#sylvie speculation

[brsb4hls]

Thoughts on Sylvie's possible ending and why I don't think it makes sense narrativly to have her end up on her branch by herself.

Mainly because it would be redundant. (The fact that it would be a sad ending of sorts wouldn't stop anyone, shows love to pull that shit for 'emotional impact' or whatever).

But: We've seen her on the timeline, alone, pondering her choices with blues-y background music twice already!

The first time after she left the tva after helping to fight Dox, and the second time after she left the bar.

And both times it was about the same dilemma.

Sylvie's life on her branch is not bad per se. She lives uneventfully, which is what she craved after a life of hiding in apocalypses.

She's sustaining herself, she makes her own choices and she builts connections (to Jack, the barkeeper, the record shop owner).

From the outside that looks like a good life.

But Sylvie is unhappy.

Because someone is missing.

And that someone doesn't fit into her life at the moment and vice versa.

Sylvie's dilemma is that she still has a fundamentally different way of seeing things, then Loki.

Loki's sense of responsibility is tied to control and tactics, Sylvie's is about helping people when it's needed, but without interfering otherwise.

And she is still caught between her beliefs and missing Loki.

Sylvie is all about freedom of choice and freedom in general. (The tva took people's choice away in the first place, so she sees that part differently then Loki, who thinks they should be able to chose between their time line lives and the tva).

And she cannot arrange herself with supporting the tva as an oppressive institution just to be with Loki.

Sylvie hoped for Loki to 'chose' her over the system, after he suggested building a life with her in the void ('why don't we figure it out together?') and he didn't. Not at that time.

She is hurt by that decision and emotionally closes herself off, but let's herself be dragged back when people are in danger.

And she challenges Loki's choice, but he doesn't react the way she wants.

'Do you care about anything but the tva?'

Loki has the same conflict. He wants to stay with the people he already formed connections with and take responsibility for potential threats (that's not erased by him admitting that he does not want to be alone).

But he also wants Sylvie there.

He seeks her out, he asks her to stay, he asks her to help.

And in the pie conversation scene he shows his frustration over her decision.

The scene does not lead to a full resolution. So when Sylvie confronts him at the bar, he does not include her in his confession of not wanting to be alone, because he most likely considers it pointless. That's when Sylvie gets up and leaves, because she is too hurt to deal with it.

Sylvie and Loki are constantly circling each other, without truely approaching the other one.

If the show does not resolve that issue and just puts Sylvie on the time line again, with a bitter sweet ending where she's 'free but at what cost?' it would be redundant and undatisfying.

We saw that already and it sucks for her.

So she needs something else.

If she decides to overcome her hurt, dares to be vulnerable and works with Loki in the end, her believes have to be taken into account.

It cannot end with full control over other people's lives for her.

That interview, that points out that everything Loki says matters and that everything Sylvie says matters? That's a clear hint that her pov is just as critical to the solution as Loki's.

My initial thoughts at the beginning of season two where about Loki becoming the omnipotent ruler of the time lines and Sylvie being on her branch.

But that would be onesided.

They are both gods. They are both powerful.

There needs to be a compromise of some sorts for a satisfying ending.

At least that's what I want and hope for. Every other outcome is possibly, but it wouldn't sit right with me.

The only other 'solution' that would fit the narrative, but that I would hate personally, would be to restore Sylvie's branch, prevent her from getting taken in by the tva and have her live a normal life on Asgard.

While erasing the Sylvie we knew.

While that still wouldn't fully work, since she could still exist as a variant given the time line logic of the tva, I could see them pulling it off, because it would be fair to 'little Sylvie' so could be considered 'happy', while still being 'sad' because of erasing 'our' Sylvie.

Didn't Martin talk about 'bitter sweet'?

We'll see.

