Not too long ago, Loki director Kate Herron reached out to the star of her 2017 short film Smear with a proposition that would level both of them up in a major way. Herron and the team at Marvel Studios had set for themselves a difficult task: They had to cast an actor who could convincingly play not only a romantic foil to Tom Hiddleston’s often swooned-over but never coupled-up god of mischief, but also a variant of Loki in her own right as the show sought to establish a character named Sylvie as a female version of the MCU’s most beloved villain turned hero.
Ultimately, Marvel agreed with Herron that Sophia Di Martino, a relatively unknown actress in the U.S., fit the bill. Another Loki role may have bigger implications for the MCU as a whole—Herron tells Vanity Fair she was at the table when Jonathan Majors got the job that may include many more films and shows to come. But Herron’s casting was the most crucial to the success of this particular show, which hinges on the notion that she be at least as compelling as Hiddleston—who had a decade’s worth of audience goodwill to draw upon.
Ultimately, Di Martino matched Hiddleston step for step. And while she may not have done it backwards and in heels—Sylvie wears very sensible boots—Di Martino did manage to meet the demands of her punishing Marvel schedule and breastfeed her new baby at the same time.
Speaking with Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast a few days after the Loki finale aired, Di Martino dug into the intensive, romantic, and action-packed showdown between Loki and Sylvie, and a choice her character made that will reverberate throughout the MCU. Kate Herron also joined for a brief post-finale check-in, all of which you can find in full in the recording below. Or scroll on to read highlights from our conversations.
In the last moments of the finale, after Sylvie has shoved Loki out of the way, she makes a vengeance-driven decision to plunge a knife into Jonathan Majors’s enigmatic villain He Who Remains—who is responsible for the years Sylvie spent on the run and hiding from the TVA. If we’re to take the show’s many allusions to John Milton’s Paradise Lost to heart, Sylvie’s decision is tantamount to Eve biting the apple and getting everyone kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Does she regret it? Not yet, says Di Martino.
“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,” the actress explains. “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.”
By killing He Who Remains, Sylvie reintroduces free will back into the universe. But she also creates endless fissures on the timeline, and ensures that many more villainous variants of Majors’s chaotically evil character will come pouring into the MCU. So should Marvel fans place all the blame for the chaos and multiversal madness sure to follow on Sylvie? “I would understand that,” Di Martino says. “But I guess we just need to wait and see what actually happens if he was telling the truth. I don’t know; maybe it will be entertaining!” Maybe, at the end of the day, we will thank Sylvie for what she did. Maybe, to quote Lucifer in Milton’s poem, it’s better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.
Because so much of the Loki finale was dedicated to the introduction of Majors and his character, Di Martino often found herself in reaction mode. Not only is He Who Remains an unpredictable figure, but Majors himself was an unpredictable scene partner. “I didn’t expect him to be so eccentric!” she says. “Every take was completely different. There was one bit where he was back-flipping around the room. I guess I expected someone a little bit more serious behind a desk, you know, menacing in a more obvious way. Jonathan was a little bit more unhinged, which was great.”
But just because Sylvie was mostly reacting, that doesn’t mean Di Martino was in any way relaxed through the season’s final installment. Thinking of Sylvie as a tail-twitching cat ready to pounce, Di Martino said even something like taking a seat was a tension-filled decision for her: “I’m going to sit down in this chair, but I’m going to be really careful because I don’t know if I’m going to have to spring out of this chair to kill someone.”
When the time to spring came, Sylvie found herself facing off not against He Who Remains, but against Loki himself, who cautioned her to think before she struck. What ensued was an emotional, passionate fight inspired, Di Martino says, by the house-destroying brawl between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in Mr. & Mrs. Smith. “I’m casting myself as Angelina, obviously,” she says. When Brad and Angelina did it, the punches were actually foreplay for what was to come—but this being the much chaster MCU, Loki and Sylvie’s fight ends, simply, with a kiss. This being a Loki story, though, that kiss came with a side of betrayal.
“I see it sort of like, ‘it’s been fun but see you later,’ goodbye kiss,” she says. “It also helps her spin him around so she can get [the temp pad]. But I don’t think it’s a totally cold move. Maybe pushing him through the time door is a way to get him out of the way, but also to keep him safe.”
Thanks to Sylvie, Loki will live to fight another day in season two—and so, presumably, will she. Di Martino swears she didn’t know about the show’s second season until those watching at home did. (A story that’s a little easier to swallow when you consider Sebastian Stan once found out about his next Marvel assignment from a friend who saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier announced at San Diego Comic-Con.)
At any rate, Di Martino is eager to see what awaits her on this next season—which could, theoretically, involve her tackling another variant of this trickster god. “Play two characters?” she says noncommittally. “It sounds like a lot of hard work.” Somehow, she seems up for the challenge.
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