki hijacked both had Stripperiffic outfits. Sylvie Lushton alternated having a regular Midgard outfit and something similar to Amora the Enchantress' outfit. The female form of the God of Stories Loki, who was also an inspiration for Sylvie, always wears the same outfit as her male form, which is a feather-collared jacket over a mail shirt and three-quarter pants. Sylvie generally displays less skin than all the aforementioned Lokis however. The only bare skin Sylvie displays is her fingers and head. It is still very much a Form-Fitting Wardrobe Distaff Counterpart to Loki's Ragnarok-period garb though.
- Alternate Species Counterpart: Sylvie's file states that she's Asgardian, not a Frost Giant like Loki, though she was still adopted. Perhaps in her timeline, Laufey the Frost Giant was King of Asgard?
- Always Someone Better: She is a much better fighter than Loki as he is unable to subdue her without killing her no matter how many times he tries with his timeslipping abilities.
- Affably Evil: Gives a little boy in 16th century France a pack of bubble gum to enjoy, after the boy watched Sylvie massacre the entire TVA unit she lured there. Subverted as she's not actually evil.
- All for Nothing: As with most Lokis, her "glorious purpose" ultimately doesn't bring her anything she really wanted. She ends season 1 having betrayed the Loki that actually cared about her to kill He Who Remains, which rather than making her happy leaves her sobbing on the ground. And meanwhile, it seems an infinite number of even worse variants of He Who Remains have indeed already started to step into the vacuum created by killing him.
- Alliterative Name: She was born as Loki Laufeydottir before changing her first name into Sylvie.
- Alternate Self: She is a female Alternate Universe version of Loki, who was told that she is adopted. The TVA captured her and erased her reality when she was a child who was playing and admiring the Valkyries. She stole a TemPad and fled before her trial. Sylvie changed her name and has been hiding in apocalypses, killing TVA agents and stealing their reset charges for a very long time.
- Alternative-Self Name-Change:
- She rejects being called "Loki." She took the name Sylvie when going on the run from the TVA, and kept it.
- When she first sees Loki, she asks to be called "Randy" after seeing a nametag from a person she possessed. "Randy" is a relatively common nickname in America, being a diminutive of "Randall", but you'll find very few Randys elsewhere, especially in the UK, since "randy" is old slang for "aggressively horny". Not only does Loki take it as a childish insult, but it could also be a punny reference to the horns and attitude common to most Lokis!
- Always Someone Better: "The Variant" plays her up as a much more capable, intelligent version of Loki, with the TVA considering her far more of a threat and the male Loki being completely unable to match her in their first encounter. This is subsequently downplayed in the next episode, however, where Loki manages to get one over on her almost immediately after this. It is also shown that while her enchantment is powerful, it happens to be the only magic she knows due to having to learn it on her own.
- Ambiguous Situation:
- In the finale, Sylvie says that she was pruned before Loki even existed. Does she mean, "existed as a Variant" or was she born before him and Thor and had a different backstory?
- Her ID in the TVA files Loki looks through in "The Variant" is L0852, however, her ID in the script He Who Remains shows her in the finale is L1190. Is it a Series Continuity Error, or were there several Sylvies?
- Was she assigned female at birth, or did she use gender-bending magic at an early age to give herself a feminine body?
- Who were her parents? What was her family like? While Laufey was definitely in the picture somehow (given her surname is Laufeydottir), Sylvie's TVA file gives her species as Asgardian, not Frost Giant like Loki rather traumatically discovered about himself. She also knew she was adopted all along and didn't carry any angst over it, and her mother died early in her childhood. She never mentions a Thor in her life, either. Was Sylvie perhaps adopted from Odin by an alternate-universe Laufey who was King of Asgard, in an inverse of Loki's situation?
- What was her nexus event? Sylvie can't figure out what she did wrong as a child to cause the TVA to destroy her entire life, and Ravonna Renslayer claims not to remember what it was. The brief glimpse we're given of Sylvie's childhood, when she was still Loki, Princess of Asgard, suggests her "crime against the timeline" was simply being too well-adjusted and showing too many signs of growing up to become a physically-inclined hero who would have fought to defend Asgard and not a sly, resentful Anti-Villain like Loki is "supposed" to be. We see her playing a game with her toys where she acts out a brave Valkyrie slaying a dragon that was imperiling Asgard, and that's when the TVA showed up to arrest her, but it's never clarified if that was a would-have-been definitive point for her personality or not— though of course, it ended up being the moment that turned her into the TVA's worst nightmare.