[sylvies-kablooie]

something i have noticed is that before s2 aired, a lot of fanart and fic assumed that sylvie would immediately realize the error of her ways after killing He Who Remains and apologize to loki. a lot of it centered on the premise that loki would track her down and she would be broken and hollow and filled with sorrow.

but i actually really liked how in s2, she didn't apologize. it might not have brought her the peace she thought it would- we can tell that by the way her legs give out after killing him, how she realizes it didn't fix her past- but she never apologized for preventing He Who Remains from manipulating anyone else's lives the way hers was dictated by him. there was no tearful apology and regret and running into loki's arms. she did what she did, she knows it was controversial, and she stands by it.

[percheduphere]

NEW THEORIES/FANFICTION FODDER

1.) If Loki can control time and thus control the story, then if he chooses to sacrifice himself to save the TVA (his friends), he can also choose to move forward in time after the sacrifice, in which he and all his friends survive... and celebrate over jet skis, bourbon, grilled fish, and pie.

2.) Since it's been implied that Mobius will show up in Deadpool 3, perhaps Mobius will choose to work at the TVA and return to his timeline at the exact hour he would return home from his normal day job. The guy is /struggling/ to sell jet skis. He tried to sell Loki his own, then tried to pitch a sale to B-15. He must be surviving off what's his left of his late spouse's life insurance. Sylvie can help him forge a W2 since she actually knows what one is and likely forged an SSN to work at McDonald's. D.B. Cooper, I mean, Loki and Casey can help by robbing banks for cash. Because screw banks. Okay, fine, this is more my fantasy.

THEORIES CHECKLIST

✅️ Loki God of Stories

✅️ Sylvie motivated to join to save her own timeline

☑️ Time looping; still not sure if the bigger HWR timeloop will prove true

❔️ Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie are the original timekeepers

❔️TVA Key Lime Pie Automat and Hot Cocoa Machine specially built for Mobius

❔️Loki will sacrifice himself and thus break the bigger HWR timeloop

❌️ Mobius = John

[iamanartichoke]

Loki season 2 things I am already obsessed with:

- Loki's eyes glowing green

- The way Loki looks at Sylvie when they see each other for the first time in the McDonald's

- The fact that McDonald's has become a character in the Loki Cinematic Universe

- "We're playing God"/"We are gods" - the theological / mythological meta that these lines have spawned in my brain is *flails*

So anyway.

[delyth88]

I haven't seen much talk about this, but I think it's significant that Sylvie says she couldn't kill Timely because:

"Timely just looked so scared. He Who Remains wasn't scared. Or maybe he was and I didn't notice."

Like I think that's a pretty big thing to admit that maybe you had such strong feelings about something that you didn't notice someone was scared of you killing them. I guess that's been eating her up for a while now.

There was that moment before they entered the citadel where Sylvie needed a moment to prepare herself. So I wonder what she would do in cold blood now. If the key to keeping the multiverse alive is to make sure HWR survives then maybe this is important growth for her. Though I don't think that will be the way things are resolved.

But I think this is a big step for her.

[musclesandhammering]

What Actually Caused the Timeslipping?

I think it was actually a progression of things. The order of events goes:

Sylvie pushes Loki through a time door to the past TVA. The fact that regular tempads can’t even do time travel within the TVA and only He Who Remains’ tempad was able to shows just how impossible it’s supposed to be for anyone who isn’t He Who Remains. So Loki shouldn’t ever have been able to go to that specific spot in time-space, and because he did, it scrambled his personal physics in a way. Almost like the universe was looking at him and going “wait.. whaa- No no no. But..?”

He prunes himself and Mobius/OB extract him from the time stream. OB described this whole process as ‘releasing Loki from time’ so I think it essentially unanchored him from any specific timeline (this is why he didn’t go back to his nyc 2012 branch in 2x05). The extractor was supposed to, then, pull him back to the present- and it did!- but because his personal physics (for lack of a better term) were still scrambled, it didn’t actually fix the problem. In fact, it made the “problem” worse.

