Sylvie

Sylvie is a Loki variant taken by the Time Variance Authority as a child and pruned from her own timeline for a nexus event nobody ever explained to her. She grew up on the run through apocalypses, hiding in moments the TVA could not detect because everyone in them was about to die anyway. That upbringing produced something no other Loki is: a version with no throne to want, no brother to compete with, and one single ambition, which is to burn down the organisation that stole her life.

She is also the sharper half of the show's central pairing. Where Tom Hiddleston's Loki is theatrical and self-deceiving, Sophia Di Martino's Sylvie is direct, furious and correct about almost everything. Her enchantment magic is stronger than her counterpart's, she is a better tactician, and her decision at the end of Loki's first season, killing He Who Remains against Loki's advice, is the choice that opens the Multiverse Saga.

Sylvie is an original creation for the Loki series, but she draws on two established comics ideas. The first is Lady Loki, the female form Loki took in Sif's body during J. Michael Straczynski's 2008 Thor run, which supplied the horned silhouette and the name recognition.

The second is Sylvie Lushton, the Enchantress created by Paul Cornell and Mark Brooks in Young Avengers Presents #1 in 2008: an Oklahoma teenager granted Asgardian power by Loki without her knowledge, who joined the Young Masters and later the Dark Avengers-adjacent teams.

The series deliberately fuses the two, and Marvel Comics has since begun folding the screen Sylvie's characterisation back into the page, a now-familiar loop for MCU-originated characters.