- Anti-Hero: She opposes the TVA because they suppress free will and kill or brainwash Variants, so her intentions are pure. However, her methods are not — she's killed countless Variants who served the TVA, and she never acknowledges that her actions were far from benign or apologizes for that. She is also hell-bent on revenge and unable to see past it. Even when she finally moves on from her mission after killing He Who Remains by starting a mundane life in Broxton, Oklahoma, she's essentially a heroic version of a Retired Monster about it.
- Backseat Driver: When Mobius picks her up in the Void, she gives him advice on how to drive the car from the back seat not dissimilar to how main Loki did it to Thor in The Dark World.Mobius: God, you really are one of you.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: In "The Nexus Event," Sylvie and Loki have each other's backs when fighting the guards of the Time-Keepers.
- Battle Couple: Sylvie and Loki develop romantic feelings towards each other and fight both the guards on Lamentis-1 and the guards who protect the Time-Keepers together. They later combine their magical powers to enchant Alioth together.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: As Loki puts it, Sylvie tries to hit him all the time. They switch between fighting verbally and physically, vehemently denying they care for each other and awkwardly attempting to spit it out until Sylvie kisses him in the finale only to betray his trust and push him through the portal.
- Big Entrance: She loves them, proving she really is a Loki. She takes the time to set up dramatic reveals during her ambushes on the TVA. They're also quite telling for how she sees herself: her ambush in the Renaissance Fair is set to "Holding Out For a Hero", and she's even arguably right!
- Black-and-White Morality: She sees everyone around her either as an ally to help her on her mission or as an enemy to deal with, with little in-between, and she solves moral dilemmas by Cutting the Knot.
- Black Cloak: She wears a dark cloak with a large hood. It's spooky, especially at night and in the field with a lantern. She loses it in Shuroo on Lamentis-1 shortly before she tells her backstory to Loki, revealing that she was Good All Along, and never gets a new one.
- Blood Knight: Sylvie is more of a brawler who enjoys fighting and can be often seen smiling while doing it.
- Body Surf: She has the ability to not only "enchant" and control one person at a time, but also quickly switch the target she is possessing by making the previous victim touch the next one, the first one then drops unconscious to the floor.
- Brought Down to Badass: Her enchantment abilities do not work in the TVA realm. This does not stop her from fighting her way to the elevator through the guards with her bare hands and feet.
- Commonality Connection: Loki and Sylvie can't find any common ground when they discuss their names, goals, and methods. But they bond over memories of their mothers, their magic, and over both of them being bisexuals who were never in any serious relationship. After this, Sylvie falls asleep in Loki's presence, which she does not do around "untrustworthy" people.
- Composite Character: She is both this and Decomposite Character. She is a combination of Lady Loki and Sylvie Lushton (the second Enchantress). Both she and L1130 refer to her powers as "enchantment" within the show.
- Cop Killer: She has been killing TVA Hunters and Minutemen and stealing their reset charges to enact her revenge.
- Create Your Own Villain: The TVA abducted Sylvie for no apparent cause other than that she had a life in which she was well-adjusted and quite possibly destined not to break bonds with her family - or, worse, in which she presented as female, unlike Sacred Timeline Loki and literally every other variant we've seen. This act causes her to develop into the most ruthless and cunning temporal fugitive the TVA has ever faced and ultimately the one who ends up causing a multiversal war.
- Crippling Overspecialization: While her enchantments are powerful, they're the only magic she knows due to being self-taught, and she relies much more on her sword and hand-to-hand combat skill (unlike the main Loki, who tends to mix and match both in a fight depending on the situation). As a result, while she initially has the upper hand against Loki, once he gets her measure she's careful to avoid a direct confrontation.
- Dark Action Girl: Just as much of a cunning fighter as the more familiar male versions of Loki.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Her costume is a dark forest green, and in low light, looks completely black. She initially appears to be a villain but turns out to be Good All Along.
- Deadpan Snarker: Her jabs can give Loki a run for his money, which leads to much Snark-to-Snark Combat between them.
- Decomposite Character: In the comics, "Lady Loki" is just the normal Loki taking female form, most notably when he possessed Lady Sif. Here, she's a timeline variant of the original Loki completely separate from his destiny and the current variant protagonist.
- Defiant Captive:
- Even as a small child who's just been through Kafkaesque TVA processing, she was defiant enough to bite Ravonna who was holding her, step on her foot, snatch the TemPad and escape.
