Everything You Need To Know About Loki & Sylvie's Mysterious Nexus Events

Spoilers ahead for Loki Episode 4. In the latest installment of Loki, aptly named “The Nexus Event,” the God and Goddess of Mischief do what they do best: cause chaos. Yes, Loki and Sylvie get into plenty of fighting and even take down the Time-Keepers (well, what they thought were the Time-Keepers) over the course of the episode. But the root of their most consequential mischief, which creates a Sacred Timeline branch so steep that Mobius himself is shocked, remains a mystery thanks to a tragic pruning by Ravonna Renslayer. The original Nexus Event that put young Sylvie on the Time Variance Authority’s radar in the first place all those years ago in Asgard also remains unclear.

While Loki has two more episodes to wrap up the big questions at play — and hopefully give the recently-pruned Mobius the jet-ski ride he deserves — there are plenty of clues and fan theories about Nexus Events to consider in the meantime. Fair warning: They might make you emotional. Here are some of the key facts and possibilities surrounding Loki and Sylvie’s Nexus Event in Episode 4 and what it might mean for the show’s approaching finale.

How Loki & Sylvie Defied TVA Logic

According to the salad logic laid out so brilliantly by Loki himself in Episode 2, variance energy can’t be detected in apocalypses because doomsday events are guaranteed to happen. “If everything and everyone around you is destinated for imminent destruction,” he explains, “then nothing that I say or do will matter.” The theory is proven true when Loki and Mobius visit the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. So the fact that something on the ill-fated moon causes not just a timeline branch, but an extension of a size never before seen at the TVA, means it must have been monumental and of more consequence than, say, an entire moon turning to rubble.

What Is Loki & Sylvie’s Nexus Event?

A few clues from the episode suggest that the major timeline-brancher was simply Loki believing for the first time he could care for someone — or be cared about — and be a good person. It seems to be Mobius’s theory, too. As he asks Loki, “Do you care about this variant? Do you really think you deserve to be alone? ... The Nexus Event the two of you caused, I think whatever that connection is can bring this whole place down.”

The branch does break out right when Loki and Sylvie hold hands and prepare for the inevitable, so perhaps the pair’s (almost) final moment was one of revelation. It could be one in which the God of Mischief saw his own goodness and thought he could be more than a force of destruction in other people’s lives.

Several viewers took to TikTok to show their support for the bittersweet theory after the episode. User richiseldia wrote that “Loki and Sylvie’s love for each other wasn’t supposed to happen.” At the same time, lokishairgrese suggested that the connection proved that “Loki started to love himself,” which “wasn’t meant” to happen on the Sacred Timeline.

Of course, there could be something even trickier at play. As user insert.pun_here_ suggested in one comment, perhaps “the arm touch [on Lamentis-1] allowed Loki to see deep into her memories and he saw her real Nexus Event. That’s what he was gonna tell her before the pruning.”

What Was Young Sylvie’s Nexus Event?

Even if Loki did see Sylvie’s pivotal Nexus Event on Lamentis-1 somehow, the viewers certainly haven’t. Whatever Sylvie did (or didn’t do) as a child that caused the TVA to take her away from Asgard is still a mystery. And because Sylvie doesn’t interact with the agency in the comics, there’s no clear clue as to what her “crime” might have been. A smirking Renslayer tells Sylvie that she simply doesn’t remember what it was, which can only be either a 1) major lie, which the TVA does a lot, or 2) proof of the agency’s indiscriminate way of promoting its own interests on the Sacred Timeline, an enigma in itself now that we know the Time-Keepers weren’t actually behind those golden doors and might not exist at all.