But if you’re travelling on business, you say you’re from wherever your office is.
Huh, I didn’t think of that. That’s just as likely I think.
I think the simplest explanation for Sylvie-Loki not remembering Frigga or thinking of herself as a princess is that Sylvie’s Frigga was wiped from existence along with the rest of Sylvie’s Asgard by the TVA. So:
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In the “main” timeline, Frigga and Odin adopt a frost giant foundling. The foundling is gender-fluid (Loki’s TVA file describes him that way!).
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At some point along the line, while still very young, Loki does something to cause a branch. The “main” timeline continues as we have seen it, with Loki eventually settling on a male form as his most common one.
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The TVA shows up to prune the branch, brings Little Alt-Loki to the TVA to be tried or whatever. Little Alt-Loki escapes them somehow - Loki is crafty! - and goes on the interdimensional lam.
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Little-Alt Loki grows up on the run. Different experiences lead her to select a female presentation as her most common. Since her family and entire world were wiped when she was very small, she barely remembers them and doesn’t identify with them. But she is pissed that the TVA took all of that away from her, and is out for revenge.
Seems to fit with everything we’ve seen so far, right?
Including trailers from next week that seem to show a young Sylvie.
Yes, I think that’s exactly what she meant. Here’s the quote:
That young soldier from the TVA, her mind was messed up. Everything clouded. I had to pull a memory from hundreds of years prior, before she even fought for them.
Sylvie mentions that she knew all along that she was adopted, whereas Loki didn’t find that out until 2011, so the nexus point must have happened when they were both very young.
I think that’s a/the key question, which it’s frustrating that we don’t know (because it seems so obvious that Loki should have been curious about it… unless it’s just ultra-obvious to him, in which case, why isn’t it ultra-obvious to us?). Does Sylvie share his DNA? Was she literally the same person as him when born? (Substitute the Frost Giant equivalent of DNA there as appropriate). Or is she a similar entity born in similar-but-not-identical circumstances who fills a similar enough role to be considered “a Loki”?
One other point that is still very unclear about Variants. When we saw our Loki become a variant, he did so only because an opportunity presented itself due to time-travel-shenanigans. He wouldn’t have had the chance to steal the Tesseract and diverge from the sacred timeline had there not already been nonsense afoot (albeit nonsense which is apparently A-OK with the timekeepers). Is that how it is for all variants? Or do some just turn left instead of turning right, all without any time travel going on at all? Because the latter is a LOT more sinister in a you-get-no-free-will way.
That’s exactly what the TVA said in the first episode, but I think at this point we can’t trust anything they’ve said.
My interpretation of that bit in the TVA cartoon was that you might make a small “incorrect” decision as a result of someone time travelling, and end up at the TVA. For example there was the Goldman Sachs guy who got deleted in the TVA ticket line - he wasn’t a time traveler himself, but took a “wrong” action due to a time travel event.
The only times we’ve seen the TVA minutemen dispatched have been due to time travel events. Although now that I think about it, all those events aside from Loki’s have been Sylvie, and maybe she’s a special case.
This also makes me wonder what the point of the whole variant trial system is anyway. The TVA has no problem deleting variants, so why don’t they just always do that? Is it to look for variants who are suitable to recruit as TVA agents?
It could be to give the veneer of a fair trial. Like maybe if they’re too obviously cruel the TVA workers get uneasy and begin to question their conditioning. If one starts to feel queasy about pruning variants, they can think, “well, we give them a trial!” to quiet their doubt.
That’s my guess. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a flashback to Mobius’ trial in the next episode.
A weird thought that attacked me last night: we see files with “Loki Laufeysdottir” and pictures written on them. If they’re current, why not give that info to the team? They might have been looking for a Hiddleston. And the pictures-who’s taking them, and how?
On a totally unrelated note, I want the Two-Gun Kid to show up. He’s had brushes with timey-wimey stuff, and I’m a sucker for cowboys.
I mean, the TVA is a bureaucracy. You ever tried to get anything done at the DMV in a timely fashion? Now imagine the DMV’s bailiwick encompasses the entire multiverse and it answers to nobody. That’s the TVA. 
How do we know they haven’t? The only TVA-associated person whose interacted with her in the show (not counting folks she’s killed/interrogated) is Loki, and while he seemed a little surprised, they’d also established that he had been kind of half-assing the research they’d initially given him. I can definitely see him thinking, “I don’t need to read a TVA file to tell me about myself,” and skipping it.
Yeah, I’d like to see if and how someone ends up being a variant if there is no time travel or other similar shenanigans involved.
Given the number of variants that we see in the TVA, either time travel is pretty damn common, or is not necessary for splitting the timeline.
Man, this show continues to just blow me away. Tonight’s episode is so good!
Stick around for the credits - there’s a post-credit scene.
So, I guess Loki actually caring about someone other than himself was such a cosmic abnormality that it opened up a Nexus Point during an apocalypse.
I saw Richard E Grant listed in the credits right after the stinger - I’m guessing he was the variant in the Silver Age costume.
I hope we haven’t seen the last of Mobius - he NEEDS a Big Damn Hero moment where he rides in on a jetski to save the day.
If Loki (and those have gotta be Loki-variants) survived being pruned, that implies that other people may have, as well.
It’s also implied that the hunter whom Sylvie kidnapped and charmed into giving information, and learned she was a Variant, was pruned.
The Loki League! Not a real thing, but it would be fun. I’ll be curious to see why the others got pruned.
I’m beginning to think the entire TVA might be Loki variants. If there are two why can’t there be thousands of them? Loki said he wants to take over the TVA, what if he created it at some point in time in the future.