- When she's left alone with Ravonna and TVA minutemen come after her, she ignores Ravonna's offer to spend her remaining days in a pleasant memory in a Time Cell. Instead, she takes her chances and prunes herself, not knowing for sure if she'll die or be reunited with Loki in the Void as Ravonna told her.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Sylvie initially reveals herself as a vengeful, hostile, and untrustworthy individual due to her traumatic childhood of being taken by the TVA and having her entire reality erased. But after meeting and surviving an apocalyptic event with Loki, she starts to open up and become warmer towards her male counterpart, even to the point of genuinely falling in love.
- Demonic Possession: Sylvie makes use of enchantment spells to take control of other people simply by touching them. She utilizes this to attack other Minutemen using one of their own and to mock L1130 by jumping from person to person and using their bodies to attack him. It appears to be limited to one person at a time, though she can still control her own body while also puppeting someone else. She also notes that with some people, it's effortless, but with those who are strong-willed, she has to concentrate, implying her own body might be vulnerable while possessing a person like that.
- Determinator: She's survived in countless apocalypses, and nothing can stop her from achieving her goal — not endless mooks, not a living Fog of Doom that has devoured entire realities, not even the loved one she'd have to abandon and betray. This is reflected in the wild boar's head with which her sword is decorated: wild boars are a symbol for power and perseverance because they fight back until their last breath.
- Deuteragonist: Of season 1, where she is the second character in terms of total screentime and the third one in terms of total word count. TVA's hunt for Sylvie and her quest to find the person behind the TVA and exact her revenge on him drives much of the plot.
- Didn't Think This Through: Literally. She refuses to take a minute to think about the consequences of her plan despite Loki begging her to do so, and she ends up killing He Who Remains out of revenge.
- Disc-One Final Boss: She's set up as the main antagonist in the first few episodes, but it quickly becomes apparent that the TVA is the true villain. Subverted somewhat in the finale, where she and Loki come into conflict again and their battle is the final showdown of the first season.
- Distaff Counterpart: Played with. Loki has his sex listed as "Fluid" in the TVA's files, but is referred to with masculine pronouns and looks male; Sylvie looks like a woman, is identified with feminine pronouns, and says that she was born a Goddess of Mischief.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": She tells Loki L1130 not to call her "Loki" and instead suggests he call her "Randy", after the guy she's currently puppeting. Loki takes this as the trolling it's meant to be. When pressed, she tells him to call her Sylvie, as she took the name when going on the run and came to like it.
- Emerald Power: Like other Lokis, she casts green magic, even though her magical skill set is completely different from that of her Sacred Timeline counterpart.
- Emotionally Tongue-Tied: Just like the main Loki, she struggles to find the words to express her feelings, because she's always been alone.Sylvie: I don't know how to do this. (...) I don't have... friends. I don't have... anyone.
- Everyone Has Standards: Even though Sylvie has killed many innocent people, and made her intentions to kill any variant of He Who Remains she comes across, she ultimately falters when she sees Victor Timely plead for his life, as she realizes that the man is genuinely innocent of any wrongdoing, much less anything that has ruined her life.
- Expository Hair Style Change: When Loki first sees Sylvie, she is wearing a horned tiara that keeps her hair tidy. She then puts half of her hair up in a ponytail so it won't be a nuisance in a fight. When she jumps off the train, she loses the tiara and lets her hair down, and wears it this way for the rest of the series. This is also the moment she starts to open up and agrees to trust Loki.
- Fatal Flaw: Inability to trust. Both Loki and He Who Remains comment on it. In the finale, she fights Loki because she doesn't believe him not wanting power for himself, and kills He Who Remains after dismissing all his explanations as lies. Both were sincere, and as a result, she loses the only person who cared about her and inadvertently plants seeds of the next multiversal war.
- Foil:
- To Loki, her male Variant she falls in love with. Both are sarcastic loners with an affinity to magic, but Loki gets disillusioned in his "glorious purpose", becomes introspective and learns to connect to others, and prefers diplomacy and guile. Sylvie is goal-driven, not self-aware and too afraid to trust, and casually resorts to violence. In the end, Loki attempts to consider everyone's best interest, while Sylvie can't see past revenge.
- To her enemy, Ravonna. It's Personal between them because it was Ravonna who captured Sylvie and then failed to stop her from escaping, and later pruned Loki, the only person Sylvie cares about. Both are tough Dark Action Girls, but Ravonna is one of the TVA's top members who want to protect it at all costs, while Sylvie is a rebel outside the system that wants to bring it down. The two of them fight each other, and Sylvie wins.
- Friendless Background: At the beginning of the series, Sylvie doesn't have anyone as a friend due to her being taken by the TVA as a child and being on the run ever since. And because of this, as Loki explains in the season 1 finale, she doesn't trust anyone.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Goes from one of the variants about to be pruned by the TVA, to a multiversal criminal determined to stop them at any costs, even killing numerous Hunters and the Time Keepers to do so, causing chaos. She is also responsible for The Multiverse to expand, only because she killed He Who Remains who was responsible for maintaining the timelines.