He’s exposed to a ton of temporal radiation when he bungees back to the loom room. It’s only for a split second, but Loki was out there with the raw time radiation, with no protective suit on, even closer to the loom than Mobius or Victor got. If he was having timey wimey instability issues before, that had to have made it worse.

[whispering-about-loki]

I can't find it right now, but there's a short clip somewhere showing Sylvie here in the suburbs with Mobius. Anyone else think that maybe she is enchanting him at this moment to show him the life that was taken away from him?

[sylviii]

the fact is that we’ve only got 45 minutes of the owl house left and from every indication it’s looking like we’re not gonna get trans Hunter or any transfem character for that matter. I’m hoping against hope that there will be something in episode 3 but even if not, I’d like to believe that Dana and the rest of the crew fought for it and Michael Mouse put his foot down and said no or that it was on the cutting room floor when they had to abridge the season. Doesn’t stop me from headcanoning the fuck out of it nyehehe

[taraljc]

Rewatched season one episode one with the bestie tonight, since we know from the trailers that Loki will loop back around to those events. and it did get me thinking.

finale speculation behind the cut.

Because everyone at the TVA are Variants--and it's very likely Sylvie can't restore all of their memories one by one there's probably tens of thousands of people there. IT'S HUGE--also they can't go back to the lives they came from because those timelines have all been pruned.

So even if there could be a way to offer Mobius the choice to go back to his life, there is already a Don on the sacred timeline raising Kevin and Sean. It would be Wanda in Multiverse of Madness all over again.

I mean I suppose they could look for a timeline with the kids and the wife but no Mobius, and he could live there. But that's still technically living someone else's life.

I think he's going to stay on at the TVA. I think they all are and not only because they've got nowhere to go, but because they believe in what they're doing and they want to protect the multiverse.

I am still on the fence about Sylvie, which is almost certainly making @nostalgia-tblr so unhappy right now (I'm so sorry, nos!). If they can keep the loom from overloading and her branched timeline survives, then she could go right back to where she was and pick up right where she left off.

But if she has to start all over again, I think I would be happier with her growing up in her original timeline. But it is a question of choice. I think Broxton 1982 was very much her throwing a dart at the map of spacetime and just deciding wherever she landed that was where she was staying.

ETA: It's so funny because after the first episode I posted about how I wondered if Sylvie would be lonely in Braxton. Quite the opposite. everyone else is still only days from the end of season 1 whereas Sylvie has spent based on the stars on her badge at least 6 months on her branched timeline and everywhere she goes, she makes friends. Everyone knows her name, everyone smiles.

Who's to say that Loki couldn't build a life for himself and make friends anywhere, after the experiences he has had?

[makerofrunevests]

It looks like Sylvie does recognize Loki when he approaches her in McDonald’s, so the question is whether she asks him if he’s going to order something

a. To keep people around them from realizing anything unusual is going on

b. Because she’s pretending she doesn’t recognize him

Or c. Because she has a deadpan sense of humor

[alaskanna]

Well, here is chapter two!

[brsb4hls]

Ok, ok, ok, Loki: moral of the story.

I slept, I rewatched, I'm trying to be coherent.

So Sylvie. I know people love to hate her, but she's obviously integral to the plot, or they would have kept her at McD's in the second ep. Now what does she do?

She challenges Loki's viewpoint. There's a constant push and pull about what's right and wrong between them. And in 2x5 we've established that Loki simply just does not want to be alone.

But what about people's choices?

The only constant about the tva the narrative has established is pruning=bad.

Everyone was on branched time lines in 2x5, so when the tva took them before the branch could develop, everything around them would be reset.

So what about Mobius' kids? The show really invested some time in that. Mobius is trying, but struggling. He is in constant sale mode, desperate (even trying to sell to B15 later on). So he's short on cash.

And his kids need guidance. They call him at work and left to their own devices, they set shit on fire.

