Loki Season 2 Theory: Sylvie May Be Pulling WandaVision's Darkest Trick

Contains spoilers for "Loki" Season 2, Episode 2 — "Breaking Brad"

Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) is in a better place in "Loki" Season 2 than she is for most of Season 1. Strangely enough, said place turns out to be a physical location – namely, a McDonald's restaurant in Broxton, Oklahoma. While Episode 1 shows her arriving on this particular timeline branch in 1982, walking into the restaurant, and announcing that she wants to try everything, Episode 2 heavily suggests that she's talking not about the menu but about all the ordinary life stuff she's missed out on during her countless years of struggle. She's now working at the restaurant and seemingly having a whale of a time ... at least, until Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and the Time Variance Authority once again disrupt her peace.

TVA interruptions notwithstanding, Sylvie's new McDonald's life appears to be quite pleasant. So why was Marvel worried about bringing the fast food company to the MCU for "Loki" Season 2? Could the studio's concern suggest a less pleasant plot twist at some point down the line? If you combine this possibility with the general unpredictability of the show and the way everything at the Broxton McDonald's seems to be flowing just a little too smoothly, it can be tempting to suspect that things aren't what they appear to be.

Might Sylvie be using her powers to create a safe haven? Could she be controlling the area to create a perfect little life for herself, much like Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) does with her Westview hex on "WandaVision"? Let's take a closer look at the situation.

A tear-inducing "WandaVision" parallel in "Loki" Season 1, Episode 4 juxtaposes Sylvie's despair when Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) prunes Loki with Wanda's sorrow as she watches Vision (Paul Bettany) disappear before her eyes by framing the two scenes in the exact same way. Could "Loki" Season 2 take the next step in this character comparison and have Sylvie replicate one of Wanda's most infamous feats?

Much like Wanda, Sylvie is a powerful magic user who's led an exhausting life with great loss and few moments of respite. Of course, while Wanda has "merely" lost every member of her family and the love of her life, Sylvie has always been completely alone and is acutely aware of the fact that she's the sole survivor of her entire timeline. If Wanda's grief is enough for her to enclose the town of Westview in a hex bubble and shape it into a retro fantasyland, could the sight of a nostalgic 1980s McDonald's and the happy people dining there be tempting enough for Sylvie to hijack the fast food place as a safe space of her own?

As for whether she actually has the magical prowess to perform Wanda-level stunts, that's another question. However, if she does turn out to be pulling the strings, she doesn't need to put the entire town under her spell — she just needs to use her skills of enchantment to maintain control of the restaurant and perhaps some of the nearby areas, thus creating a serene environment in her immediate vicinity but allowing the rest of the world to do whatever it pleases.

Sylvie might have the motivation and the means to turn the Broxton McDonald's into her personal playground, but has she actually done so? "Loki" Season 2, Episode 2 certainly offers clues that can be read this way. When Loki, Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson), and Hunter X-5 (Rafael Casal) show up, there are numerous subtle hints that she's in full control of the place. Her co-workers seem to take orders from her, and everyone else just so happens to leave the counter area the second Loki walks in so they can talk without being interrupted. She even conveniently has a break as soon as she and Loki need to make their conversation even more private — and when she decides to help him, she leaves her place of employment without a moment's hesitation, the rest of her shift be damned.

While it's possible that Sylvie has simply spent a lot of time at the restaurant between the two episodes and put in the elbow grease to earn her apparent command of the place, Episode 2 doesn't really communicate that. If anything, the McDonald's seems to have a quietly ominous "WandaVision"-style vibe now that she's working there. And as a trickster god who's gone through a particularly long and traumatizing period of fugitive life, Sylvie might not have moral issues with hypnotizing a bunch of people to create a safe space that allows her to finally experience a tiny bit of normalcy. Either way, the McDonald's storyline is clearly one of the most fascinating elements of "Loki" Season 2.