- Gender Flip: Sylvie is in-universe a female version of Loki, though in many ways she's also a feminine twist on Thor.
- Gone Horribly Right: She wanted to kill the person she considered a tyrant to give everyone free will. She succeeded, but by extension, she also gave free will to said tyrant's more evil variants who are intending to start a multiversal war.
- Good All Along: The TVA turns out to be the real villains of Loki, as Sylvie works with her counterpart to stop them. She is an extremist though, so "good" is neither nice nor soft.
- Green and Mean: Sylvie shares her male counterparts' affinity for green clothing, and she can be incredibly hostile to those who have the intention of foiling her plans.
- Had to Be Sharp: Apocalypses are the only place where ordinary Nexus events don't register. Because her very existence causes Nexus events everywhere she goes, the only place Sylvie could hide from the TVA for very long was at the end of a world. She grew up living among thousands of apocalypses, always needing to keep her TemPad recharged to jump to a new one at the right time.
- Hair-Contrast Duo: With Loki, who calls Sylvie his "faded photocopy". He is her male Variant who has black hair and apart from being a sarcastic magic user, is her opposite in every way.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Sylvie dyed her hair blonde as an adult and she possesses the intention of ending the TVA's oppression.
- Hand Blast: When she fights Loki in the season 1 finale, she starts shooting green energy blasts similar to how Loki's done in "Lamentis". It is unclear if she always knew how to do it or learned it the moment Loki himself learned enchantment when they linked their minds to subdue Alioth.
- Happily Adopted: Unlike Loki, she was told that she is adopted early on and judging from the flashback in "The Nexus Event", she had a happy childhood until the TVA showed up.
- Happiness in Minimum Wage: Sylvie ends up working at a McDonalds after killing He Who Remains. Despite how much of a comedown this might seem for a literal goddess, she clearly loves her job and is very good at it, due to it allowing her to make friends and find a permanent place in a community for the first time in her very long life.
- Hat Damage: The horn on the left side of her tiara is broken off. She is shown to use it as a weapon, so she must have lost it in a fight.
- The Hedonist: She claims to be an even bigger hedonist than Loki, but according to her never at the expense of the mission. Even when she's happier in Broxton, Oklahoma, though, the only fun she goes out of her way to have is hanging out at a record store where she's friends with the manager and occasional sedate visits to a local watering hole, though, so how much this is true is up to interpretation.
- Heroic BSoD: After the explosion of the Ark, Sylvie loses all hope and calmly waits for the planet to collide with Lamentis-1 and to kill her:Sylvie: And so that's where I grew up, the ends of the thousand worlds. Now that's where I'll die.
- Holding Hands: Sylvie and Loki doing it yield unusual results:
- She takes his hand when they are waiting for their doom on Lamentis-1, a moon that is about to collide with its planet, and he reacts in kind. The TVA immediately register a new timeline branch that is rapidly growing amidst an apocalypse, which was previously discussed to be impossible.
- Sylvie realizes that she lacks the power to subdue Alioth by herself, so she takes Loki's hand and asks him to help her do it. They both close their eyes as they find strength within each other, and while Loki becomes an Instant Expert in Sylvie's core skill, enchantment, Sylvie then suddenly starts using his skills (Hand Blasts and telekinesis) in the finale.
- Horns of Villainy: She is the Cop Killer who wears a tiara with two horns, one of them broken, while the protagonist Loki does not wear his signature horns this time around. As her character is explored and she becomes more sympathetic she loses the tiara after using it as a weapon and doesn't pick it up again.
- Hot Goddess: A beautiful, svelte woman who's also the Goddess of Mischief.
- Hypocrite: She calls out He Who Remains on treating people like pawns in his game, while she herself has been killing Variants in service of the TVA and believes herself to be right. He immediately calls her on it.He Who Remains: [growling] Grow up! Grow up, Sylvie! Murderer! Hypocrite! We're all villains here.
I-Y
- I Did What I Had to Do: When Mobius notices that she did "some annihilating" and killed quite a few TVA minutemen, she replies this way. As Mobius has just put it when you think the ends justify the means, there's not much you won't do, and her goal was surviving.
- In the Hood: Her first appearance features her entirely cloaked in a dark cape, hiding her features.
