Loki Season 2: Why Sylvie Lands In A McDonald's After Killing MCU's Kang Variant
After the climactic conclusion in "Loki" Season 1 of Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) killing He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), landing in a McDonald's seems like a strange choice. But according to the "Loki" Season 2 trailer, that's where the Goddess of Mischief ends up. While on his travels, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) finds his literal other half working the counter at the fast food chain. In a scene that could been created at McDonald's expense, it was more interesting for the series' creatives to delve into Sylvie's emotional journey.
"This character had been on a decades-long, maybe centuries-long revenge mission and the classic trope of those stories is that it's all-consuming and she's not thinking about what comes next," executive producer Kevin Wright told Fast Company. "Now she has this moment of opportunity, where is she going to go?" Di Martino jokingly added that it had to do with Sylvie's hunger, but it goes much deeper than that. After finding a strange connection with her variant and being a fugitive from time, Sylvie, funnily enough, now has time to figure out what is important to her.
Sylvie still struggles with her tragic backstory
Sylvie has spent her entire life hiding in the branches of time, and after betraying Loki at the end of Season 1, she finds the perfect location. McDonald's is an apt place for Sylvie, someone who never had a childhood.
"When we stayed in the view of character, this woman who went on the run as a child, had been running through time, a fugitive of time, living in apocalypses, never being able to relax or slow down, the novelty of walking into a 1980s McDonald's looked appealing," Kevin Wright continued. "You play a Little League game and go to McDonald's. You go to a kid's birthday party at McDonald's. Someone like Sylvie would never have experienced that, and would be really taken by that."
The decade is another important aspect of Sylvie's choice. Not only is it a random spot in time that wouldn't immediately spring to mind for anyone trying to find her, but it's also the height of nostalgia. Sylvie can experience a moment that harkens back to innocence. She lost her innocence early on, so having a front-row seat to an era gone by is her first chance to immerse herself in it. The last thing she wants is a reminder of what she's done and the people she hurt along the way. Loki doesn't seem prepared to let her go so easily, but at least for a moment, the trickster can pretend she's someone else.