Mobius looks exhausted (the stubble etc). He's very sceptical and even afraid, when Loki shows up and finally agrees to come with him, because Loki says his boys are in danger.

If that Mobius stays at the tva, what about his boys? Why create such a huge emotional scene for nothing?

Also, if the time line hadn't branched (original version, where Mobius got taken at the nexus event), his boys would be erased.

Now from a Rick Sanchez pov that shit doesn't matter, but narrativly, there has to be something to it.

Sylvie challenges Loki by pointing out the branched timelines are what should have happened in the first place hadn't the tva not interfered.

They go back and forth about choices.

Point is, the choices were already made and lead to nexus events and branches and then the tva took those choices away. So Loki dragging everyone back cannot be good, right?

Sylvie wont interfere, even if she gets Loki on an emotional level, because it's not her place.

And Loki realizes that when he says everyone should go home after Sylvie didn't come with him.

Sylvie does interfere, when the branches are threatened, they dissolve, so she helps. She is very much about free will, but she is not careless. She always helped when needed.

BUT SHE DOES NOT WANT TO CONTROL.

Loki does!

So where will that lead? Loki will have to jump back and stabelize all the branches.

Victor probs wont succeed and Loki will do it himself.

But what then?

The morally correct thing would be to let all branches exist with the variants on them. (Especially if we take the soundbits into account when Loki is deliberatly slipping, B15 saying she was happy where she was, Mobius wanting to get back to his boys...)

If Loki gets powerful enough to safe and control time lines (the green lines in the trailer) he doesn't need the tva. He can keep an eye on Kang himself.

But he wants to keep his friends for selfish reasons.

So what will it be?

Also the end will be exactly what HWR predicted. Plus the tva has a fail safe (shown on the screen before spaghettification).

So does the tva have to keep existing? If so, to what extend?

Narrativly Loki would have to put everyone on their respective lines and sit his arse down at the citadel, making sure shit doesn't go sideways. Powerwise that would be cool, he would also be a true hero, but isolated again, after he just acknowledged he needs connections.

Side note: notice how Sylvie makes those connections? Everyone knows her by name. She's a regular at the bar and the record shop. She built herself a life, wrote her own story and encourages Loki to do the same.

So the 'happy ending' would be him saving everyone, and then building himself a life outside of tve tva (since that's an artificial place and his 'friends' there aren't themselves).

But that still leaves the treat of Kangs.

So how do we solve that moral dilemma?

To say it with Buffy:

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

[percheduphere]

This image bothers me so much.

I wrote 2 long posts on speculation of a time loop occurring, where I think Mobius and Sylvie are in the narrative, and what may happen next if Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie are indeed the 3 original timekeepers.

Theory Post 1: read here

Theory Post 2: read here

I haven't discussed where Loki's positioned on the narrative in-depth. We know that his growth, very much influenced by his relationship with Mobius, has led him to:

1. Trust others

2. Believe in others

3. Care for others

4. Self-Reflect

5. Compassion for self

6. Compassion for others

7. Rely on others

NOTE: I don't think Loki ever lacked these capabilities. They were just pummeled by trauma. Mobius knew this, which is why he emotionally invested in him.

There are three plot points Loki needs to meet:

1. Convince Sylvie to join his side by passing on how he's transformed from Mobius's compassion to her.

2. Communicate, in no uncertain terms, how much Mobius means to him.

3. Discover the timeloop and break it to free the timestream they're all in.

Point #7, under his growth, is what makes me dislike the above screen capture. It suggests a self-sacrificial move to either fix or remove the Loom on his own. The implication would be that he's grown to the point of sacrificing himself for others, but we've already seen him do this in Avengers: Endgame. And honestly, he's died and suffered enough times that this feels exhaustingly rote.

