You kill one variant, and countless more turn up in his place, except these ones promise to be a lot less benevolent and a great deal more focused on trying to take over the entire multiverse. This is the situation that faces the Marvel Cinematic Universe following the Season 1 finale of Loki, which saw Sophia Di Martino’s Sylvie go against all advice and stab He Who Remains right in his chest, something even the brains behind the Time Variance Authority didn’t see coming.
Not a lot of fans would have predicted the instant cult favorite would be the one directly responsible for unleashing multiversal chaos, and she’s been experiencing the sort of backlash we haven’t seen MCU supporters throw in the direction of the franchise since Star-Lord let Thanos break free in Avengers: Infinity War when they were so close to getting the Infinity Gauntlet off of his big purple paw.
Sylvie has plenty of making up to do, then, especially when she reconnects with Tom Hiddleston’s trickster, having potentially kicked off a second multiversal war and sent him to the wrong timeline where nobody knows who he is or what he’s talking about. In a new interview, Di Martino admitted that her variant experienced mixed emotions when she killed He Who Remains, namely the relief at accomplishing her mission but regret that she may have made things exponentially worse.
“She’s done it and she’s sort of waiting for the relief and the release and something to happen to make her feel a tiny bit better about things. And it just doesn’t come, and she’s left questioning everything. I think regret definitely comes at some point. I’m sure it will, because the whole conversation that’s just happened with Loki is almost like a misunderstanding. It’s just a bad bit of communication in a way, and then she’s left with the reality of what she’s done. There’s some big feels.”
If anything, it sets Sylvie up to have a more meaningful arc moving forward, as she tries to reconcile with her decision while trying to come to terms with the fallout of the devastation she’s no doubt set to cause, and it’s likely we’ll be seeing her again long before Loki Season 2 premieres.