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The nasty betrayal in Loki’s Season 1 finale is unforgivable, but it makes total sense given the character’s past circumstances.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Loki Episode 6, “For All Time. Always.,” streaming now on Disney+.
In Loki, Tom Hiddleston’s Asgardian trickster working to become a true hero wasn’t just about his redemption — it was also to show Sylvie that she could trust people again despite the tragedies in her life. She lost faith after the Time Variance Authority messed with her reality and tried to prune her to protect the Sacred Timeline. As such, many felt that seeing Loki shedding his villainous skin would help her believe and hold out hope again. Sadly, she betrays him in the finale. While it is unforgivable and feels like she’s walked back all the progress they made, it makes total sense.
Loki and Sylvie have several key moments where they build each other up. It’s not just about romanticism but them wanting to craft new identities with their best selves. It showed during their heart-to-heart on the Lamentis-1 train and in the Void. For a moment, it seemed like their vulnerabilities and honesty with each other would cause them to listen to one another, even when in doubt.
However, this doesn’t happen at the Citadel when Sylvie kicks Loki out through a portal to the TVA and proceeds to kill He Who Remains. It’s a nasty, traitorous act as she inadvertently unravels the timeline and fractures the multiverse, throwing everything into disarray. Although it’s tempting to scold her, it was always going to happen.
This is Sylvie’s nature, and it runs deeper than just wanting revenge for her family. When He Who Remains offers her and Loki the chance to run the TVA, it’s not a gift or him making it right. He’s literally telling her the reward for all her pain and suffering is to run the tool he used to destroy her family. He’s not just taking away her agency further, but her identity. To him, all she was ever meant to do was be a pawn.
It’s insulting as Sylvie’s free will never mattered, nor did her family’s existence. Had he offered her a reality where they were alive again, that might have sweetened the deal, but he only offered her a Loki she just met. There’s no way that alone would suffice. Seeing as Sylvie’s always been anti-control, she would not want to become someone who takes control from people, robs them of free will and manipulates them.
Sylvie doesn’t have that puppet master behavior in her. She’s not about ego; she’s about compassion and empathy and knows the TVA, as an extension of this tyrant, will always represent evil. Thus, by killing the overlord, she’s giving meaning to her family’s lives by hopefully saving others. She doesn’t trust He Who Remains at this point as he admittedly bends the truth, so it’s easy to see why Sylvie wouldn’t believe she’d break reality with her kill.
Worse yet, the other Lokis had their families, unlike Sylvie. Thus, there was never going to be any nuanced consideration of the offer. Had the overlord not stripped her of purpose from the start and deemed her loved ones expendable, she might have considered differently. But he confesses he paved this road to the Citadel and that her family had to die for her to become this person. It’s why Sylvie is simply breaking the shackles that enslaved her and might enslave others down the line.
Created by Michael Waldron and directed by Kate Herron, Loki stars Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Owen Wilson as Mobius M. Mobius, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravonna Renslayer, Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15, Tara Strong as Miss Minutes, Eugene Cordero as Casey, Sasha Lane as Hunter C-20 and Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie, with Richard E. Grant and Jack Veal. Season 1 is streaming on Disney+.
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