‘Loki’ Director Kate Herron Has an ‘Idea’ of What Sylvie’s Nexus Event Was as a Child
In Loki, Sophia Di Martino stars opposite of Tom Hiddleston’s Loki as Sylvie, a Loki variant. The fourth episode of Loki reveals that Sylvie was captured by the Time Variance Authority as a young child. She managed to escape and spent most of her life on the run. Throughout her life, Sylvie wondered what Nexus Event caused the TVA to recognize her as a variant. During an interview with CinemaBlend, Loki director Kate Herron gave some answers about Sylvie’s past.
[Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for season 1 episode 4 of Loki.]
Sylvie was captured as a child in ‘Loki’
The fourth episode of Loki opens with a young Sylvie (Cailey Fleming) playing with toys in Asgard. Hunters from the TVA, including Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), appear. They collect Sylvie and bring her to the TVA.
Viewers watch as Sylvie goes through the intake process as a scared child. When Renslayer brings Sylvie to her trial, Sylvie manages to escape. The flashback ends, and Sylvie explains to Loki that she spent the rest of her life hiding from the TVA.
Later in the episode, Sylvie encounters Renslayer again. She asks Renslayer what her Nexus Event was, but Renslayer tells her that she does not remember. This crushes Sylvie, as her whole life was essentially destroyed due to something unimportant.
The ‘Loki’ director has an ‘idea’ about Sylvie’s Nexus Event
As fans know from the beginning of the Disney+ series, someone can stray from the Sacred Timeline without any ill intentions. While Herron has an “idea” of what Sylvie did to trigger the TVA, she told CinemaBlend that she wants viewers to come up with their own interpretations.
However, Herron did share that she thinks Sylvie’s Nexus Event was “something innocent,” saying:
“But in terms of like, what exactly it was, I would kind of just leave that open to the fans to discuss because yeah, I think it’s fun. I have my own idea of what it is, but I think in my head, it’s definitely something innocent and something out of her control. Which kind of plays into the fact that not everyone arrested by the TVA is necessarily like Loki and has stolen a tesseract and created this branch. Sometimes you accidentally do just step onto the wrong leaf and you create this branch. Do those people, where it’s accidental, do they deserve to go through this process where ultimately they’re deleted by the TVA? Probably not. Or maybe they do, for the better of servicing and protecting the timeline. So yeah, that’s kind of all part of the discussion.”
According to Kate Herron, Sylvie is not a villain
Part of what makes Sylvie’s story so heartbreaking is that she apparently did not do anything wrong. According to Herron, this was done on purpose because it helped show Marvel fans a new way to look at the TVA.
Herron told CinemaBlend:
“My interpretation of it is that it’s definitely open for discussion, because I wouldn’t want to shut that down. I think it’s kind of fun seeing everyone and their read on it. But I think there’s something tragic, in the sense that we see her as a little girl and she’s playing with her toys, and it doesn’t seem like it’s a big thing that she’s done. So I think that’s the really key thing with her is that we don’t necessarily know what the exact event was, but it wasn’t villainous, and it didn’t seem [that way]. I think that’s the clear thing, particularly with Episode 4, is that obviously our perspective on the TVA started to shift. For example, it was really important for me showing her going through the same process as Loki but it’s like, ‘Okay, how do we show that through the eyes of a child that’s also innocent?’ And we should feel, as an audience, wrongfully there. So I think that was really key for us.”
New episodes of Loki premiere on Wednesday on Disney+.
