Sylvie Laufeydottir (born Loki) is a fictional character portrayed by Sophia Di Martino in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) media franchise, partially based on the Marvel Comics characters Lady Loki and Sylvie Lushton's Enchantress. She is depicted as an alternate version of the supervillain Loki and joins forces with another version of them to overthrow the Time Variance Authority (TVA).
Blaming the TVA for stealing her life, Sylvie allies with Loki, and later Hunter B-15 and Mobius, to hunt down the creator of the TVA. After finding the creator, He Who Remains, she kills him, freeing the Multiverse but betrays Loki in the process. After going to work at McDonald's, Sylvie returns to the TVA to help them fix the Temporal Loom.
Di Martino has portrayed the character in both seasons of the Disney+ television show Loki (2021–2023), and the character made her comic debut in the spin-off limited comic series TVA (2024–2025). Di Martino's portrayal of the character has been received positively by critics and fans, though some were initially confused about her identity; she received several awards and nominations.
Concept and casting By November 2018, it was announced that a television show would premiere on the then-upcoming Disney streaming service Disney+ about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) character Loki. By February 2019, Michael Waldron was hired as the show's head writer and executive producer for the show, eventually revealed to be titled Loki. That year, English actress Sophia Di Martino auditioned for the show alongside Loki's actor, Tom Hiddleston, under the false names "Bob" and "Sarah", and was not told until afterwards which role she was auditioning for. By November, Di Martino was cast in the show with reports indicating that she would be portraying a female version of Loki in some shape or form.
Director Kate Herron pitched the character with "a brand new backstory in a brand new story" with her physicality and mannerisms similar to Hiddleston's Loki. Di Martino also noted that while it was important to make the character unique and original, she would retain the important aspects of Loki's personality. Herron praised Di Martino's casting, saying "she brings this amazing vulnerability to all her characters", and helped craft Sylvie as an alternate version of Loki who can hold her own without taking the attention away from her alternate counterpart.
Hiddleston expressed excitement for Di Martino taking the role, commenting: "I cannot wait for audiences to see Sophia in this [...] she has mischief, playfulness, maybe a little bit of interior fragmentation and some broken emotions [...] she made it completely her own [with] her own preparation and research and it was such a fun dynamic". He added that it would "destabilizing" for Loki to meet an alternate version of himself.
Characterization
Personality and appearances Sylvie first appeared in season one of Loki (2021). In the show, Sylvie joins forces with Loki in taking down the TVA, an organization located outside of space and time which governs all of time. With the help of Mobius and Hunter B-15, the pair discover the TVA is being run by androids, and eventually encounters the real creator, He Who Remains, an alternate version of Kang the Conqueror. Initially at odds with Loki about it, Sylvie kills He Who Remains freeing the Multiverse, and sends Loki back to the TVA after sharing a kiss. On her role in season one, Di Martino found that Sylvie was "just on a revenge mission" due to "having her life ruined". Herron also found Sylvie to be driven by revenge, pain, and anger, and compared her to her counterpart in Thor (2011). Herron interpreted the kiss between Sylvie and Loki as a goodbye kiss, and that while Sylvie's feelings were genuine, her will to take down the TVA was stronger. American child actress Cailey Fleming also portrayed a younger version of Sylvie.
Di Martino reprised her role in the second season of Loki (2023). After killing He Who Remains, Sylvie travelled to Broxton, Oklahoma in the 1980s, and begins working at a McDonald's. Sylvie working in Broxton, Oklahoma is a reference to the location of Asgard in comics during the late 2000's and early 2010's. A 1980s McDonald's was specifically written into the script, with executive producer Kevin R. Wright calling the experience for Sylvie a "love letter to nostalgia through [her] eyes who will see all of the novelty and joy of it". In the second season, Sylvie reunites with Loki, Mobius, B-15 and other TVA workers Ouroboros and Casey, and assists them in fixing the Temporal Loom with the help of Victor Timely, another variant of He Who Remains. In the end, Loki sacrifices himself as a replacement for the Loom, giving Sylvie her freedom despite the cost of never seeing Loki again.
Sylvie made her Marvel Comics debut in the spin-off comic book limited series TVA (2024–2025), written by Katharyn Blair, one of the writers for Loki season two. The story picks up after the events of Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), and features Sylvie returning to the TVA to assist B-15 and a group of heroes (including variants of Spider-Gwen and Captain Carter), in finding out who almost killed Mobius. Kevin Erdmann, writing for Screen Rant, called the comic an unofficial season three of Loki.
Costume design and portrayal Di Martino, Herron, costume designer Christine Wada and hair designer Amy Wood designed Sylvie to be as practical as possible while acknowledging the character's life being a "dirty job" to stray away from stereotypical feminine costumes such as high heels. Her helmet's broken horn was inspired by Lady Loki's headpiece in the comics, and illustrated how rough her life had been and how she is practically "broken" inside. Due to Di Martino recently having given birth, hidden zippers were added to her costume so she could nurse her baby between takes. In season two, she dons a 1970s-themed McDonald's uniform which Di Martino called a metaphor for Sylvie "being able to try and live a normal life and enjoy what she's created".