- It's All About Me: After her identity is revealed, the narrative and Loki as the POV character treat her as someone who has the moral high ground because she seeks to destroy the unjust system that polices the Multiverse. The finale shows that the one thing she truly wants is to get revenge on the mastermind behind the TVA who personally wronged her. Sylvie disregards the negative consequences for the Multiverse at large and the opinion of Loki without whom she wouldn't reach the End of Time and kills He Who Remains.
- It's Personal: Justified. First, Sylvie was taken away from her life as a young child by none other than Ravonna Renslayer back when she was a hunter, who in the present callously claims that Sylvie's nexus event was nothing but a minor event she doesn't recall the details of. Then, just when Loki was about to announce his love for her, Ravonna prunes him on the spot. Sylvie's aghast/angry face shows that Ravonna has officially become an enemy she can take personally. She then says this almost word-for-word when she confronts He Who Remains.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's incredibly rough and gruff but isn't a bad person. In many ways, her moral compass is even straighter than that of L1130 and it's partly her influence that makes him a better man. She's capable of loving and caring for those she grows close to and is fiercely determined to take down an oppressive organization. But her methods can get extreme, and she's ultimately unable to see past her need for revenge.
- The Lad-ette: Sylvie is a tough, physically skilled Lady Swears-a-Lot who prefers to present fairly unisex. As a child, we see she had long hair but still dressed in a style closer to what other MCU media have shown young Asgardian boys wearing, and her hair was left loose and unstyled. Throughout Season One, she does have a bob haircut, but this is probably the easiest style for her to maintain on the run, and she dresses in a mix of scavenged TVA armor modified to look more like her childhood clothes. By Season Two, her hair has grown out into an androgynous shag/mullet and she wears muscle tees in her spare time. All of this contrasts with Loki's delicate manners and carefully arranged hair.
- Lady Swears-a-Lot: She will call you an "arse" and ask you to "piss off" because she has "shit to do", while her male counterpart is always impeccably well-mannered and eloquent. This is because she lacks the education he got as an Asgardian prince.
- Large Ham: Sylvie can be just as dramatic as her male counterpart.
- Lean and Mean: She has a thin frame and is quite gruff and vindictive. She does have a soft side underneath that though.
- Leaning on the Furniture: She is so rebellious and unafraid of the TVA that Hunter B-15 finds her in the interrogation room sitting on a chair with her feet on the table.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Loki realizes that killing He Who Remains will just leave an Evil Power Vacuum that invites his worse Variants to take over. Sylvie doesn't care.
- Letting Her Hair Down: She initially ties half of her hair and uses a tiara to keep it in place. In the middle of "Lamentis", she lets her hair loose and agrees to tell Loki a bit about her powers. She never ties it from this point on.
- Lonely Together: Both Sylvie and Loki never were in any serious relationship. She has been a survivor on the run all her life, and he was barely tolerated by Thor's friends before he severed all ties to Asgard. Since they are variants of each other, they quickly find common ground and fall for each other.
- Love Can Not Overcome: Unlike Loki, whose Love Redeems him, Sylvie is too focused on her mission to let her feelings get in her way. She refuses to listen to Loki who voices reasonable concerns about her choice and goes through with it after betraying Loki's trust and pushing him through a portal.
- Malicious Misnaming: He Who Remains calls Sylvie "Loki" several times to unnerve her, even though he knows that she goes by Sylvie.
- Man Bites Man: Sylvie escapes the TVA as a child by biting Ravonna and stealing her TemPad. In a deleted scene, she also bites Loki's arm on Lamentis-1 shortly after they end up there. Alligator Loki must be Sylvie's soulmate!
- Man of Kryptonite: Sylvie's unique ability to create Lotus Eater Machines out of her possessed victim's memories make her uniquely dangerous to the TVA, the vast majority of whom are brainwashed variants, unaware of their true origins. Both targets Sylvie used her possession on ended up breaking down and turning against the TVA upon realizing they'd been lied to, once they realize they had a past and existence before the organization. It's heavily implied Renslayer's focus on Sylvie isn't just because she feels responsible for her initial escape, but also because Sylvie's powers threaten the stability of the entire TVA.
- Meaningful Appearance: She wears fingerless gloves as a part of her "cool" image, just like Loki did in Ragnarok.
- Men Use Violence, Women Use Communication: Inverted. Sylvie prefers to go for brute force approaches where her possession ability won't work, while Loki prefers "diplomacy and guile". Sylvie, unlike Loki, has very little knowledge of illusion magic beyond her self-taught enchantment ability.
- Mind Rape: She can use her victim's memories to place them into a Lotus-Eater Machine. At the beginning of "Lamentis", Sylvie fishes for information from Hunter C-20 by making her believe that she is sitting in a bar with Sylvie and Sylvie is her best friend.
