Loki Director On Sylvie's Nexus Event And Why We Didn't See More Of Her Timeline Reset Attack
Major spoilers below for the fourth episode of Disney+'s Loki, so be warned if you haven't yet watched!
With the episode "The Nexus Event," Loki climbed delivered one of the most mind-jarring hours of MCU content we've seen so far, and it was made all the more impactful by the chemistry-filled character development built up in the first three installments. Not only did audiences witness Mobius' potential death (definitely not dead), Loki's surprise pruning (definitely not in Kansas anymore), and Lady Sif's surprise return (definitely not improvising), but we also learned the origin story behind the enchanting Sylvie and her revenge mission against the TVA. Well, sort of.
CinemaBlend spoke with Loki's super-talented director Kate Herron following the debut of Episode 4, and as one might imagine, there was no end in sight to the amount of questions that could be discussed. (Stay tuned for more on those amazing new Loki variants and much more.) Below, fans can check out what Herron had to say about both Sylvie's Nexus Event and why her massive timeline-demolition efforts didn't get more focus after Episode 2.
Was Sylvie's Nexus Event So Bad That The TVA Had To Destroy Her Life?
Episode 4 began with The Walking Dead star Cailey Fleming as a young Sylvie, seemingly as happy as could be while playing with her Viking-centric toys. Her afternoon was soon interrupted by Gugu Mbatha Raw's non-bounty hunter Ravonna Renslayer, who roughly hauled Sylvie away to the TVA as her henchmen set a reset charge in that timeline. Viewers didn't see anything particularly incriminating, and Ravonna herself later implied Sylvie's Nexus Event wasn't so impactful in saying she couldn't even remember what it was. When I asked Loki helmer Kate Herron about whether Sylvie's big moment was more of a major catalyst or an insignificant one, here's what she said:
It would make a ton of narrative sense if Sylvie's Nexus Event fell on the less-than-massive side of the spectrum. While Cailey Fleming's Sylvie could have certainly been an evil little imp outside of the scenes we witnessed, she wasn't depicted that way, and could easily believe that she's mostly innocent in nature. And it almost seemed like Ravonna had some kind of personal stake in taking the young female Loki away, considering how pissed off she seemed in the moment, which was in stark contrast to her nervousness later when she was seen entering the Time-Keepers' chamber. (Not that she had any reason to be nervous in front of those fakesters.)
Kate Herron continued, and her words were a reminder of Episode 1's introductory video with Miss Minutes, which pointed out that Nexus Events can be caused by something as otherwise insignificant as waking up late for work. Here's how she put it:
It's obviously suspect that Kate Herron herself doesn't appear to know what Sylvie's Nexus Event is, although that might just be the director's way of providing a spoiler-free answer ahead of any future episode reveals. Even if we don't ever really find out exactly why Sylvie was targeted by the TVA (beyond just being a Loki variant to begin with), that moment was still successful in serving as the episode's first full-blown indication that the TVA is not nearly as much of a protagonist-filled organization as fans (and Loki) had been led to believe. That continued to be proven throughout the episode, too, by way of Mobius being killed off, the Time Keepers reveal, and Loki himself being hit with the pruning stick.
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Why Didn't Loki Show More Of Sylvie's Timeline Attack?
Loki's second episode ended with a doozy of a final scene, with Sylvie's big scheme being put into action as a bunch of timeline-reset charges were set off in various locations around the world, causing a huge rise in the number of timelines being split away from that most "sacred" one. While many viewers likely expected Episode 3's "Lamentis" to show the catastrophic aftermath of Sylvie's time-terrorism, the installment's runtime was almost entirely devoted to building the connective bridge between Tom Hiddleston's god and Sophia Di Martino's goddess.
Then in Episode 4, when Loki and Sylvie were captured and brought back into the TVA, that big attack was already an afterthought. I asked Kate Herron why the show didn't dedicate more focus on what came from Sylvie's actions, and she explained it by saying the point of the story in that moment wasn't about the TVA chaos, but about the burgeoning relationship between the two trickster gods.
So even though Marvel fans probably had ideas of multiverse shenanigans and other comic-friendly chaos resulting from Sylvie setting off all those charges, Loki pulled a fast one on everyone by showing us just how ineffective the female Loki's seemingly calamitous act truly was. In the end, the attack was never meant to be a debilitating situation for the TVA, at least from the creative team's perspective, but more to show just how powerful and far-reaching their timeline-saving acts can be. And all while viewers were busy watching Loki fall in love with himself. I don't know if that counts as slight-of-hand, exactly, but it certainly did the job.
Loki has just two episodes left to give us answers to its various mysteries, so here's hoping there's a lot more to learn as we traverse the 2021 Summer TV landscape. New eps drop Wednesday mornings on Disney+ at 3:00 a.m. ET.
Nick is a Cajun Country native and an Assistant Managing Editor with a focus on TV and features. His humble origin story with CinemaBlend began all the way back in the pre-streaming era, circa 2009, as a freelancing DVD reviewer and TV recapper. Nick leapfrogged over to the small screen to cover more and more television news and interviews, eventually taking over the section for the current era and covering topics like Yellowstone, The Walking Dead and horror. Born in Louisiana and currently living in Texas — Who Dat Nation over America’s Team all day, all night — Nick spent several years in the hospitality industry, and also worked as a 911 operator. If you ever happened to hear his music or read his comics/short stories, you have his sympathy.