The upcoming second season of Marvel Studios’ “Loki” series sees the return of not just Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, but also his somewhat unpredictable partner-in-crime from the first season – Sophia Di Martino’s Sylvie.
The first season ended with the timelines fractured after she took down He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), yet from the looks of the trailers for the second season – when we first catch up with her she’s working at a McDonald’s restaurant outlet.
Why is she there, beyond the obvious chance for the series to incorporate a big promotional tie-in? Speaking with Fast Company, producer Kevin Wright discussed their approach Sylvie’s return this season.
It turns out the idea somewhat originated with Di Martino herself, who was asked on the last day of filming where she thinks the character might go next, to which she reportedly said: “she might be really hungry”. He explains how that ties in with the fast food chain:
“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. Now she has this moment of opportunity, where is she going to go?
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. 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.
I was worried that McDonald’s would think we wanted to do something ironic or make fun of them. But we were selling an earnest story, a love letter to nostalgia through a character’s eyes who will see all of the novelty and joy of it.”
The new season finds Loki in a battle for the soul of the Time Variance Authority. Along with Mobius, Hunter B-15, and a team of new and returning characters, Loki navigates an ever-expanding and increasingly dangerous Multiverse in search of Sylvie, Judge Renslayer, Miss Minutes, and the truth.
Also back are Owen Wilson as Agent Mobius, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Judge Renslayer, Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15, Ke Huy Quan as a TVA Techie and Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror variants. Eugene Cordero, Rafael Casal, Tara Strong, Kate Dickie, Liz Carr and Neil Ellice also star.
Eric Martin (“Rick and Morty”) serves as head writer for the new season directed by “Moon Knight” helmers Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead.
The second season of “Loki” arrives on Disney+ on October 6th.