- Mirror Character:
- To Loki, her male Alternate Self. Both were adopted into the Asgardian royal family (though whether they were alternate versions of the same family is ambiguous). Both are talented magic users, Deadpan Snarkers and loners who use a lot of defense mechanisms to cover up insecurity. When they first meet, they immediately mirror each other's Slasher Smiles and echo each other's phrases ("me I presume", "you are in my way"). They eventually both fall in love and fight each other.
- She's also one to Thor before his Character Development in his solo movie. Both of them are blonde hotheaded Blood Knights who are more than willing to fight or kill anyone who gets in their way, and both of them are prone to performing Leeroy Jenkins-like actions without thinking of the consequences of what will happen as a result.
- This, by extension, also makes her reflect on Hela, who was a depiction of what Thor could have become had said character development not made him a better person and who was also a powerful sorceress/Asgardian princess on a vengeance mission after her life was stolen from her. Sylvie is nowhere near as bad as Hela, but with Hela reflecting the absolute worst of both Thor and Loki, and Sylvie having many of both of their grimmer qualities, it's hard to not see her as a parallel to Hela but with a moral compass.
- Mirror Match: In the finale, she fights Loki for the right to decide the fate of the Multiverse. While she is attacking and he is defending against her, as Variants of each other they use similar moves and spells.
- Missing Mom: She has very few memories of her mother, who died when Sylvie was a child.
- Moral Myopia: She gets called out for this a couple of times. She's understandably quick to condemn the TVA for its immoral actions but she's hardly a saint herself. He Who Remains outright calls her a hypocrite and that she's a villain just like he is.
- More Deadly Than the Male: One of the most elusive Variants the TVA has had to deal with an impressive body count and running circles around them. Compared this to the (male) Loki Variant whom she slaps around like a rag-doll and spent the episode constantly being referred to as her "inferior". She also demonstrates the ability to enchant others and control them remotely, something Loki himself has never done (he does understand what she's doing, but doesn't know the technique himself). This is downplayed in later episodes once he has her measure; Sylvie may be a better fighter, but Loki is nearly as good when he's fighting seriously and is explicitly the better sorcerer, having been formally taught.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: The second-best solution, to be precise. If her possession ("enchantment") skills won't do it, she casually resorts to violence. In the finale, she adamantly refuses to consider alternatives even though Loki begs her to, and kills He Who Remains.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Overlapping with Vengeance Feels Empty, after she kills He Who Remains and succeeds in her lifelong goal, his only response to his death is a cheery (but no less ominous), "I'll see you soon." The despondent and shocked look on Sylvie's face afterward says it all.
- Mythology Gag:
- Her crown with one broken horn comes from the Loki design introduced at the end of the Loki: Agent of Asgard comic.
- An even older one is the child in 1549 France equating Sylvie to the Devil, most likely due to her horned crown. Christian scholars painted Loki as a Satan equivalent due to his trickster persona when they were recording the Norse tales. It also may be a reference to how Loki's actual first appearance in Marvel Comics was as a Satanic Archetype in Venus #6.
- Nature Versus Nurture: Despite being a Variant of the same being, Sylvie does not have much in common with Loki, because she was born female (or, given Loki's genderfluidity, chose to present that way - it's a bit hard to tell), told that she was adopted, taken by the TVA as a child, and grew up alone hiding in apocalypses, with any connections she ended up forming being quite short-lived and doomed. They share a natural affinity to magic and snark, but she is way more mature and less cultured and has different skills and quirks.
- Never My Fault: She's very quick to blame anyone but herself for the circumstances she finds herself in. This reaches feedback loop levels once Loki has gone through enough character development that he stops embodying this trope himself and starts taking responsibility for things Sylvie and only Sylvie did.
- Nice Girl: In a Hidden Depths way. Sylvie is a ruthless pragmatist where her mission against the TVA is concerned, but she's kind enough to offer a scared young boy gum after he witnessed her take out a Minutemen unit in Renaissance France, loves and takes deep pride in helping people at her job at McDonald's in Broxton, and makes sure her teenage supervisor Jack has a safe way to get home after an evening shift. She has a clearly evident soft spot for kids and families after her own childhood was ripped away from her.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Killing He Who Remains allows a variant of said founder to rule over the TVA, and allows all the multiversal chaos that follows to occur.
- Noodle Incident: The nexus event which caused the TVA to initially bring her in. Sylvie has no idea what she did "wrong" to catch their attention, and Renslayer doesn't remember the details.
- One Head Taller: Sylvie seems tiny next to Loki who is much taller than her (Tom Hiddleston is 6'2", Sophia Di Martino is 5'7").
