Loki Director Explains That Unexpected New Romance

The fourth episode of Loki dropped on Disney+ yesterday and featured a surprising turn of events. At the beginning of the episode, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) accept their fate on Lamentis and prepare to die in the apocalypse, but a "Nexus Event" allowed the TVA to find them just in time. The event in question appears to be Loki developing feelings for his Variant self, and it seemed as though he was going to confess those feelings at the end of the episode before Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) interrupted. The potential new romance has been a hot topic on social media with many fans going all-in on the ship while others are finding it a bit odd. During a recent chat with Marvel.com, head writer Michael Waldron and director Kate Herron explained why the decision makes sense for Loki.

"That was one of the cruxes of my pitch [for the series], that there was going to be a love story," Waldron explained. "We went back and forth for a little bit about, like do we really want to have this guy fall in love with another version of himself? Is that too crazy? But in a series that, to me, is ultimately about self-love, self-reflection, and forgiving yourself, it just felt right that that would be Loki's first real love story."

"The look that they share, that moment, [it started as] a blossoming friendship," Waldron explained of the "Nexus Event." "Then for the first time, they both feel that twinge of, 'Oh, could this be something more? What is this I'm feeling?' These are two beings of pure chaos that are the same person falling in love with one another. That's a straight-up and down branch, and exactly the sort of thing that would terrify the TVA."

"Who's a better match for Loki than himself?" Herron added. "The whole show is about identity. It's about him, and he is on a very different path, and he is on a different journey. He sees things in Sylvie that he is like, 'Oh, I've been there. I know what you feel.' But she's like, 'Well, I don't feel that way.' And I think that was the kind of fun thing about it. She is him, but she's not him. They've had such different life experiences. So just from an identity perspective, it was interesting to dig into that." She added, "It was just about giving it the space to breathe and digging into it in a way that felt earned."

How do you feel about the idea of Loki and Sylvie? Do you ship it? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!

New episodes of Loki will drop on Disney+ on Wednesdays. If you haven't signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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