‘Loki’: Why Is Sylvie the Only One Who Remembered What Happened?

The events of episode 5 of season 2 of ‘Loki’ were kind of confusing because Loki was the only one to survive the events that transpired in the TVA when the Temporal Loom overloaded. Of course, while his time slipping did indeed return due to that, one of the things that he also noticed was that his friends were back to their timelines and had forgotten all about him. Meanwhile, when Loki met up with Sylvie, she remembered him and everything that happened in the TVA. So, why is it that Sylvie was the only one who remembered what happened?

The Temporal Loom sent everyone to their original timelines

The ending of episode 4 of ‘Loki’ was kind of tragic because the good guys had to face the inevitability of their loss when they failed to fix the Temporal Loom in time before it destroyed them. Victor Timely was basically destroyed by the radiation coming from the Loom. As the radiation became too strong, it eventually reached the TVA and caused everyone but Loki to disappear.

Loki, of course, noticed that everyone else in the TVA was gone and that his time slipping returned as a result of the radiation coming from the Temporal Loom. As he was slipping between different timelines, he noticed that he slipped to different timelines in the Sacred Timeline and even saw the variants of his TVA friends. The problem was that none of his TVA friends were able to remember him as they were all back to their original lives before the TVA took them for being variants.

The person whom Loki spoke to the most during that time was AD Doug, who was Ouroboros’ identity before he was taken to the TVA. AD Doug was a physicist and a sci-fi author who helped Loki understand what he could do to control his time slipping and how he could possibly return to the point in time before the Temporal Loom destroyed the TVA.

Of course, Loki also spoke with Mobius’ variant, who lived a simple life in his own timeline in 2022 and was working as a jet ski salesman who had to make ends meet to take care of his two sons after their mother had left them. In short, Mobius and the rest of Loki’s friends over at the TVA returned to their lives after the Temporal Loom’s explosion reached them.

Basically, what happened was that the Loom “reset” them to their original timelines and allowed them to live their lives the way they were supposed to live them before the TVA took them. Let’s not forget that their memories were also wiped by He Who Remains after they won the multiversal war against the other Kang variants, and that explains why Mobius and the other TVA employees had no memories of their past lives and the existence of He Who Remains.

So, when the Temporal Loom reset them, they were reset back to their timelines when they had different lives and memories. They couldn’t remember the TVA or anything that happened there because their identities and memories in the TVA were different from the ones that they had when they were in their respective timelines. That is why Mobius and the others knew nothing about Loki, the Temporal Loom, or anything that happened in the TVA.

Of course, Sylvie was the exception. After Loki collected all of his friends and brought them to AD Doug’s laboratory, he decided to go to Sylvie because he also needed her Temporal Aura because she was there in the moment before the TVA was destroyed.

Loki traveled to Oklahoma to meet up with Sylvie, who was working in the McDonald’s there. As Loki is about to explain everything to her, Sylvie quickly cuts him off to say that she knows who he is. Loki also tells Sylvie that the TVA was destroyed, to which Sylvie replies that she knows because she was there.

This means that Sylvie remembers everything that happened in the TVA right before everyone there disappeared. And Loki was just as puzzled as the viewers because Sylvie could recall everything that happened, whereas the other TVA employees couldn’t.

Sylvie has He Who Remains’ TemPad

As mentioned, Sylvie was able to remember the things that happened in the TVA when the Temporal Loom destroyed it. But people are puzzled why she was able to remember such an event when the others weren’t. This allows us to see two possibilities.

The first is that Sylvie may have escaped right before the explosion of the Temporal Loom. She still has the master TemPad of He Who Remains, which means she may have been able to open a door right before the explosion got to her. As Sylvie tells Loki in episode 5, she is selfish, and this could mean that she was selfish enough to choose her own life when she realized that they failed to fix the Temporal Loom.

There is another possibility, and it is connected to both the TemPad of He Who Remains and the fact that Sylvie’s memories were never erased.

It is also possible that Sylvie still got caught in the explosion of the Temporal Loom and was sent back to her own timeline. However, because her memories were never altered or erased before she arrived at the TVA, she was able to retain them when she was “reset” to her original timeline. So, if that’s the case, why was she in Oklahoma instead of in Asgard?

Well, it is more than possible that Sylvie chose to resume her life in Oklahoma after getting reset to her original timeline. She still had the TemPad of He Who Remains, and she likely used this device to travel back to the life she chose in Oklahoma.

This was hinted at when she and Loki had a conversation in the bar. She told Loki that they now all had a choice to live the lives that they wanted because they could now write their own stories. Sylvie even urged Loki to write his own story.

As such, it is more than likely that Sylvie decided to write her own story after she was reset to her timeline. She chose to go back to the life that she chose because this was the kind of life that she wanted. That is why there’s a good chance that she used the TemPad to go back to this timeline after the events that transpired in the TVA.

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