WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Loki Episode 2, “The Variant,” streaming now on Disney+.
With the possibility of Sylvie Lushton, aka the second Enchantress, appearing in the Loki series, now seems as good a time as any to go over who this young woman is and how a villain was able to infiltrate a team of Avengers…again.
Sylvie Lushton debuted in Dark Reign: Young Avengers #1 by Paul Cornell and Mark Brooks. Calling herself the Enchantress, Sylvie claimed to be an Asgardian who was banished from her home and sentenced to New York to serve out her exile. She joined the Young Masters, a team of superpowered teenagers who were unaware that there was much more to this girl than met the eye.
A chance encounter with the Young Avengers gave Enchantress the chance to join a more established superhero team, something she desperately wanted. Using her powers, she psychically manipulated her fellow Young Masters to audition for a spot on the Young Avengers. Enchantress, however, was the only one of her teammates to win a place on the team.
Enchantress then revealed her real name and disclosed that she was not a real Asgardian. Sylvie had been a normal teenager living in Oklahoma, where Asgard had been relocated. Around the same time, Sylvie began to manifest powers seemingly out of nowhere. Not wanting to be cast out as a freak, Sylvie traveled to New York to “fit in” and find people who could help her learn about her abilities.
Unfortunately, her former teammates were bitter about her leaving them and sabotaged her efforts to be a Young Avenger. They sent an analysis of Sylvie to the Vision, verifying that Sylvie was a magical trap created by Loki to dismantle the team’s magical defenses. Once this was confirmed, Wiccan immediately banned Enchantress from entering the hideout, effectively ousting her from the team. This also revealed more to Sylvie about the origin of her powers.
It turned out that Loki, the god of mischief, had not only given Sylvie her powers, but created her to cause more mischief. This implied that Sylvie’s memories of growing up in Oklahoma were only fabrications designed by Loki to cause more havoc once the truth was revealed. Sylvie lied about where she came from to get onto the Young Avengers, but she was the victim of an even bigger deception.
Sylvie would continue on with her life, trying to find a new purpose, but her time on the Young Avengers could have been a disaster. It also continued the trend of infiltrators sneaking their way into the Avengers’ roster. Such was the case with the Space Phantom, a being who could assume the form of others and duplicate their powers after sending them to limbo, with Giant Man, Iron Man, and the Hulk falling victim to his machinations.
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