On top of this, Loki may additionally be challenged to reverse his stance on TVA recruitment and/or allow Mobius (John?), B-15, and Casey (and OB?) to return to their lives with no memory of him. In other words, out of love for these people, he will sacrifice his friendships with them and choose to be alone (with the potential exception of Sylvie). Doing all of these things may break the timeloop, and it would certainly not be something HWR would expect (as he believes Loki is selfish).

Regardless, I hate this possibility. HATE IT. Yes, the self-sacrifice would show how far Loki's come, but I don't think heroism must always have such high costs. I would much rather have Mobius and Sylvie accompany Loki to the Loom, so that he will not have to make the sacrifice alone (proving that Loki ISN'T alone, but Mobius is not a god and wouldn't last 2 seconds at that level of temporal radiation.

My hope is the above screenshot was purposely used in the trailer as a mislead and that the true solution is something else.

My ideal outcome is for Loki to return everyone to their timelines with their memories intact. Everyone keeps in touch, stays friends, and can be called upon to reactivate the TVA as an emergency response team when needed. I would also love to see Mobius open his home to Loki (and Sylvie) if they need a place to stay and insist upon staying friends with regular visits (if not outright letting them live with him; besides he could use the childcare assistance). If the final shot is the entire team (B-15, Casey, OB, D-90...) sitting around Mobius's dinner table, sharing pie together, I will be so happy.

[delyth88]

Who's watching Loki from the security camera?

Miss Minutes? Or someone in the future / someone who's lived this time loop before?

[nostalgia-tblr]

do you have any theories for sylvie's s2 storyline?

i have no idea where her journey might be headed. if the leaks are true, and they most probably are, i bet we are going to get sylvie vs. sylvie thing (which is going to be hot, with the superior selfcest potential).

other rumors say that there is going to be 3 sylvies so i wonder if that earth!sylvie isn't even the "main" one.

so we get:

a sylvie who felt guilty, mistaken and worthless thus decided to live a low-key normal life and is depressed af,

a sylvie who felt guilty to the point of embracing the "she who remains" role as kang wanted her to,

and maybe yet another sylvie that has to avoid taking the path of either sylvies?

I have none, because these days I am doing my best not to speculate too much about ongoing stories because of that thing where you come up with A Theory (or read someone else's) and you get attached to that idea (it'd be so great!) and then when something else happens it can be disappointing and/or annoying. If I just let the story unfold at its own pace there's less chance that I'll be let down by a perfectly decent plot that just isn't the batshit theory I came up with one night at 3am.

That said though! Sylvie looked sad in the trailer, not just her face but they'd dressed her in Depression Clothes as well, so I assume that things are not going well for her in wherever-the-fuck. My poor Blorbetta :( She'll probably blame herself for breaking the universe somehow, even if she pretends that she doesn't. I'd assume she's also sad about sending Loki away, and guilts about that too even though it's his own fault for not just letting her stab whoever she wants to stab.

[regaliasonata]

You know one thing for season 2 I hope they do is another allegory on Loki and daggers. Like in season 1 he explained how love is a dagger, i have a little headcanon that daggers for Loki has more symbolism to it, say magically. Classic Loki mentioned how blades and daggers hinder their sorcery but I like to believe maybe they represent his magical potential.

Sylvie said that in the universe chaos was born in the form of her, Loki's crave the wild things in life hence their nature to do things in a more crazy style, but I feel that may also be hinting to the magical potential they have locked within.(maybe an equivalent to chaos magic?)

Daggers to the regular eye can be seen as a worthless choice to use for combat but they require stealth and strategy. You can torture an enemy with slashes and cuts until they beg for mercy and then deliver a killing stab.

We've seen snippets of Loki doing small things with his magic, sneak peaks to what is to come(like how a person would use a dagger to cut up a person, weighing out the enemy) and then maybe he will end up bursting and unlocking more of his powers, no going back(a call back to how you pierce an enemy to death)

It's only a matter of time before Loki finds his true potential and I think season 2 may give us more insight, any thoughts?