- One-Woman Army: Sylvie is powerful enough to take down multiple TVA Agents who get in the way of her vendetta against the Time-Keepers.
- Order Versus Chaos: Sylve is firmly on the "chaos" side of the conflict. She fights for "free will" and her plan is to kill those in charge of the TVA, the "order," and then walk away, creating a power vacuum.
- Out of Focus: In season 2, where after being the Deuteragonist of season 1 she is still an important side character who provides an outside perspective on the TVA as an institution and acts as Loki's conscience, but is only the fifth in terms of screentime and fourth when it comes to word count.
- Paradox Person: Just like L1130, Sylvie is a Loki Variant who is not supposed to exist.
- Perspective Reversal: When Loki meets Sylvie, he is the unreasonable one with Skewed Priorities who gets the two of them into trouble, and Sylvie constantly calls him out on his half-baked plans. In the finale, Loki is the sole voice of reason, while Sylvie blindly rushes into action disregarding the consequences.
- The Power of Love: Loki and Sylvie holding hands is a Nexus event that results in the timeline branching off so steeply that the TVA are able to register it even amidst an apocalypse - when everyone is going to die and nothing matters. The implication is that, somehow, The Power of Love was going to allow them to survive. Mobius laughs when he realizes that the two Variants of the same being formed a romantic bond so strong that it was literally shattering reality.
- Properly Paranoid: As Loki is drunkenly singing to the passengers, Sylvie notices a shifty man leaving the car. Loki doesn't see the problem until the man comes back with several guards who are suspicious of the rowdy passenger.
- Pyrrhic Victory: She finally gets her revenge on "He Who Remains" for ruining her life by killing him, but unfortunately, doing so causes multiple branches of the Multiverse to form, and a far worse Variant to take over the TVA.
- Queer Establishing Moment: In the episode "Lamentis", when Sylvie asks Loki about his romantic interests, her specific wording is whether he "had any interest in other princes or princesses". Loki replies "a bit of both", and says that he suspects the same is true for Sylvie. She does not deny that, establishing her as bisexual.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: By the end of the series, Sylvie, the feral cat, is the Red Oni, and Loki, the thoughtful prince, is the Blue one. He is pensive, introspective, cultured, and prefers to talk things out, she is defiant, determined, rough around the edges, and easily resorts to violence.
- Refreshingly Normal Life-Choice: After spending the majority of her life hiding in apocalypses, Sylvie is happy with her new, mundane life as a McDonald's worker.
- Revenge: Sylvie's primary motivation, as Hunter B-15, who had a link with Sylvie, tells Ravonna. Sylvie's life was taken away from her by the Time-Keepers, so she wants to kill them. Once she learns that they are nothing more than mindless androids, she goes after those who created them. Deconstructed in the finale, as her desires for revenge lead her to a decision that has a lot of consequences down the road.
- Revenge Before Reason: In the end, she's so blinded by her hatred for the TVA that she refuses to listen when Loki tries to convince her that killing He Who Remains is a terrible idea, and does so — with dire consequences.
- Rich Language, Poor Language: Loki grew up as a prince and speaks "upper-class" posh English like all Asgardians from previous films. Unlike him, Sylvie speaks with a less prestigious local British accent (Nottingham, to be precise) to reflect her relative lack of education and life on the run.
- Sadistic Choice: He Who Remains offers her and Loki to either kill him and destroy the TVA, which would lead to a multiversal war with numerous Kangs in command, or rule the TVA together, restricting free will. She does not hesitate when she chooses the first option, more out of revenge than thoughtful consideration.
- Samus Is a Girl: "The Variant" reveals this alternate version of Loki as a female.
- Satanic Archetype: A child from 1549 France who's seen Sylvie points to the stained glass with Satan's image in a cathedral when Mobius asks who killed the TVA men, equating Satan's horns with Loki's horns. In 2077, an old woman calls Sylvie and Loki "devils".
- Screw Destiny: She is dissatisfied with her role on the Sacred Timeline and ultimately finds the man behind it all, He Who Remains, "the author" of the universal narrative. He offers her via Miss Minutes to write a new story for her, then asks her to take over and become "the author" herself. However, she wants revenge rather than more "fiction" and kills him, spawning endless Alternate Universes.
- Screw Yourself: Sylvie touching Loki's hand is a Nexus event that results in the timeline branching off so steeply that the TVA is able to register it even amidst an apocalypse. Mobius laughs when he realizes that the two Variants of the same being formed a romantic bond so strong that it was literally shattering reality. After several episodes of longing looks and Holding Hands, they acknowledge their feelings in the finale and kiss only to immediately break up after that.