Di Martino noted she found ways to incorporate her native English accent to contrast with Hiddleston's Loki while also keeping the Asgardian accent, not wanting to sound too posh or too well spoken. Like Loki, Sylvie is also depicted as bisexual, an aspect Herron and Di Martino found to be important for representation and to honor the Norse mythology of the character. Los Angeles Times writer Tracy Brown noted that this inclusion mimics the comics, calling it "a big step for the MCU, which has for years been called out for its abysmal track record when it comes to LGBTQ inclusion".
Relationship with Loki
Throughout Loki, Sylvie is depicted as Loki's love interest, an idea formed in the earliest pitches of the show from Waldron who wanted his reluctant relationship with her to develop his character in "the hope that maybe that it's also about [Loki] learning to forgive himself". He added that he wanted Sylvie to play a role in Loki's self-actualization and redemption from the villainous depiction in previous MCU media, commenting that "in meeting Sylvie and having a mirror held up to him, for the first time he feels [affection] about himself". To misgivings about their romance, Hiddleston noted that "Sylvie's not Loki, Sylvie is Sylvie", while Herron called their relationship "unique".
Critics were intrigued by Sylvie's relationship with Loki with Waldron finding it necessary to further character development. Christian P. Haines, a philosopher and assistant English professor at Penn State University, discussed with Gizmodo the implications of their romance, The question is less, 'does this count as incest', and more 'what would happen if this really basic social rule were loosened?' [...] Would chaos roil the multiverse or would things be pretty much the same, except we wouldn't take for granted even the most basic social and cultural rules? That strikes me as a very Loki proposition: not revolution, really, more an acerbic irony that undermines self-serious assumptions about human nature or what it means to be 'civilized'. BBC Culture critic Stephen Kelly opined that the relationship would likely result in "some of the most perverse fan fiction the internet has ever seen". Andi Ortiz of TheWrap felt that the relationship would be "a little hard to make it work long term" but praised it and Hiddleston and Di Martino's performances opining they "have the right chemistry as actors".
Original comic derivations
Sylvie is an original character created for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), with inspiration taken from two characters in the mainstream comics set in the Marvel Universe (Earth-616): Lady Loki, a female version of the Marvel Comics supervillain Loki who debuted in Thor Vol. 2 #80 following the Ragnarok event; and Sylvie Lushton, the second iteration of the Enchantress introduced in Dark Reign: Young Avengers #1. In the comics, Lushton is a girl from Broxton, Oklahoma who receives magical powers granted to her when Asgardians took over her home; Later, she became known as the "Goddess of Mischief", a moniker that the show adapted onto Sylvie. Fatherly summarised Sylvie as a combination of Lushton and Lady Loki into " Loki Variant who uses the alias Sylvie".
Fictional character biography Early life Loki was born a Frost Giant and abandoned as an infant by her father Laufey, being raised in Asgard as their princess. She is arrested by Ravonna Renslayer on behalf of the Time Variance Authority (TVA) as a child for "crimes against the Sacred Timeline". She is brought into the TVA headquarters and into the courtroom, where she steals Renslayer's TemPad and escapes the TVA through a Timedoor. Over the following centuries, Loki learns to hide herself from the TVA, adopting the alias "Sylvie" and developing a method of body possession, dubbed 'Enchantment', to achieve her ends.
Life as a fugitive
While living as a fugitive, Sylvie kills several units of TVA Minutemen, such as in 1858 Oklahoma, and steals their reset charges. She travels to 2050 Alabama and is tracked down by another variant of herself during a hurricane there, where, upon rejecting his offer to work together to overthrow the Time-Keepers and revealing herself to him, she executes her scheme; teleporting the charges she stole to various locations across the timelines, causing branches to form on the Sacred Timeline to distract the TVA so that she can assassinate the Time-Keepers. She teleports away to the TVA headquarters via a Time Door.
Bonding with Loki
Sylvie and Loki are confronted by Renslayer. As Sylvie threatens to kill Loki, Loki uses a TemPad to teleport them to the moon Lamentis-1 in 2077 while it is being destroyed by a falling planet. After learning the TemPad needs to be charged for them to use it, Sylvie and Loki join forces to escape the moon, masquerading as a guard and his prisoner to get onto an evacuation train, where Sylvie and Loki bond over drinks and the differences in their pasts. After being discovered and thrown off the train, Loki accidentally breaks the TemPad. Sylvie and Loki plan to instead hijack the evacuation ship, which according to the "Sacred Timeline" will be destroyed before leaving the moon, only to fail. Loki learns from Sylvie that everyone in the TVA are variants hunting other variants, to which Loki reveals to Sylvie that the majority of variants working for the TVA, including Mobius M. Mobius and Hunter B-15, are unaware that they themselves are variants.