- Slasher Smile: Sports one of these sometimes when she gets into fights — which she does frequently. It's another aspect that she shares with every other version of Loki.
- Super-Empowering: It's implied that she can enhance the physical strength of those she possesses, as we see ordinary humans under her thrall being able to go toe-to-toe with the other Loki, who is, after all, a Frost Giant.
- Sword and Fist: She is carrying a kukri around, but she fights with a lot of bare-handed punches and kicks as well.
- Taught by Experience: Sylvie's ability to "enchant" people is something that she learned to do entirely on her lonesome, and is something that Loki doesn't know how to do despite being formally taught magic by his mother since he was a child.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Loki on Lamentis-1. They stop fighting and make a truce in order to recharge the TemPad and use it to escape imminent death before the moon collides with its planet. This does not stop them from bickering.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Sylvie says this word-for-word before she and Loki are about to hijack the Ark on Lamentis-1.
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works: She tosses her sword at one of the Time-Keepers in "The Nexus Event", which reveals that they are mere animatronics and don't actually run the TVA.
- Timeshifted Actor: Sophia Di Martino plays Sylvie as an adult, while Cailey Fleming plays her as a child.
- Tomboy: She wears an unfeminine costume that is practical for battle, has shoulder-length hair, loves melee fighting, and swears a lot.
- Trickster God: She's the Goddess of Mischief, much like how every other Loki is a God of Mischief.
- Trying Not to Cry: In the finale, she struggles to contain her emotions when Loki asks her to stop and tells her that he is not attempting to betray her but rather just wants her to be ok.
- Twice Shy: Loki and Sylvie agree that Mobius's theory about their nexus event on Lamentis-1 is totally wrong and ridiculous, even as they struggle to verbalize how much they mean to each other while cuddling under a single blanket. Having never been in a real relationship, both feel awkward and come off as two teenagers.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Her enchantment magic is self-taught but still impressive enough that Loki wants to know how she does it. It's also the only magic she knows, unlike Loki's vast array of magical tricks.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Sylvie lived a happy life with her loving adoptive family in Asgard. However, when the TVA abducted her and pruned her reality, she started to become bitter and vengeful, with all that she can think about is destroying the bureaucracy that took everything from her.
- Vengeance Feels Empty: She betrays Loki's trust and pushes him away in order to complete her mission and kill He Who Remains, the man behind the Time-Keepers who took her life from her. Once she is done, she sits limply on the floor, completely alone. Her actress explains that Sylvie does not feel any happier than before, just like Loki warned her:Sophia Di Martino: That final moment is just utter devastation. She thought she was going to get the relief that she's been waiting for her whole life. She's built this up so much. She finally kills the guy right at the top and feels nothing. Still feels sort of angry and bitter and sad, as she always has. But nothing, just emptiness, and that's really sad.
- Waif-Fu: She is a small, slender woman who successfully fights her way through half a dozen TVA minutemen armed with rods that vaporize the target in an instant. And she does it with her bare hands and feet, without resorting to her magic or her kukri. Justified in that she's an Asgardian, who are stronger and tougher than humans, and the TVA employees we see are all (seemingly) human.
- Walking Spoiler: Everything from her name and backstory to her plot involvement is a major spoiler.
- Warrior Princess: Sylvie grew up - briefly - as a princess of Asgard, and she has transformed into a formidable warrior in her adult years.
- Weaponized Headgear: Sylvie uses her horned tiara as a weapon against the train guards, similar to how the main timeline Loki used his helmet in Ragnarok.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Her goal extends beyond merely killing off a bunch of TVA minutemen — she wants to kill the Time-Keepers who've been kidnapping and memory-wiping the Variants, turning them into TVA employees who believe they were "created" by the Time-Keepers. Mobius calls her a "terrorist", and Sylvie demonstrates in the finale she will pay any price to protect "free will".
- You Killed My Father: Sylvie holds a vindictive grudge towards He Who Remains and the TVA since they erased her family and her entire reality out of existence. Although she manages to successfully kill He Who Remains, his death only creates more chaos throughout the Multiverse.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Mobius calls Sylvie a "terrorist girlfriend" because she has killed a large number of minutemen, who are revealed to be brainwashed Variants and thus are not actually "bad". But from Sylvie's point of view, she acts in self-defense — if her plan succeeds and she kills the Time-Keepers, she will be free from the oppressive organization that has hunted her for her entire life and converted other Variants into obedient functionalists.
"The universe wants to break free, so it manifests chaos. Like me being born the Goddess of Mischief."
